Saturday Night in Louyang — Jayme Davar

After a full day of visiting the Louyang City Museum, the Longmen caves and experiencing the Red Lantern Festival, a handful of us decided to walk back to the hotel. We walked for awhile in the dark thoroughly enjoying sugared popcorn and pineapple on a stick, which we had purchased for our walk.

On our way we passed a large square with a great number of people milling around. We could hear music playing and noticed that there people dancing on a stage. Always wanting to see what the Chinese do for fun, we ventured over to the stage. There were people standing all around the dance floor and many were blocking the staircase. That did not stop us from noticing that couples were waltzing. A few Chinese men asked some of the women in the group. One of us was willing to except, but we could not find the entrance to the stage. Not wanting to miss out on the fun, we joined a few couples on the pavement below the stage. Since there are only six men in our entire group, we were lucky to have two with us. They each chose a partner from the five of us and proceeded to dance. I don’t know if either of them had had any formal lessons in ballroom dancing, but what they didn’t know, they improvised.

The other three women in our group did not want to miss this opportunity to strut their stuff on the dance floor. We started to rotate partners, and after a while we just started to dance with each other. Well, as we were having fun, we noticed that the people in the square were having fun watching us. All of sudden we noticed that a huge circle had formed around us and that all movement on the dance floor had ceased. We, the Americans, were now the main attraction. My partner and I decided to ditch the ballroom dancing to kick it up a notch. We ended up dancing swing to waltz music. We had a blast showing off our moves, and the Chinese never took their eyes off of us. We were used to being stared at when we went on outings, but this was more than what we had experienced to date.

We soon grew tired of feeling like fish in a glass bowl and decided to end our evening of dancing. This did not end the staring. As we tried to make our way through the crowd, people watched our every move until at last we made out way to the street. Then, and only then, did the square return to normal. Our little group walked slowly back to the hotel feeling tired, happy and still amazed by all the attention we tend to attract.