bouncing dance floor, hidden dragon

i am glad to report that i have successfully infiltrated the chinese gay scene, and i couldn't be happier. i don't know where my comfort level with gay guys originates from--maybe my cousin chrissy? oh wait, was that a secret?!-- but, regardless, dancing with gay guys is, well, just fun. i have yet to make it to the legendary roscoes in chicago, but for the time being jundu, the gay bar we found in hangzhou has hit the spot. aesthetically speaking, this little dance club looks more like a hole-in-the-wall dive bar you might have stumbled upon in bucktown ten years ago--at least how i imagine bucktown pre-real world/yuppie invasion. the dance floor is pretty small, and while watching the skinny men with shirts pulled up past their stomachs dance, it was hard not to snicker at how their heads/bodies amazingly bounced in sync. well, that was until we ventured onto the floor and realized that it was not suspended into the ground..whaaaat? yeah, i know, increddddible...a little dangerous, but nonetheless absolutely fantabulous. let's just hope that a bouncing dance floor is in the works for the mccullough social space renovation...it would become a freshman heaven on earth.

the day after this groundbreaking discovery--more on earth-shattering activity later--ann, chynna and i headed to the anji bamboo forest, the location of 'crouching tiger, hidden dragon'. rumor has it this place was untouched ten years ago, therefore making it an ideal spot for the film, but leave it to the chinese to completely transform such a pristine area into a crazy tourist site. below are pictures that show the pretty and the hilarious sides of anji...

we ventured off the stair trail...if we had gotten in trouble, we planned on pulling out the "i don't speak chinese" foreigner-card...

greeeeeeen

chynna: warrior or monkey? you decide

because hiking is just too tiring...

roller-coaster type slide...because hiking is just too tiring...

ok, so they had a blow-up human-sized hamster wheel on water. i couldn't say no. but let me tell you, that shit was hard, as seen in the sequence below...

making my way up...

success!

balls!

finally, some of you may have heard about the earthquake that hit sichuan today. apparently it was felt all over china, hangzhou included--i was feeling under the weather and i think slept through it. i still don't know how bad the damage was in sichuan, but aside from a few swaying buildings, nothing serious occurred here, so no need to worry. k, that was almost too serious for me, so have a look at my new boyfriend...i heart comb-overs.