Korean Cooking & Karaoke

Another Thursday and another evening of eating, drinking, and random activity fun! I gathered up anyone that wanted to go and set off for a branch of the popular Korean eaterie 高丽园 (Gao Li Yuan). The deal was 38RMB (£2.50) for all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink buffet.

The restaurant itself was plush, and the maitre d' disconcertingly smiley and polite. Normality returned further inside where the serving staff were typically impatient and rude. Wang Lei came along with his girlfriend, Guo Li, and Yudi brought a friend (Ren Zhen - neatly, an exact homophone for 'serious' or 'earnest'!) while Guanchen for his part brought Zhu Xing, Xiuli, his attractive female cousin and her friend. The classmates (Enxi, Mingrui and myself) found ourselves heavily outnumbered by 'authentic' Chinese people!

The food was great - a mix of Korean-style sushi roles, hybrid Chinese-Korean stir-fries and grills, Japanese tempura, little crabs, and a tasty Korean grill churning out plate after plate of beef and squid. The beer less so - light, flat and not cold enough to make it not matter.

I taught everyone the bunny-ears drinking game, whatever it's called, which lasted a few rounds before we attracted the stares of the entire restaurant. We abandoned it in favour of a reactions-based game which was like a spoken form of tag, before playing the toothpicks guessing game, which didn't take long to collapse too under the weight of remembering numbers with 12 players.

A couple of hours later, and the staff were making it very clear we'd overstayed our welcome, packing up around us and switching off the buffet. We set off for a nearby karaoke club where we collectively displayed a singular lack of talent for singing. The highlight was probably a shouty version of a 花儿 song, delivered in an exaggerated hard Beijing accent, by Mingrui.

We had to clear out in time for everyone to get home before their respective dormitories locked-down, so after another stirring rendition of 朋友 we jumped into three cabs homeward-bound. On the way, I turned around in my seat to Guanchen:

"How come your cousin is so good-looking and you look like this?" I teased him. Zhu Xing laughed.

"I've been thinking about that myself!" Guanchen replied and seemed to seriously consider the question.

"Ahh... I'm just kidding..."

"No, no... I've got a 表弟 (younger male cousin), and he's really handsome too. I don't know! I guess genetics isn't fair."

"Well, at least you have your charm", I suggested.

"Yup, I do have that", he conceded.