Feb 25; The Pains of Being Pure At Heart/ The Pains of Not Knowing the Local Language by Heart

Day 20

In Korea, Cat and I saw a poster that said “The Pains of Being Pure At Heart." I thought it was yet again another beautiful saying that Korea created. I took the poster with me to China.

In China, Catherine introduced me to the band called "The Pains of Being Pure At Heart"

Here I am introducing the band to you:

TPOBPAH were touring around Asia and since attending a concert in China was on my bucket list, I decided to knock one thing off my list with Catherine. We actually decided to go to the show a few hours before the show since we were kind of iffy at first - we didn't have tickets, language barrier, getting home... But I'm so glad we did go!
Before the show, we decided to get a light meal. We found a restaurant that looked appetizing to the both of us and ordered a gigantic bowl of corn soup.

yumm! Corn soup!

As this huuuge bowl of sweetness arrived to the table, we eagerly tried it only to find that it tasted like disappointment. How did disappointment taste like? It tasted like nothing I’ve tasted before. It tasted like nothing. We headed to 7-11 for some snacks to put some flavour in our system and headed towards Yu Gong Yi Shan, the venue for the show.

The tickets were purchased at the door where they spoke English. Merchandise could be purchased in the lobby, where they spoke English too. And if you wanted to hang your coat somewhere, you could leave it at coat check, where they all spoke English. I loved the familiar scene.

We made our way to the floor and happily found a place to stand in the second row with an almost perfect view – there was a tall dude with bowl/mop hair standing in the middle blocking the stage action on the right side. Although I really didn’t mind it too much considering we were safe from the rowdy Russians who were ready to mosh.   

A Chinese band called Skip Skip Ben Ben played a 30 minute opening set. It wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t the worst either. Although their sound was interesting, I think I could have done without them.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart played an almost 2 hour set of music that sent you in a trance and made you wanna dance.

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
Alex, Kurt, Kip, Peggy

The dude on the left is not in the band but should be. I wish I had a name.

Kip, kip hooray!

Peggy

Since the subway system closes at 11:00 every night, we had to get a cab home. I used my map and broken Chinese to tell the driver where we were going and we got back to the dorm in one piece and without getting scammed. 

35-45 min taxi ride - 65RMB

It was a fantastic night.
Now, I dread waking up for tomorrow’s training session.