Latino Joy in Shanghai – Nomadicgregors

Hey all,

Continuing with the posts about October break… Possibly one of the nights we’ve had more fun in Shanghai since we’ve been here, period, was the Friday of October break. We found some Latino Joy in Shanghai!

We already knew about the JZ club, one of Shanghai’s leading venues for live jazz. We briefly stopped there on a night out to listen to a jazz band’s set. Next thing we knew, we heard about JZ’s newest venue, JZ Latino. Which, of course, only plays Latin music. So the first chance we got (which happened to be October break), we set sail with Ty (the MS principal and overall one of the best people we’ve met here) and fellow Dominican Francis (my email buddy when Cam was first hired and my go-to person for a lot of questions, especially when they involve not being able to find a particular food item).

This club is on the top floor of one of the hotels downtown (in this case, the Renaissance by Yuyuan Gardens) and has live music on Fridays. I would’ve taken pics of the inside, but in between singing, dancing, and sipping Strongbows, I just didn’t. The band was playing merengue, salsa, and bachata covers. Two things surprised me the most:

1) The band was pretty much Colombians and Cubans (how do these people meet in such a large city?)

2) Chinese people can dance salsa quite well! Especially the girls, they are much more graceful.

Part of the reason it was such a great night was that it was yet another chance to see how much Cam has embraced my culture and how much he likes the music. Hearing your very obviously American husband singing and cheering when the band plays a beloved song from your country’s musical icon (“Bachata en Fukuoka”) is inexplicably awesome.

We hadn’t danced in such a long time…but Cam did a great job leading (as usual). It turned out surprisingly well. We didn’t care much about looking cool, but we managed to keep up with some salsa spins, so we looked like we knew a little bit, which is exactly the case.

We got to the club at 9:15, and the next thing we knew, it was 2 am! I suppose time does fly when you’re having fun…but it was just funny to realize…WE CAN STILL RALLY! HAHAHAHAHA. I’ve become a lightweight, and usually, by 1 am, I’m usually ready to go and half asleep while standing up, so it was cool to find out empirically that we still got it.

Here are some pictures of the spectacular views from the club terrace (this is from the 25th floor).