That night, we went to the Victoria Club. We had tried to go to the Ballroom Dance club, but they closed at 9:30 (like most of town) so we went to the Victoria. We expected it to be a dance club, but we were so wrong! It is an entertainment club with a variety show. When we got there there was a guy doing the classic plate spinning. Our waitress took us up to premium seating right by the stage and somehow managed to convey to me that you had to buy a drink (there was no cover charge). I didn’t know what to order so I looked around and saw a lot of people had this drink with flowers in it, so I ordered that and a beer for Seth. It was 70 kuai for both drinks, really pricey for a drink, but not bad for an evening of entertainment. The MC came out and sang a song and then he started looking for volunteers for a skit. He spotted us and he actually spoke decent English. He said hello and asked if we spoke Chinese. I replied with my usual “Wo bu hui shuo Zhongguo hua” (I don’t speak Chinese) which always gets people excited and he and several other people started laughing. So he asked if I spoke Chinese and I said a little bit, so he made me go up on stage! In front of a couple hundred people! After I got up there, he realized just how bad my Chinese was since I just kept saying “ting bu dong” (I don’t understand) sto most of what he said, but at least kept getting laughs. So he couldn’t use me for the skit, but he made me walk the catwalk. I considered workin it with all my American curves, but I was kind of in shock. I was just glad that I had dressed nice and put on make-up! But it was a lot of fun. They even gave me a Pooh-bear for playing along!
There were several skits throughout the evening. One involving some WWII reinactment, a singer who proposed marrige to a girl in the audience, a round of gambling on darts, a head-banging military-themed singer with her half-dozen backup dancers, and a really dumb skit that involved something about people not moving (and we didn’t just think it was dumb because we couldn’t understand, most of the crowd left during this one). Then the whole cast came out and sang a good-bye song at the end. It was tons of fun, good entertainment, and a great way to spend the evening. Yeah, the drinks are kind of pricey, but it would be a great one night a week or every two weeks thing. We can’t wait for some of our friends in some of the smaller towns to go with us when they visit. The lighting made pics difficult to take, but here are the few I got. 
