Anyone know of places to dance if I go on a trip to China?

I believe there is a lot of dancing there; anyone have info???

Jerry Blumenthal

When I was in Beijing (formerly known as Peking) last summer, I spent most of the day in Temple of Heaven park. There were different groups of people ballroom dancing in the park! They'd bring boom boxes and set up and just dance the afternoon away.

I don't know of any specific studios or dance halls, but I know they exist. A lot of dance teachers in China make extra money as "dance hosts" in the evenings. They work at the various dance clubs as partners-for-hire for the evening. Usually the club's manager sets you up with someone based on your height, ability level, and types of dancing you like to do. There's also regular social dancing.

THANK YOU!!! So it should be possible to do some dancing? Meet some people? Either in the park or at a studio?

If in the park, I guess I should leave my suede bottomed shoes home and take some dance sneakers.

Jerry

You should be able to meet people in the park, that's for sure. I wish I could recall exactly what time I was there, but there were several groups. The Chinese view partner dancing as another good form of gentle exercise, like Tai Chi, that should be done daily for health benefits. I have a friend who's mother lives in Hong Kong, and she gets up very early every day to go ballroom dance in the park near her home.

Perhaps someone there could point you to a dance club, too.

Even if you don't find the dancers, the Temple of Heaven is wonderful and the park is delightful. Aside from dancers, you'll see groups of people who gather to play traditional instruments, or badminton, or mah johng. It's really a place where people go to relax and have fun outdoors.

Do you speak any Chinese? I knew a TINY bit when I was there, and it helped a lot.

Xi'an is beautiful, I really liked it there too. I didn't see any dancers but I was only there for three days.

I speak no Chinese, but my son has a web based software program that teaches vocabulary, and I will see if that helps me to learn some before I go. It will be ungrammatical, but you cant have everything.

Jerry

Let me teach you how to say hello at least!

In pinyin (the romanization of Mandarin), it's

Ni hao

Unfortunately I can't show the tone marks here...Chinese is a tonal language, so depending on how you say it, a phoneme like "ma" could mean:

1) mother (ma ma)
2) hemp
3) horse
4) to scold
5) a signifier meaning you are asking a question

Anyway, I'll try to phoneticise it for you:

knee how

but you say the "knee" part with a little rise in your voice, like at the end of a question in English. The "how" part drops a little bit and then rises again, kind of like when someone is talking to you on the phone and they say something a little suprising and a little scandalous, like "oh" dragged out two two syllabus but not actually like "uh oh." It's so hard to write about, sorry!! If you get the "knee" part right, though, it's not quite as important to get the "how" -- people will know what you mean.

So, think

knee? how

and you've got it.