Roasted Duck, Mannequins, Tonga and Sumit's Tanga (or: My New Year's eve in Beijing)

Let me grab the opportunity to wish you all a thrilling, success- and joyful New Year high in seemingly little but surprisingly big moments! Where did you spend New Year's eve? In a cosy “Chalet” somewhere lost in the snow covered Swiss alps? On the gorgeous beaches of “parque Tairona”, Santa Marta or Taganga? On the slopes of Slovakia? Hula Hula dancing in Hawaii? Among lions, elephants and rhinos in a game park in South Africa? In any case, I hope you had a great start into 2006!!

My New Year's eve was quite a blast and I enjoyed it a lot. At around 7pm I went with some Swiss friends of mine, the (in)famous "Von Schulthess family" (Starting from the left: (An)dre(a)s, Tony, Regine, Florian and his gril-friend) to Liqun, a Roast Duck Restaurant buried away somewhere in the maze of hútòng (little alley) close to Tiananmen. What a place, what a feast! And, believe it or not: it was the first Běijīng kăoyā (Beijing Duck) I ate in my life. Yummy!! The place is really a discovery and I happily recommend it to any stomach interested.

After diner we strolled around the tiny little streets around the restaurant until we got to a store that had been torn down only very recently (one of the victims of Beijings ultra-fast transformation into the “Olympic-Capital”). What lie before us was a mere treasure chest(for non-Chinese): Heaps of Chinese lampions and decent female manikins. We, and especially Regine, instantaneously fell in love with this “all for free” flee market (and the lovely female display dummies..;) We acted the goat quite a bit and had at least as much fun as the increasing number of Chinese gathering around us and laughing at us silly foreigners.. ;) The lampions since then refurbish my room and, while one of the two beauties stayed in Beijing, the second is on its way back to the country of the Cheese and Chocolate.. ;)

Once back at Qianmen we split up. I went on to meet up with some other friends so as to head out (I'll always remember the hillarios conversation in the taxi. Topic: Shilas preferences for, oh what ever.. Guess she wouldn't appreciate me mentionning it here.. ;) to the New Years eve bash at the Tongan embassy. Did you just ask : what and where the fuxxxx is Tonga?! Well, let me introduce the congenial host of an awesome bash:

Tonga is one of the rare countries in the world that are actually smaller than Switzerland. This archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean is the home of some 112'000 persons and a king. Yep, you heard correctly, Tonga is and remains the only constitutional monarchy in the Pacific. At least 0,01% of the total population of this tropical paradise (meaning about 12 persons) were in Beijing on 31 December and invited us over to their embassy for what turned out to be an awesome bash!! The place was cramped with mates from all over the world, good food piled up on our plates and the fridge was packed. I met the first Tongan of my life (very charming, out-going and with a lot of rythm indeed) and enjoyed being around my Beijing mates (Starting from the left: Soraya, Eduardo, Sumit, Dom, Mishie, I admit to have forgotten the (pretty difficult) name of this hillarious Aussie, Pavel and Gürkan).We enjoyed some good drinks, snacked, played a pool game I've never played before (something between shuffle puck and curling (the red thing I hold in my hand is actually the puck one uses to play this game), danced and gossiped until the Chinese TV announced that it stroke midnight! We popped the corks and enjoyed the first couple of hours of 2006 to the full. Even Hu Jintao peeped into the Tongan embassy (picture above).. ;)

Somewhen around 2am another party floor was opened, namely the indoor (whirl)pool(s) in the basement.

Even though I missed the apparently pretty spicy first couple of minutes (ask Gürkan for more details..), what followed was still great: We presented our underwear (well, Sumit for some reason hesitated to show his "tiger tanga" to everyone and finally decided not to hop into the pool..) and enjoyed some waterball, chilling and diving in the warm pools.

While some of the "rumberos" continued (what was a terrific party) in one of the clubs in the center of Beijing, I went home at 4am and snored for the first time in 2006....

Oh boy, may 2006 continue as it started.. ;)