Happy Leap Year

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  Beijing, China
Friday, February 29, 2008

Friday night in Beijing, and it is Leap Year, February 29th.  If that doesn't call for a party I don't know what does.  I somehow get invited to a party at the Metro Bar.  We have become friends with the owners of the neighborhood bar, and their story is either a perfect New Yorker Short Story, or Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie of the Week, depending on the quality of the writer.  Luke and Coco are both around 25 years old.   Luke is from England and his girlfriend Coco is a native Beijinger.  Coco's father owns at tiny grocery store that sells expired cans of peaches and bottle of stale beers to late night drunks and bewildered foreigners.  The store is literally 30 square feet total, and yet this old Chinese guy is able to sock away enough cash from unloading moldy Pop-Tarts and semi-melted Bomb Pops to be able to send his only daughter, Coco to England to study.  And it is during her 7 years of college and post-graduate studies, that our friend Coco meets a typical English boy, Luke.  After her graduation, Coco is torn between returning to her native China and staying in England with her boyfriend.   She decides that she must return to the land that she loves, and in quite the romantic twist, that is perfect for an Oxygen Original Movie, Luke does two things, first he agrees to move with her to Beijing, and he also proposes.   So Luke and Coco take over the failing bar in the basement beneath her father's shop, and try to make a go of it.  How romantic, and an incredible waste of two proper and wildly expensive prep school and Oxford educations.  Luke's parent's must be so proud that all those years in Stafford learning Latin and Philosophy, securing all those O levels, before attending Charter House at Cambridge have lead to a very dicey career as a Barkeep in Beijing.  I'm sure that will be the highlight of next year's Christmas card letter.
Anyway, we have adopted Luke and Coco's Metro as our unofficial drinking establishment, and they decide to celebrate their new enterprise with a private Leap Year Day party, and by private they mean, we have invited everyone we have ever met in their lives and posted an invitation on the local ex-pat magazine's website.  Very exclusive, as you can see, with private invitations sent to an select group of roughly 250-thousand Foreign Chinese citizens.  The party offers discounted drink specials, a free buffet, and a band.  Yes, a band...in the space of good sized Dentist office they will have a band...um okay.  So we promise Luke and Coco that we will be there, and after a long week at work, I must admit the idea of what has the makings of a typical frat-style party is rather appealing. 
As with any party, a fashionably late entrance is important.   I get there after 11 pm, and find the place packed.  Of course due the size of the real estate, a small ladies garden club would pack this place, but the effect is tremendous.  In the corner is what appears to be very intoxicated group of Bolivians sit in a semi-reclined manner at the only real bar tabletop in the place.  The remnant dregs of amber colored liquids circle the bottoms of at least 25 glasses on their table.  Beside them are some Asian rock and rollers in full-on 50's Marlon Brando Wild One's get-ups.  Black Leather Jackets and dangling cigarettes from the corners of mouths.  All of them are staring at the tiny stage that is set up in a corner behind the pool table with lust at the only real Fender Stratocaster that any of them have ever seen.  At the pool table are a group of Aussies, and with them are the only blonde girls in China.  They spend at least 20 minutes per each ball on the table, and have at least three times as many spectators as the band. 
I make it through the crowd and to the bar where Coco greets me with a Carlsberg in a cold glass, which has somehow become my standard order and a nice hug.  We make some small talk before she returns to the clamoring throngs who are pushing up to the bar for the inexpensive liquor.  When I say they have discounted drink specials, try 2 bucks a well drink and around a buck fifty per 20 ounce beer.   I turn around to see the "band" taking the stage.  This band consists of one guy with an electric guitar, another guy with a saxophone, and a 25 dollar stack of karaoke party tapes.  They pop in a tape of American Garage band standards, which is probably labeled, "Tape Number 25...Favorite Selections for Drunk Kansas Girls."   The fantastic melodies of Sweet Home Alabama, Good Lovin', Louie Louie, and an extended version of Hit Me with Your Best Shot, echo through the room.  The guitar player strums over the tape, and the two live members of the band trade vocals.  Occasionally an intoxicated American girl yells out requests, which are never granted because, you see...they are playing along to a tape, you idiot.
 This is the best bit of entertainment I have seen in years.  I have seen Pulitzer Prize winning plays, world famous musicians, incredible comedians, street performers, amazing films from around the wrld...you name it, and I really can't think of a performance with greater shear entertainment value (although it is totally unintentional) than the Karaoke Twins.  After every song, the guitar-player bends the strings of his guitar, and raises his hand to the air like Pete Townsend, while the sax player leans into the mic to say, "Thank you very much," like Elvis or more like a very poor Elvis Impersonator unsure if he should do the early rockabilly E or the bloated Vegas Presley.
I delight in the craziness of the "live band..." when several of my German and English pals arrive.  We all say hello to Luke, and he decides we should all share a drink.  It is decided that we should all switch to Gin and Tonics.  One leads to another, and the band plays on.  Such classics as Eric Clapton's, Cocaine...with an amazingly awful Chinese accents,  "She no rye, she no rye, she no rye, Krow-Crane..."
Luke brings us back tequilas, and from this point on...the glasses are never more than half-empty before they are replaced by others, each more toxic than the last. 100 yuan goes a long way, and we all have slapped a couple hundreds on the bar and left the leftovers for additional drinks, so we have pretty unlimited bar tab at this point. The Gin and Tonics are getting stronger, and the reason is quite simple.  Apparently there is a limited supply of cans of Tonic water, and there is plenty of Gin.  This is perhaps the only time in history that tonic is watered down by Gin.  Shall I make the long story short and just say...it is very long walk home, and I am miraclously successful to make it home without incident.   The denouement of the night involves waking up on the couch with the computer's Slingbox blasting away on some Cinemax 2 Police Academy film at 6:30 am, fully clothed except for my shoes.  I drag myself to bed by way of 3 aspirins, a vitamin C, and an Echinacea tablet for good measure.  Happy Leap Year...good thing I have 4 years to recover.
 

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