Are you still in Beijing?

Drop me a PM to let me know how you're doing.

Duhhhhhh....

Same thing goes for the cigarettes. OUCH!

"5,000 years of...." well evidently of running around like a pack of wild animals. And don't any of you apologists tell me that this is just misinformed or myopic white "racism", because let me tell ya, I've known some Black Africans (real Africans, not Americans) whose grace and dignity are delights and marvels to behold. Also, the Vietnamese. Race has nothing to do with it. Mao's Communist Party, who turned China into a barbarian country, has everything to do with it.

I still remember the first time I witnessed a live black, this is the moment I can never forget.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Oops, I forgot. It's because they ARE infants. The Communist Part does not tolerate adults. Self-controlled, dignifed adults are a threat to the Communist Party.

"As we all know..." (mimicing a brainwashed, infantile CCP drone here....)

In all seriousness, I think my above statement isn't entirely sarcastic. In the 70's, chinese would say "dancing is a game for capitalist pigs!", chinese today would say "dancing? That doesn't improve your grades, go study for your test!!!"

I think anything outside of math is pretty much discouraged by parents in China today.

Some Colombian friends gave up after trying in vain to show me how to imitate the sensuous way they'd move their hips while the rest of their bodies remained still.

My god, don't tell me they can *all* move like Shakira? :shock: And here I was thinking that she patented those hip-rolls!

One of my favourite dancers is Tan Yuan Yuan of the San Francisco Ballet company. I have a video stashed somewhere of their production of "Othello" (in which she plays Desdemona), and (to this plebe's eyes at least) it's absolutely friggin beautiful. I can only hope they come here someday, before she retires (not that she's particularly long in the tooth...but still, you never know.)

As for theories...hmm, well, the CR was indeed catastrophic for Chinese arts. Ballet had zilch history in China to begin with, but the Cultural Revolution retarded whatever progress might have been made. While Balanchine was revolutionizing ballet in the States, ballet in China reached its (cough) "pinnacle" with "The White-Haired Girl" (and unbelievably, some ballet companies *still* have this piece of revolutionary schlock in their repertoire, when it should have been dumped into the dustbins as soon as humanly possible.)

I didn't get the rest of the post. What the heck are you saying - that mainlanders can't *dance* or that they comport themselves badly?

It's not that Chinese people can't dance. It's that every culture's music has its own rhythm that people absorb from the time they're young. Some Colombian friends gave up after trying in vain to show me how to imitate the sensuous way they'd move their hips while the rest of their bodies remained still.

One culturally varied expression of rhythm is clapping. Koreans, and probably Chinese and Japanese, too, clap on the beat, in contrast to Westerns who clap off-beat.