Gambei from Alan

Gambei, my Columbia friends! Here is a look at what it is like to be treated like a star in China. Go to our photo gallery for even more pictures.

Our hosts treated us to a typical "rock star" dinner gathering with the endless table of food – which of course included "gambei," which is a "bottom's up toast." You can see more photos of the festivities at our photo gallery.

The Chinese believe that food and drink bind friendships together, and so they do. It's not uncommon for there to be 10-20 toasts at dinner; these folks can out drink Dierik the German!

Our TV show was amazing. The people are this excited to see us everywhere we go, really, it's amazing.

The sound tech for our performance at the Tsingdao ceremonies runs the biggest nightclub in Jinan, "Cinderella." It's huge and broken into theme rooms: karaoke, band stage, a disco, a "girls dancing stage" picture girls in go go boots dancing to 60's music...a "boy and girl meet room" that is a big oval table where single guys are outside, girls are on the inside...the Chinese version of "speed dating. The "house band" was a great group from Beijing doing a three-month stint of 7 nights a week there.

Clubs stay open till at least 4 am. These guys had a great repertoire of modern Chinese rock, some of their own arrangements of traditional Chinese poetic lyrics mixed into their own music, and even traditional Chinese Beijing Opera libretto over their own modern rock compositions.

Outside, I love watching the Trike Trucks. They s are typical heavy load transportation here; motorcycle front ends with one-ton axles and cary loads certainly bigger than that. The 1500cc single cylinder engines sound like a 1930's John Deere tractor with a 600 rpm redline..."pop-pop-pop," very slow.

I took a photo of Linda-Xu Hsaio Tien -- our translator – on a stone tiger at a National Park near Langgu. The park is to commemorate a hero from 600 years ago who killed a tiger that had been killing villagers there for some time. He came to town, drank 18 bowls of "wine," went to sleep on a big flat rock ... the tiger woke him, and he hit it with his walking stick, then killed it by hand. We got to try the "wine," which was made from local corn, certainly 100 proof or better -- think Moonshine, not wine as we know it.

We also had dinner the Cultural and Tourism Board Bureau heads from Langgu, and some heads of the hotel staff, who cooperatively arranged a big show for us that night. This is typical of how we're treated here...huge dinners with important people, many courses of great food typical of each area we've visited. The shot of me and the National Park Director toasted is "gambei."

The Chinese that food and drink bind a friendship forever, and it's typical to have 10-20 gambei toasts at a meal... In our gallery, you can see photos of us on stage with the life size photos from the hotel show that night You can see the effort they went to to make the shot look and sound great. They had those same photos running on big screen TV's in the hotel lobby advertising the show, all week. Amazing.

This is all typical of the kindness, friendliness, and lengths that folks here have gone to to treat us so very well during our whole stay here. Columbia will have to work very hard to reach the high bar set by our hosts here when it's our turn to host the return end of this cultural exchange.

I'm very grateful to have the chhnce to represent Columbia and America; this is a great opporutnity for us to help open doors between our two countries, and I think all four of us are taking this responsibility very seriously.

On a "what a small world note," Jake and I were in the hotel bar here relaxing a bit last night, and started up conversation with the great pianist playing there...it turns out her uncle moved to our very own Columbia, Missouri, 10 years ago. I'm sure our friends of China group must know him. This is not the first time we've met someone on this trip who had ties to our hometown, or knew someone who lived there, had studied there, or planned to.

How cool is that?

alan