CONTINUED DESTINATION: URUMQI

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However, I had yet to form relationships with other English-speaking locals or foreigners who didn't work at the school. Most nights, I would wander down to one and only backpackers’ bar—The CD Bar, now defunct, but to be resurrected in October 2004 as “The Globe Bar.”

It was an evening after work, as was becoming increasingly common for me, that I went down to the bar in search of something different to do.

Over a slow Wusu beer—my favorite cheap local brand, a pretty yet mildly maturing Chinese socialite bounced into the bar with what could only be described as her side-kick.

I was introduced by the bar staff and in an immediate flurry of hugging and kissing, she announced that I was a new friend of hers and of her younger, stunningly beautiful, gum-chewing, visor-wearing side-kick. Both of them were dressed like sugar daddy's girls and they pulled it off brilliantly. As superficial as it was, I found them both absolutely charming.

Before I knew what to do with myself, the bar staff hustled me into a sleek, panther-silent BMW. Two minutes down the road, we got out and the transformation of the evening was instantaneous. Three minutes before, I was balancing on a second-hand bar stool sipping luke-warm beer straight from the bottle, next the car I stepped out of was being valeted away and a bouncer with a security earpiece dangling from his ear, was nodding respectfully as we entered a neon-glitter building.

I had passed this place many times but never noticed it before. Upstairs was a maze of black marble corridors lined with floor lighting at each edge. Mobile phone calls were made and information deciphered by the time we knocked on a numbered door.

It was like that scene from “The Matrix” with rows and rows of doors to choose from, except our doors and corridors were black. We entered a room that must have been four by eight meters, at most.

It had to have been the poshest karaoke “cell” known to Urumqi. The door shut and I looked around. There were the two socialites jumping and squealing to music though not singing yet, a youngish Uighur man who had clearly drank too much and was asleep across a couch, a much older possible sugar daddy, three of the guys from the bar and me, at that time a 24-year old girl.

The evening then pretty much blurs for me. The festivities entailed downing small glasses of beer every time the older socialite shouted in English, "Are you happy? Happy! Happy!"

She did this every five minutes whilst watching victim after victim sing into the deafening karaoke set-up. We were all backlit by the wall-sized screen behind the singer, and couldn't hear a thing—just noise.

My ears, eyes, social manners and sanity were all in jeopardy. As the hours passed, I drank and thought about the door which was only separated from me by a petite, bounding, beer-downing woman.

Work

Six weeks after the karaoke cell event, I had settled in fully. I had both local and non-work foreign friends. I was seeing someone new and very fun and all-in-all everything was running smoothly. On Wednesday, we had our weekly teachers' meeting at the school.

Our school hides in a tall office block in part of downtown Urumqi. The 20-floor building itself is identifiable by a golden-pyramid roof, ringed by three building-width hoops. The hoops are evenly distributed down the three-story pyramid. It looks almost as irrational as it sounds.

That Wednesday, I walked into the meeting, having just arrived from one of the downtowns; the “downtown” along You Hao Friendship Road in the North.

Urumqi has developed rapidly and the speed of development also engulfed real city planning, this gave Urumqi, in my mind, three city centers. In the North, is You Hao or Friendship, South of that and across the highway is, Nan Men (South Gate) where our school is and to the South of Nan Men is the Uighur quarter loosely gathered around Da Bazaar or the Grand Bazaar.

I sat down at one of the cute little classroom chairs—a retro blue desk-chair combo and joined the others arranged u-shaped around our director.

At this time, the school, thankfully air-conditioned, was at the height of our summer school season. We were all working overtime for the month of July, teaching day, night and weekends. In spite of this, morale was high and the teachers were chatting about the upcoming outing for our students at Nan Shan or the Southern Mountains.

A few days before, my new flat mate, a new teacher, Brooke, had arrived from another branch of the school in Indonesia. We had all been too busy to properly welcome her so she had instead, taken the time to explore on her own and absorb some of the brilliant local food such as Pollo, a tasty but greasy rice dish with carrot and lamb pieces, and irresistible Ban Mien, chewy thick white noodles available with a variation of saucy toppings. In the meeting, Brooke was formally introduced to the crew.

As we moved down the agenda for the meeting, our Chinese manager called in Vivian, the new member of her sales crew so she could be introduced as well.

Vivian shuffle-smiled into the room. She was sweet but clearly strong-minded—you could tell from the way she smiled. She beamed more broadly at us while the manager introduced her and we quickly introduced ourselves. That’s when the meeting took a new turn.

I anticipated Vivian to take a step back into the corridor after the formalities were over. Instead, she stepped forward. She announced that she was very happy to meet us all and to show this, she would sing a special song for us. Did I get that right? Sing?

We all tensed up and eyes widened in fear as sunshine spilled through the window. In the corner, our manager let a snigger escape.

The song that was about to commence is a famous Cantonese ballad, apparently. Her loud singing filled the room. She would love us "for-eh-ver". This was the Chinese equivalent of "My love will go on"—I started hyperventilating.

The manager's sniggering became less controlled and bursts of suppressed half giggle came from the left of me. I couldn't tell who it was; I was busy boring my eyes into the carpet. We couldn't cope, we wanted to respect her but biological reactions were taking over. Every gram of politeness I'd ever learned swamped my brain.

In a panic, I did the only thing I could, I drove my fingernails into my skin so I would wince instead of laugh.

When she started to crescendo, the fingernail pain just wasn’t enough. I did something I never thought I would, I voluntarily attempted to visualize corpses.

Read the rest of Catherine’s singing adventures here!

Catherine Barr is 25-year-old English teacher who recently relocated from London to Urumqi.

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