City Girl
by Kitty Yip Kee Wah
Hey everyone, bet you were expecting to see Angel Chu's name up there under the groovy pic, right? Yeah, well, Angel is away this month. She's off on a book-signing tour in North America! I know, can you believe it? It's just totally "oh. my. God." But there she is - a publisher agreed to take on her book and got her a distribution deal for the US and Canada. I think I was at the same party where she met him - I saw her talking to this gweilo guy but I didn't think anything of it at the time.
So anyway, this guy - Al Bernard of Bernard Books - bought the international serial rights for Chinese Babes in Beijing in perpetuity for a tidy four-figure sum and whisked Angel off to promote the book Stateside! Last time I heard from her she was in an internet cafe in Mobile, Alabama after a long journey from Vermont in Al's Nissan Bluebird.
Never mind all that though, even though it is the most exciting thing that has ever happened - this column's supposed to be about partying in Beijing, not about glamorous tours of America. Beijing is pretty glamorous too - with it being summer, it means roof gardens are open, everyone is feeling great and things have been getting totally wild. Like the other day I went ot one of those 'traffic light' parties - where you wear red or yellow or green to show like how available you are. That's really cool because it's taking the normal customs of dating and relationships and then it's making an obvious mechanism out of them, so that it's really wild and subversive. Totally wild!
Even better than that though (I wore yellow - to keep people guessing!!) was the Deep Down DJ Party At The Park event I went to, one of those out-of-town get-togethers where you take a bus to the venue with a whole load of like-minded partygoers. I got invited by Dale, this guy at work I've had my eye on for a while. We were both in the hotdesk area at Goldening PR's headquarters in the Pacific Plaza.
"Hey," he said, "have you seen some meat I left in here about a week ago?"
I said, "Is that why this windowless office is full of flies?"
"No," he said. "Anyway, do you want to come to this DJ party thing tomorrow night?"
The party was held at the Happy Kingdom Garden, an amusement park that was closed down last year after poor safety standards led directly to the deaths of eleven children and indirectly to the deaths of hundreds. It was really cool having the lights going and sound system all set up amongst the old abandoned rides. Some joker said he could see an eyeball hanging on a broken strut where the armature had sheared away from the Space Mine Experience on that fateful day. But I looked and all I could see were a few shreds of flesh.
DJs Mike De and LaoWaiMeLord? span some funked-out European technojazz, which made everybody have fun. I danced the night away, got off with Dale and totally enjoyed hanging out with all these cool arty people, like sales managers and PR consultants. Only in Beijing!