Speaking (Teacher), Soju (Drinking) and Singing (Badly)

In a moment of chatty digression, our Speaking teacher 张艳鑫 (Zhang Yanxin) confessed in class the other day that she'd never drunk soju (Korean rice spirit) before, despite the proliferation of Korean eateries in the Ice City. That alone was excuse enough to drag virtually the whole class out for some Thursday night eating and drinking activities.

We decided on somewhere near 黑龙江大学 (Heilongjiang University) which is where Teacher Zhang is doing her Master's degree in linguistics when she's not teaching us. To my surprise, even Karolina, our Russian classmate - who is rarely seen in class, let alone out and about with the rest of her classmates deigned to tag along. I invited Guan Chen too and he brought a little friend of his - 朱星 (Zhu Xing - literally Red Star) - another Computing Master's at HIT, originally from the Southern province of Jiangxi.

So it was that the nine of us - looking like a half-hearted United Colors of Benetton advert - found ourselves sat on the floor around a low table, gorging on a variety of pickles, pancakes, pork cutlets, and Korean-style hotpot.

Soju (or to give it it's Chinese name, 烧酒) is a clear, grain-based spirit, quite light in taste, and measuring in at a relatively restrained 20% alcohol. In the spirit of multiculturalism, the Koreans taught us a couple of drinking games, and even after Zhu Xin quit, red-faced, after two shots, and Karolina claimed a medical condition, we polished off a respectable fourteen bottles between seven drinkers.

Teacher Zhang, a Northeasterner giantess (in boots, taller than me) upheld the hard-drinking reputation of the region by enthusiastically chugging back shot after shot, and winning several rounds of the games.

On the way out, we stopped to say hello to a donkey which didn't like me much, before Teacher Zhang bought us all a slice of pineapple-on-a-stick each. On a whim, we trooped en masse down into the first bar we saw - the excellently-named Dreaming in Drinking Bar - which to my delight, had a projector and karaoke machine running.

The bartender was a young, cheeky and oddly excitable man-boy who I guessed was probably also a student. For entertainment, we demanded he juggle bottles like 汤姆·克鲁斯 (Tang Mu Ke Lu Si or Tom Cruise) from that movie 鸡尾 (literally Chicken Tail), which he did, badly.

After a couple of poorly-mixed cocktails - ordered by translating clumsily directly from English (B五十二 (B-52), 特其拉拍着 (Tequila Slam-Person)) - I felt emboldened enough to give the public karaoke machine a go. A few notes into Britney Spears' Crazy and I noticed I was getting some dirty looks from my fellow patrons. Halfway through the song and Mingrui and Enxi had had enough, wrestling the microphone from me and bodily dragging me out. Time to go home! Note to self: After a few drinks, you CANNOT sing as well as you think you can.