Homesick

I’ve been going through our China and Thailand photos to order prints for the last few days and it’s actually made me really “homesick” for China. I’m somewhat surprised by this. I even looked at pictures of piles of garbage on the street with an endearing light. Well, one thing that really made me miss China was this little video of Peter Pan and Dom singing to us. The internet was way too slow and too many sites were blocked over there to successfully upload any footage, so hopefully I can get a few gems up here now that we have “real” internet.

This little video was taken when we were on some paddle boats paddling around this pond in the middle of Xiangtan. The boys just offered to sing to us. No shame. My students would get embarrassed really easily over the funniest things, e.g. when I called on someone to answer a question it was always followed with an absurd amount of giggling and whispering; asking a boy and a girl to sit by each other; talking to me privately, about anything. Even saying hello flustered them. On the other hand, things that we would typically find embarrassing here, the Chinese would totally surprise us and show a whole different side to themselves showing no shame.  A prime example is KTV. Delving further into that example, is the music choice at KTV. Always pop…circa my 6th grade year. Backstreet Boys are still in their golden year over there (I think that golden year has been going on a long time over there too). Brittney Spears is still huge. N’Sync, 98 Degrees, B’Witched. Anyone remember them? I actually did a “dance” to a B’Witched song in 6th grade with some other girls for the school talent show (because we were awesome, obviously). But that was 6th grade. The only newer artist I heard over there is Lady Gaga, who is basically taking over China.

There is one other band, however. I’d never heard of them before going to China even though they are a current group from the UK. They’re called Westlife. We’re pretty sure that someone just formed the boy band for China because they just eat that stuff up. Well, they’re hilarious and I couldn’t believe it was year 2010 over there watching music videos of them. But just like everything else, they become endearing to you after awhile. I remember one night at KTV with a bunch of students, someone put on “My Love” (shown below) and everyone, all 12 of us, were belting the song out with all our hearts. No shame. It was really fun and everyone stood up and clapped at the end because they were so proud of their own performance. And because they like to clap after things.

Well, enough rambling. I found this clip of Dom and Peter Pan singing “My Love” (they informed us they both sing it every time at KTV and had a short argument about who liked the song more). It’s priceless.

Here is the original version by Westlife in all their boy band glory.

If you’re anything like me, that song will be stuck in your head for the next 24 hours, give or take. Did you choose your favorite Westlife boy?