Acrobats, Knock-Offs and A Little Cigarette Ash!

We welcomed our next set of visitors last week, one of my Georgetown friends, Deb, and her friend Niki! We had a blast showing them around and exposing them to our life of infringing on Intellectual Property Rights by introducing them to the $1 pirated DVD and XiangYang Market – home of the $5 knock-off (insert luxury brand name here) bag/belt/sunglasses/jewelry. Unfortunately for all of our future guests, XiangYang closed the day after Deb and Niki discovered it, but I am sure there will be plenty of copycat markets popping up in the near future.

When we weren’t tainting our guests with the opportunity to buy pirated goods, we took them to see the Shanghai Centre acrobats do a myriad of freakish things with their what must be jointless bodies. We were in the second row, which was exciting at first, but got a little scary when we realized that we were in prime position for becoming landing pads, as the acrobats did stunts that would require major harnesses in the U.S., but in OSHA-free China, go unprotected. Fortunately for us, the acrobats were on their game that night and no one was injured.

We also threw a ‘1st of July’ party in honor of our guests and the upcoming US holiday. And who better to invite back than the $75 chef from our last party! It still amazes us that for just $75 you can get a Chinese chef to bring over all the ingredients to cook a 20 course meal of some of the tastiest Chinese food we’ve ever eaten. After arriving with just a few bags and pulling out food from nowhere in true Mary-Poppins-ish fashion, we had a party full of well-fed guests, leftovers for a week, and a spotless kitchen! So we really can't complain when he insists on smoking for 75% of the cooking time. We figure a little cigarette ash never hurt anyone, especially when you can't taste it!

A few more party highlights.......

Zach's summer intern, Cyrus, from Washington University in St. Louis.

"Cyrus the Virus", as Zach likes to call him, was given one task by Zach to help with the party - find a keg. He failed. And now Zach and Bing will taunt him for the rest of his internship. Splendid role models, aren't they?

Zach's work partner, Bingdong, who managed to go home with quite a few phone numbers at the end of the night! Zach was jealous.......

...until his karaoke duet with pre-KFed Britney

Zach's hair is so long, it's french braidable!

All in all, it was a great week, thanks Deb and Niki for visiting us, we can't wait for your next trip!