Night Club by Foreign Language University, Shanghai 12/31/02

I spent my New Year's Eve in Shanghai at this Japanese-run club in the northern part of town (next to the Foreign Language University). I write about the experience in my Shanghai travelogue from which I will quote at length:

"The highlight of the evening has to be the five Japanese women who come out for the second routine. They're dressed in these matching beige outfits that I can only describe as urban tribal (or is that tribal urban?). Two of them are rocking dreads, one of whose hair is about thrice as big as her head and the others have braided their hair into corn rows. They lie down in a pattern like spokes from a wheel, their heads facing out and the music starts. The music starts to build - very Afro-percussive and it tickles the back of my head, like I've heard it before but can't quite place it. Then it hits: it's Ozomatli's "Como Ves".

So basically, I'm listening to a multi-ethnic, leftist funk/Latin/hip-hop/rock band being used as part of a dance routine for a quintet of Japanese students sporting black hair styles in the middle of Shanghai on New Year's Eve. Oddly, none of this seems particularly strange to me which is a clear sign that I've been
dealing in cultural hybridity for a long, long time now and nothing really surprises me anymore.