Buenos Nochas!

I can assure you there's nothing funnier than a Chinese man greeting you in faux Mexican wardrobe with an enthusiastic "Buenos Nochas!" We had arrived alive at the Amigo Mex-Tex restaurant against all odds.

A cabbie with particular fondness for adrenaline, horns, and speed tore through town with astoundingly useless danger to deliver us to the "expensive part of town." My new multi-million dollar idea is either a) IMAX of the Tianjin driving experience, b) or bring the drivers to Universal Studios and throw passengers with them on a slalom recreation of Tianjin. I've said it before and I'll say it again... Tianjin drivers are either the best or the worst in the world. The drive with absolute disrespect for any traffic law or desire for self-preservation of the species. That said, one rarely sees so much as a scratch on their cars from a collision. Perhaps pedestrians don't leave marks.

Back to the restaurant; I wanted a margarita a badly. I had subtly passed the idea of Mexican food to my colleagues as dinner time approached. By the time we hit the cabs, the taste of quesadillas and burritos were being refreshed on our mental palettes in anticipation. Unfortunately, neither was served at Amigo.

I quickly ordered my margarita. I wanted it iced. I hadn't had much ice sense arriving and the thought of ice and tequila together sounded perfect. Ten minutes later I was handed something that strongly reminded me of a snowcone. There was a scoop of shaved ice in the middle of a classic margarita cup. The margarita had been poured over it and made an inch-deep lake surrounding my small mountain of ice. It did taste a bit like a margarita though.

Slowly, in perhaps five minute increments, everyone else's margaritas arrived. I had the largest for some reason. It was noted later that every item we ordered was delivered different in some way to what should have been it's twin that someone else has ordered. I got the large margarita. Everyone else got very small micro-gin glass margaritas. We also swore that the servers had fake Mexican accents when they spoke English.

We ate... and then the bill. 800 yuan for five people. Keep in mind my 3 bedroom middle-class apartment runs around 1200 yuan a month. We moved along and realized why there were only two parties in the restaurant. In Chinese terms, it was something like an $80/plate restaurant. On a positive note, it was very clean and the service was amazing, if a bit slow on the drinks. When my camera's battery died they quickly let me borrow some of the restaurants AA's.

We ended the night at a bar called Cozy's where a band called Solitaire was performing live hip-hop covers with a standard rock-band setup + keys. Interesting stuff. This was the first time I've seen live music performed (excepting the multi-instrumentalists playing at the Mexican restaurant and the outdoor karaoke) since arriving. Brian promised the margaritas would be better here. The man is a liar... I received a micro-gin glass with a shot of tequila and a splash of lime thrown in complete with table-salted edges. I let him finish mine and moved on to beer. Tsingchao is a new favorite of mine.

Before we left I saw some Americans come into the bar. I spoke to one of them for a few minutes. He was from Oklahoma studying at Nankai University in Tianjin, one of the top schools in China. At one point he mentioned how odd it was that a lot of Chinese there spoke some German, "apparently they're studyin' somethin' called 'textiles'..."

Ahhh, we send America's finest....

I'll have pictures on here as soon as they finish uploading. By the way, feel free to browse my Flickr photoset of Tianjin. I'll be storing photos in here till I leave the city.

Buenos Nochas!



The crew: Andres, Brian, Me, Dru, Kelly Anne




Dru refilling the Micro-Martini glass with Coke