While most of the teachers for Aston in Ningxia province lived in Yinchuan, there were a couple of teachers who were based in the surrounding small cities.
These cities were a very different experience to even the very small (by Chinese standards) city of Yinchuan. While Yinchuan is small and didn't have many foreigners, there were enough other foreigners around to make friends and always have people to do things with; but these small satellite cities don't really have any other foreigners and the teachers who were based out there were pretty much alone.
This was great for improving people's Chinese and really getting immersed in Chinese culture, but sometimes you need a bit of Western contact! So every so often we would go visit our colleagues out in the sticks.
One weekend we went to visit American Dan in Zhongwei. Zhongwei does have the added benefit of being right by Shapotou desert, which I have written about before, but once the desert fun was over it was nice to explore another city.
Because Zhongwei is such tiny city there wasn't a huge amount going on in the evenings, but Dan played the perfect host and showed us around. We were wondering around the streets, a little bit tipsy from the baijiu shots at dinner, when we stumbled across a promotional beer event.
A promotional beer event might seem like an odd concept but in China they're pretty common. A beer company will set up a stage, big lights and loud music, and somehow this is a way to promote the beer and, I guess, give people something to do for an evening. In the summer they also act as sort of beer gardens for people to hang out in.
Because of the lack of bars around we decided to stop off for a beer and see what was going on on the stage. What a fateful decision that would turn out to be.
We sat down and ordered our beers with little interest in what was happening on the stage, but as the man on stage started dragging people up to the stage it was inevitable that we would get noticed as the only foreigners in sight.
I don't really know how it happened, I certainly didn't volunteer myself, I think my friends may have kindly volunteered me, but somehow I ended up on the main stage in this tiny Chinese city. Not only the only foreigner on stage, but also the only woman on stage with about 6 Chinese men.
This was going to be interesting.
As the host started chatting away I had no idea what was going on. I can't really explain how little I understood of what was going on. I just stood on the stage blankly and moved when I was told to while my friends cheered and whooped.
Eventually we were put into a line and it was clear that something was going to happen now. The first man stepped forward and walked awkwardly to the front on the stage and posed. The next guy did the same thing. "Oh, I get it now" I thought, "this is a catwalk competition and I'm next. Oh, shit."
Anyone who knows me will know that while I'm no wall flower, I'm not exactly a massive exhibitionist either; but by this point I knew that I couldn't walk off the stage, it was too late for flight so there was only one option - fight!
I took the task at hand, thought fuck it, and fully embraced the catwalk. I don't know exactly what was going through my head, but I shimmied to the end of the catwalk with my arms wide open and then proceeded to pose like a muscle man and even gave my (very small) biceps a few kisses. It looked ridiculous but the crowd loved seeing this white girl acting like a complete werido and I was living for it.
After everyone had done their walk we all lined up and stepped forward one by one for a vote by cheering. By this stage I had figured out that the prize was a tower of beer and I knew that I had that laowai power on my side - just by being foreign I was an automatic novelty. As I stepped forward to the cheers from my friends and a smattering of claps and cheers from the other observers meant that I knew I had it in the bag.
I was presented my tower of beer and held it up high with pride. The host then shoved his microphone in my face and asked if I wanted to say anything and no one will ever know why, with my limited Chinese, I decided to shout into the microphone "谢谢中国,我爱你!" or "thank you China, I love you!". It was ridiculous but the Chinese locals thought it was hilarious and I was loving life. I'd just won a catwalk competition and had a tower of beer to prove it - was this peak life achievements?
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