Posts tagged expats

On Sunday afternoon, after the BBQ, we went to Mansion Paurcel, a French restaurant/bar decked out in Marble with a large terrace in middle of the French Concession. The event, Enjoy party, is promoted by a friend of mine, a multi-talented French (again, gasp) guy, whose gregariousness borders on sleaziness (in a good way). 

The mostly white crowd wasn’t huge, but a lot of acquaintances and friends were there, sipping wine, nibbling on Hor Dourves, and chattering mostly in English, peppered by a few French sentences and pecks on the cheeks to greet new arrivals. 

I’m not making judgement on this is better not, but this epitomizes expat gay scene: if weren’t for the wait staff, headed by an Mexican who used to work at Jean George’s, you wouldn’t be able to tell this is China. 

Afterwards—we were sufficiently drunk—we did the localest (real word?)thing to do: KTV. 

Since Twitter and Tumblr are both blocked in China, I created a Weibo account. For those who don’t know, Weibo is the chinese clone of Twitter and Tumblr, combining features of both. I have a feeling all these Chinese companies, RenRen, Weibo, Kaixin001, etc, wouldn’t have survived if wasn’t for the Great Firewall of China. 

Life in Shanghai and Beijing is pretty good, including gay life, especially for the expats or the locals who are 非常 international. The gay world I know here is a small world, an unreal world, as one of my Israeli friend calls it, because almost everyone (expats) here is in transition. They behave differently than they’d have behaved back home. This evanescence and this shared adventure create bonds easily. I’ve the privilege of making many great friends. 

There’s a local gay world here, some friends have tried to explore it when they first arrived in China, only to give up after few months. 

I think it’ll be interesting Weibo’ing about this.