Ringo Starr

Since my last post there have been even more crazy things going on in China then usual. First, since my last post was about thing in my room being broken I thought I'd update you on that. Well not long after I had posted it I talked to Teddy to see what was taking so long with just replacing a few lights. Apparently the hotel no longer wants to be responsible for the 14th and 15th floors, which the school owns, so they are refusing to replace the lights. This means that Peter, Teddy's boss, is now getting into it with the manger of the hotel. Of course Teddy felt so bad about this that he came by my apartment later to apologies more. It's not really his fault but I didn't want to comfort him too much since I want him to put some pressure on them to get this done, if one more light here goes out I'm just going to be in the dark. Teddy solution for the whole problem was just to have me abandon my room and move across the hall. I just have this vision of them never using this room again because a few lights have gone out.

Yesterday we had a Christmas banquet with the president of the school. Teddy told us all to be there at 5:30 and no one was that surprised that the president was late, since it's sort of a status symbol, but we were a little surprised that he was an hour late. Ken was also about an hour late, and while that's not so surprising on its own, since Ken usually runs a little late, when I asked him about it he said that he forgot the time and had to ask Teddy again. When he asked Teddy again Teddy told him it was at 6:30 but didn't feel that he needed to tell the rest of us this for some reason. Teddy said that it would take too long to tell us, all of 15 seconds, but I think it was just that he wanted to make sure that we were all there before the president showed up since Teddy arrived at around 5:30 also. The banquet was nice Emma, the little daughter of one of the German teachers, was there and she's gotten really good at Chinese really fast. She was able to read part of a business card in Chinese characters a feat I don't think anyone else but Jason could do. The dinner was good and as usual there was a lot of toasting, but no Bijou this time.

The real fun started after dinner though. We decided to go Christmas caroling around the school so we all got some more beer and met out in front of one of the dorms. It was a girls dorm but they pretty much let us do what we want so we just went in. The people in charge of the dorms came out and said something to Clark, but he just handed them the business card the president of the school had given us and said it was OK by him. David had printed out the lyrics to a bunch of songs and Ken had some hats from Wal-Mart. We just walked into the courtyard between these big dorms and started belting out We Wish You a Merry Christmas. At first there were just 5 or 10 girls standing around watching us but then we heard thus huge rumbling sound all around the dorm as almost every person in the dorm came out to watch us. They went pretty crazy with applauding and taking pictures as we stood their and sang. We decided to go up to the fifth floor and the hallways were so packed with students we had a hard time getting though. On the fifth floor we started to sing again to thunderous applause from all around the dorm. After about four or five songs we left and went to another nearby dorm.

This dorm probably had already heard about it from the first dorm so as soon as we started singing there was yelling and screaming form all around us. The crowd here was probably twice as big and a lot more intense. Clark said that there were probably some girls in the crowd crying and I think he's right. We went up stairs to look for someone we knew and as we went though the halls people were pulling on our cloths and pushing all around us in the halls. The person we were looking for lived in room 509 so when we got there we knocked on the door but no one came out so our huge mob banged on the door until some very confused girl came out. Apparently this dorm has at least 3 room numbered 509. We went around this dorm singing until an angry looking woman with a red armband on came out and basically made us leave something about them having a test in the morning. This video is from the second dorm. While I remember us singing pretty well we had all been drinking for a while. The crowd you see was only a small part of it as people were watching from across the courtyard:



After that dorm the people in charge of the dorms must have been calling around since we were physically blocked from going into the next dorm. The dorm after that we got one song in before the kicked us out then we found a place outside the dorm to sing where they could here us. People at all these dorms were shouting and waving and taking a ton of pictures. We stopped for more beer and went to one last dorm. Here the lady with a red arm band didn't want to let us in either, but we pretty much just walked around here and started singing. We did two songs, Clark tried to dance with her for the second song. During the second song she started smiling anf took of the official looking arm band. We were going to leave but she insisted we go to another courtyard and do another few songs. Brian said the Christmas spirit touched her. All in all I don't think I've ever been a part of such a crazy scene in China. I was shouting stuff like "Thank you China, you've been a beautiful audience," the whole time. It shows still how unusual foreigners are here and how interested they are in us that a little off key Christmas caroling drove them crazy. Brian compared it to being like Ringo Starr not the most famous member of the Beatles but still pretty big.