Sunday, May 3, 2009

"Cinco de Mayo" on "Dos de Mayo"

This weekend was a long weekend in China. Friday, May 1, is when China celebrates Labor Day* [see footnote at bottom], so it was a national holiday. I ran some errands during the day on Friday and Saturday, more to come on that in the near future.

Saturday night, once I returned to Zhudi Town, my current outskirt of Shanghai, I went to The Monk. The Monk is a local bar that caters to the expatriate community and is the Zhudi Town version of Cheers, where "everyone knows your name."

The reason that we were all meeting is that the owner of The Monk, Ralph, a lovely gentleman, organized a Cinco de Mayo event. Ralph, being a businessman obviously understood the gains he could encounter by putting the event on Saturday May 2, versus Tuesday May 5. That said, I'm sure there will be a crowd at Ralph's establishment on Tuesday.

There was a mexican buffet and a hoppin' salsa band. I had a good time visiting and even got out on the dance floor for a little while. Being one of the few (if not the only) folks from Texas present, I was asked several times if I had my honky-tonkin' boots on.

I just found it ironic that I was celebrating Cinco de Mayo in China... more than 8,000 miles away from Mexico.

* Labor Day Information
Curious as to why our (American) Labor Day is observed as the first Monday in September, and not May 1 with the rest of the world? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_day#International_Workers.27_Day If you follow the link, you can scroll above to see how different regions observe the holiday.

Follow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_day to find out more about our observed holiday.

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