Yesterday was maybe the best gig of the tour so far. We arrived at the club really early, about 5pm, and spent the entire afternoon and evening hanging out in this city an hour outside of Guangzhou. I’ve had a few gigs in places like this, and these are generally the larger clubs, maybe because they have less competition. Whereas in the major cities have a few streets lined with clubs (which are usually very similar), the remote areas have giant mega clubs, the size of which I haven’t ever seen, aside from Buzz in DC.
Setup was quick and easy, and after eating dinner afterwards, Kim and I found an empty KTV room to take a nap. The room was huge and comfortable, but that only lasted a short time. A group of three managers came into the room and turned on the light and started asking questions. I told them we just wanted to rest for a few hours before performing and he said that was no problem but that we had to move to another room. We collected our things and followed him down the hall where he led us to the green room filled with all of the dancers. No sleep was to be had in there, but lots of fun.
When the club opened, this place turns into a total strip club. No, no nudity, but every other strip club element was there. Old dudes playing the dice game, stripper poles everywhere, beautiful women. I know I say that¬†a lot, but this place had really stunning women. One of them was named Tracy, and despite her very American name, she didn’t speak any English. I spent a lot of the free time hanging out and talking with her, which was enjoyable. She said she didn’t have a boyfriend when I asked her, and immediately followed that with “I don’t know why either”. Kinda hurt to hear that – I told her to get one immediately.
The actual show was great. The crowd was live, they liked all the performances, and there were no problems. Actually, there were really no problems with anything the entire night, which is fairly uncommon. After the performance we waited 2 hours until the club started to close before taking down our equipment, but it was no problem because they were enjoyable hours spent in the company of good people.
Kim and I had a blast hanging out with this huge Tibetan Shaolin kung fu singer. He had a routine where he dressed up all in black leather (basically an I-will-kick-your-fucking-ass suit) and performed a 20 minute set which included downing an entire pitcher filled to the top with 5 Coors. Props, fella. This guy was huge¬†- well, maybe 5’8″, but probably 275lbs of muscle. Built like a bodybuilder, but part of his stage act included kung fu. He did flips, handsprings, cartwheels, kicks up to his head with both feet¬†- absolutely insane things for a huge guy like that to be doing. After we were all done performing we hung out in the green room and watched him do drunken kung fu for us after he downed 10 beers. After he’d do something, Kim would get up and try to imitate him, usually knocking something over or nearly kicking someone in the face. What a damn good time that was.
Today we leave at 2pm, apparently we have a long drive in the loaf ahead of us. I’ll nap and listen to my ipod. I picked up 40 photos this morning before coming here – they look fantastic. A lot of them are from the Buddhist and Taoist temples that I went to in the last week, and the Guangzhou Museum of Art. They’re in my album already, which is nearly full. Kick ass.