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6/1/2005

We had a second sever thunderstorm this morning. The sky was dark in late morning. It rained dogs and cats. I would have to go out and meet Beibei’s parents to discuss setting up a tango school in Dalian. This came about by pure accident just few weeks before I came to China when my friend Rachel forwarded an email requesting help about introducing tango to Dalian. Since I was going to be in Dalian and I always desired to populate tango to China, this would present a perfect opportunity.

Because of the weather, I couldn’t get a cab to pick me up in front of my building. I had to borrow a umbrella from a building guard and braved the rain. Cabs were all over the street but the road was crowded. We had to navigate the car through a deep water pond in one of the sections. While chatting with me, the cab driver told me that today was the international Children’s Day and many schools were off but poor children could not do anything.

I managed to get to the best seafood restaurant in Dalian a little late. They were not there obviously affected by the weather. I did not know their cell phone and couldn’t call. Nor did I know their full names. So I could not confirm if we had a reservation here. I decided to wait it out by sitting down and writing my blog on my notebook. A few moments later, a very distinguished middle aged gentleman walked in and asked me whether I was Jim. I stood up and acknowledged him. A warm and kind woman appeared and apologized repeatedly for being late. There was also a young gentleman accompanied them. His name was Zhigong and he was a general manager of a software company in Dalian. Beibei and her parents thought that it would be good for us to meet because we both were in IT field. That was really considerate of them.

Beibei’s mother, Maggie, ordered some really nice seafood dishes. While the servers brought up the dishes, Zhigong and I discussed some IT related subjects. He told me that his company of 24 was a SAP partner and focused on financial software small to medium companies. He invited me and the students to visit his company. I thought it was a good idea for us to see how a real Chinese company was run, needed to check with our schedule which was already too full.

Gradually the conversation was turned to Argentine tango. We all agreed that there was huge potential for tango in China. Some work had to be done. Beibei invited an American couple from San Francisco to be in Dalian to do some exhibitions to introducing this form of dance. They did not remember their names. We also talked about how tango was different from other forms of ballroom dancing. Tango was an emotional dance full of feelings. It was a reaction to the music, partner and yourself at any particular moment during a song. As a result, tango was rather unstructured and impromptu. We also talked two ways of dancing tango: open and closed embraces. I thought open style would be good to start with in China for the conservative traditional cultural reason. They joked that I was out of touch with times in China.

Pat gave a talk on the US legal system. I was quite impressed by how knowledgeable the DUFE students knew about the subject matter.

posted by Unknown @ 9:00 PM