Friday, May 18, 2007

Ping Pong Qiu

Last night, I was walking to the bus stop after sharing a couple of beers and a bite to eat with emily and Alvin. We passed a place I had wanted to check out-- Speakeasy Bar, which I thought I'd read about on GoKunming. We climbed up three flights of stairs, past giant stickers on the wall of the hot, animated, warrior girl type (when I say giant, I mean about 10 feet tall), past stickers on the floor that said "Netwoike Connection." On the third floor was a big Internet lounge, with probably 100 people at stations (not as big as some places I've seen here), chainsmoking, drinking, and playing online games. Anthropologically intriguing as this was, it was not what I thought I would find at Speakeasy. We turned to go out, but I realized there was one more floor.

"Let's go up there," I said.

"Oh, you don't want to go up there. That's just a ping pong club," Emily said. What?!? That is exactly what I wanted! We went upstairs, to find probably about a dozen tables in a dingy, high-ceilinged room. At the near end, there was a bar and a table with a few people sitting around playing cards; at the far end, there were old guys playing ping pong so hard they had taken their shirts off. New York Athletic Club, watch out.

Alvin and I rented two paddles and a bright-orange ball, 5 yuan for half an hour. He was pretty good (as an Indonesian-Chinese guy, he should be), and proceeded to destroy me. I handed my paddle to Emily. If you have any doubt that ping pong is a sport, you need to watch how the Chinese play. They keep focused on the ball, volley, volley, volley—and then with a really angry look on their face ZING! shoot one right past you. It is awesome.

After about 60 minutes, they told us our half hour was up. We left the place at 11:00 and games were still going on. On the way out to the street, I noticed that there was another entrance to our right. If we'd taken that direction, I would have found the Speakeasy club I expected. I'm so happy we made wrong turn.

*****Having a little trouble posting photos. I've got some good ones for this, though.

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