Acrobatics Show at Chaoyang Theatre

On Friday night, we (Me, John and Pierre) went to see acrobatics show in one of the best Acrobatics houses in the whole China (it was held in Chaoyang Theatre – www.bjcyj.com). The ticket was quite expensive (120 RMB – which is quite lot here in China. Actually 120 RMB is the cheapest price on which you can get in, but somehow accidentally they give us seats in the VIP zone which was basically 2nd row in the theatre, so we had amazing view on the acrobats and perfect place for taking pictures and shooting videosJ), but definitely it was worth it. It was the best Acrobatics show I have ever experienced. Interesting fact about Chinese acrobatics is that it has the history of more than 2000 years and there are several acrobatics schools which are training professional acrobats. One of the most famous schools is CZU. They are taking there kids in age of 5or 6 and these kids are going through very intense training which is focused on balance keeping, power, flexibility and dynamics. The acrobat “career” finishes around age of 19 or 20 when acrobat is not flexible enough to perform some of the breathtaking acrobatic tricks.

It’s very hard to describe all the acrobatic stuff they did during the show and I think a picture can describe more than 10 000 words. I have some amazing videos from the show as well, so I will try to put it somewhere so you can download them and check them out. So, here are some of the pictures.

Party night in Latinos (hard-core Salsa and Mango dancing club)

On Thursday the whole MC team went to Latinos club. I was expecting some kind of normal dancing club which is focused on latino music. Well, I was kind of wrong. It was something like half-professional club where a lot of people who really know how to dance salsa and mango are gathering every week to have fun together. When I entered the place it seemed to me as a kind of club that was in the Dirty Dance (where all the stuff from the camp was dancing during the free time – night). :-) really hot!!!, really cool :-)

I was really amazed by the way how these people were dancing. It seemed to me like dancing competition – hard-core professional dancing. As I have no idea how to dance salsa and mango I just watched with opened mouth how cool salsa is (when you really know how to dance it:-)).

In the middle of the night there was some kind of show. Basically there was one guy who was apparently professional latino dancer and women had opportunity to dance with him. This was really amazing! The guy had never danced with those women but he was able to immediately recognize the dancing style/substyle of the woman (it took him something like 2 seconds:-)) and then he was able to lead the woman as they have been dancing for years togther. Fantastic. Women were almost fighting who is going to dance with him. He changed around 10 women with absolutely different styles and was always able to get the style and lead the women with her style (at least it seemed to me like that).

Later on I figured out that this Latinos club is something like community place for people who love latino dancing to gather and to dance together. They have a live band there (the band was singing in Spanish or Portuguese:-)) and a DJ who is playing latino songs during the break time of the band. As we figured out later the DJ is a professional mango dancer in New York who is currently here in Beijing and he is giving dancing lessons here in Beijing with his dancing partner who is Chinese (or at least she looks like Chinese).

But the best part of the night was at the end of our stay in the club. Around 1 am there was just one third of the people and just a couple of couples were dancing on the dance floor. The DJ was going around and he was saying hi to the all people he knows. Then he picked the girl (which we figured out is his dancing partner) and they started dance. Oh my god. That was so amazing. They were doing so difficult dancing movements and they were dancing in a very past way without any mistake. The harmony between these two people was just amazing.

When we were leaving I got the leaflet with the information about dancing lessons. Now I’m considering starting to learn how to dance salsaJ. I know it sounds weird to learn how to dance salsa in ChinaJ, but with this couple doing lessons… – it’s not about the place, it’s about the people:-)

Houhai (Lotus Flower) - Party Night

As I promised at the end of last week I’m bringing more detailed information about Sunday’s party. We were in the Houhai in the Northern Beijing which is one out of three party districts in Beijing (according to Beijingers – but who knows where the truth lies?).

It’s actually very nice area next to the Houhai Lake. You can rent a boat and have a beer on a small boat while enjoying the beauty of the nature.

We were in two pubs. First one was called Alpha and Omega. It was actually a club and it was quite good one. Live music (Chinese kind of rock – quite good, rhythmic and loud music. Interesting information that has to be mentioned is that if you want to stay in this pub and you want to enjoy yourself you have to spend at least 100 RMB per person. We were 5 in the pub so they told us to spend 500 RMB J. Funny stuff – so we packed our stuff (Leon was there with complete ice-hockey equipmentJ) and we moved to the Lotus Blue Bar. The pub was quite good. We were sitting outside on the terrace and we enjoyed our drinks and pop-corn. We left the bar around midnight.

There are a lot of lotus flowers in the lake and that’s why the whole area is named Houhai (what a surprise) – Houhai means Lotus flower in Chinese.

Week overview

Beijing Central Train Station
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

It is already one week since I posted my last message on my blog. During this time loads of things happened here and I’m going to describe the most interesting ones.

1. Party night at Houhai (Lotus lake pub/club area)

2. Party night in Latinos (hard-core Salsa and Mango dancing club)

3. Acrobatics Show at Chaoyang Theatre (the most amazing acrobatics show I have seen so far in my life)

4. KTV party (the coolest party I have had so far in China)

In the next postings I will describe them one by one.