If I recall correctly this would in fact be your second such ‘informal’ outing with a Chinese girl. Have you so quickly forgotten the ill-fated double date with Li Ling Xuan?

Firstly, I’d have to count Chun Xi Liu as being well within the locus of the Roundeye Drinking Bubble , if not quite on Renmin Nanliu.

Secondly, I’d question the validity of the word date ; accompanying you to meet a fairly capricious girl (with a boyfriend, yet who allowed herself to be groped by a drunken volleyball player moments before almost driving the club into chaos by then approaching and talking to me - see A Woody All Weekend ) whose every other sentence funnily enough regarded a looming English Exam next week, just so her large-chested friend that you were porking (who was half-reluctantly playing the completely hokey I’m a traditional girl card at the time) didn’t feel that she was the only naughty local out and about with Whitey.

One of the most awkward nights in my life, all the more bizzare for that, ahem, baijiu we drank before coming out.

The first point of conversation was the translation of prostitute into Chinese, then terming you something along the lines of mian fei ji , a hooker that plies their service for free. I think this set the tone for the evening. A later highlight was my well-meaning criticism of the hypocrisy of a mural on the KFC wall depicting a giant, happy-go-lucky Chicken playing baseball with a bunch of kids, rather than a mutant, eyeless genetic freak being pumped full of steroids in a 4ft cage containing several hundred such creatures. I completed the tour de force by suggesting a swim in the filthy Funan branch of the city river.

Thanks for bringing that memory up…