Friday: the bar, the taxi

Tonight we had quite the adventure when we went downtown to a bar to hang out with our host sister and her friends. The crowd consisted of us, Wei, her cousin Peng, her other cousin Summer, friend Suki, other friend Juan, and two of Peng’s friends, one of which has some association with a famous singer in Japan. He is also an actor from Chengdu.

The night started with Wei asking us if the bars in the U.S. would ‘preserve the wine’ for you at the bar if you didn’t drink it all, so that you could have it the following time. I told her no, I didn’t think so, as people didn’t usually drink wine at bars, and it usually goes bad. I wondered what she meant. When we got there, we met Summer and Suki and had some nice conversation in a cool booth with beaded curtains, sort of half-indoor, half-outdoor. Wei said that we’d get two bottles of wine. I thought sure, I like wine.

The waitress then brought around a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Kahlua. The previous questions about ‘wine preservation’ finally made sense, and Nick and I realized that she meant liquor. At this particular bar, and maybe in most, you buy some bottles of liquor up front. You the buy some cheap mixers, and the waitresses come around to make mixed drinks in big pitchers on the table. Then begin the games.

The first game is just with your thumbs. You hold up your hand, and say “1, 2, 3, X,” where X is the number of people you predict will put up their thumbs at the end of your counting. You go around the circle; if you guess correctly, you’re out of the game. If you’re the last one left, you drink. A whole drink.

The second game is with dice. I don’t remember the name, but you put one die in a cup for each person at the table. One person shakes the cup and then memorizes the sum of the numbers. Each person takes a turn, going around the table, saying numbers in order. If there are 4 people, you start with 4, 5, 6, etc. Each person can say 1 number, 2 numbers, 3 numbers, pass, or reverse the direction of play. The range of numbers for 4 people would be 4-36. The object is to keep from saying the number that was the sum of the dice. Play goes around until someone says the sum, and that person loses and has to drink. Some special things that help the game are that the ‘dealer’ cannot pass or reverse, so they get stuck sometimes. The most dangerous numbers to say are the ones right around half-range, i.e. 16 in this case. Peng managed to lose the game a good six times in a row, so his night started early. More friends arrived and kept the party going.

I went to the bathroom once and forgot to roll up my pant legs. I will only learn that lesson once.
At the end of the night, we asked Wei who would drive us home, and she pointed to Peng. She doesn’t really drive. We told her that we couldn’t get in a car with him, but she assured us that “it’s okay” and “he is good at drinking.” We knew that, he was sort of okay, and he could hold his own, but after an estimated 8 drinks, we still couldn’t get into a car with him behind the wheel. I kept thinking about having to explain to the Peace Corps staff why we were at the hospital at two in the morning and why we were there because we got into a car with an intoxicated driver. After some affirmations to Peng that we had a great time and were friends, we explained that we don’t get into cars with intoxicated drivers, even in the U.S. So, Wei was kind enough to take the taxi back with us to Chengdu University. With the exception of the driver getting lost and not knowing where Chengdu University is, disaster averted.