I just got back from an evening of music with this guy: 阿牛 (ah niu).  It was one of those situations that even after all my time in China I will never expect.  Me and my Cameroonian friend Elvis, a teacher at the local college who has been here for three years, were having a casual dinner of eggplant, a whole fish, and mapo tofu at a really good restaurant near his school.  While we were eating a student of his sat down at the table next to us with her family.  After talking with Elvis for a while she offered us five tickets to a concert with this guy taking place that night at the local college’s auditorium.

I got to the show on time but ended up waiting half an hour until the show started at eight o’clock.  The auditorium, on the third floor of the cafeteria, was mostly full with about two hundred Chinese people of all ages.  Before the show started I made friends with a freshman P.E. student at the school, we found a mutual love for Queen and dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  As the lights dimmed and the bubble and smoke machines went on full blast we were treated to a dance display of a couple dozen young women in skimpy clothing dancing to Justin Timberlake, Fergie, and a China Mobile jingle .  Then two made-up MCs straight from China TV introduced Ah Niu.  He sang a couple covers (including one of my all time favorite Chinese songs: Dui mian de nu hai 对面的女孩).

The crowd loved him, in a very Chinese way.  The whole audience was alive with the screens of cell phones taking pictures and filming the show.  People kept running on stage breaking through the police barricade to get their photo taken with the guy.  I should explain that Ah Niu is a 40 year old, he looks so much younger, pop singer from Malayasia who now lives in Guangzhou (aka: Canton).  It felt like seeing the big-time city slicker superstar in a small rural city, he didn’t have to try hard to get the whole place yelling that they love him.  I left a bit early after Ah Niu’s second lipsynched song feeling happy and content.