Over the weekend, Jovian and I brought Disco Death to Kunming for the first time. It wasn’t without its complications (as we expected the first event at a new venue to be), but we had a good time and came back smiling. The eve
We stupidly waited until the last minute to book our plane tickets and ended up paying dearly for it. We paid almost what it costs to fly to Bangkok from Chengdu, and as expected, we weren’t able to recoup such a significant expense. We took the train back, which took 20 hours, but even that was a pretty good time playing Scrabble and watching the landscape whiz by.
In between going to Kunming and coming back, we had what felt like a 3 day vacation in tropical China. Kunming feels completely different from Chengdu, and it had been six months since I’d been there so it was great to return. We ran into many old friends – Nick, Shonny, and others. Oh, and we witnessed the final night of the Speakeasy Bar. For anyone who doesn’t know, that was the most notorious party venue in Kunming for years and years. I still can’t believe that it closed – that’s what’ll happen though when the landlord raises your rent from 5,000 yuan a month to 25,000. As expected, the last party was crazy.
The show that we performed on Friday was seriously marginalized by it being Speakeasy’s final weekend. Put simply, we were two outsiders competing with a large group of locals (3 bands and four DJ’s) at an infamous bar on it’s closing weekend. Also, their party was free, and ours wasn’t. Still, it didn’t completely bomb which is good. The event was at Uprock, which is certainly in the running for Kunming’s top party venue since Speakeasy is finished. The problem, however, is with the child-like owner who invites us to his club on Saturday but gets so drunk he has to be carried out before we even arrive. Putting my money and time on the line and doing business with someone like that always makes me nervous. My job now is to minimize his ability to compromise my goals in his own venue – even though in the end, what’s good for me is good for him as well. We’ll see how that goes.
One of the highlights of the trip, though? Boating around ?? (Green Lake) in Kunming. Honestly, this photo doesn’t even do it justice:
