A sweaty mass of people from all around the world are bouncing up and down, side-to-side and moving to the thumping house base. Then the club staff pulls back the black curtains covering the windows and sunlight grinds the room to a halt like a scratch on a record. People stop dancing to look at their watches and cell phones to discover its 6am. I walk to a window and I’m surprised to learn we are up about 8 floors in a high-rise looking over the street in the Sanlitun area of Beijing. I was sure when we stepped from the street into and elevator that we descended into some deep basement to find this club, turns out we went up not down. My confusion is momentary and not surprising, I’ve been in Beijing 36 hrs now, having arrived from 5 weeks in Mongolia which comparatively seems stuck straddling the 17th century and the new millennium. The stars have aligned themselves very quickly for me in Beijing and it feels like I’ve resumed part of my former life, just now living in Beijing. Many of the attachments to the real world I left in San Diego have landed in my lap again. I now have a neighborhood where I live, an apartment, a cell phone, friends and a rigorous social schedule.

In the club my new friends are trailing away from the dance floor and beginning to huddle together. No one is ready for this night to be over. As we gather ourselves Browdy reminds us “Hey man we just saw Bolt set a new world record at the Olympics…we need to keep this party going!” Our group is not the only ones thinking this, a mass of foreigners is forming as we make our way out of the club. Everyone is using their best English to question each other about another club, what is next, where do we get more drinks? A group of Russians has made it out of the club with some Vodka and this gets passed around. Some French speaking Africans are resuming their acrobatic break dancing again right in the parking lot, a group of Italians is hugging everyone…the party won’t stop.

The Olympics have brought the world to Beijing in person or through mass media and China has prepared exhaustively to for it’s coming out party. Untold Billions have been invested in infrastructure and Beijing residents have adopted friendly smiles for the foreigners. The long term expats and those returning to Beijing are using words like “transformed” and “unrecognizable” to describe this new city. I myself have little frame of reference for Beijing having never been here before the Olympics, but even I can tell a new air hangs about the city…literally and figuratively.

7 more days before the closing ceremonies, time to soak it in.