Peter walters

 

If you’re like me,public humiliation,spontaneous dancing and venomous snakes don’t sit very well with you.Aside from those three-er,features-we have no complaints about A Fun Ti Carnival,the Xinjiang cultural experience not quite summed up by the word “restaurant.”Not that there’s anything to complain about:the food is wonderful,the entertainment is uique and impressive and the Xinjiang beer is (as our resident beer eschwer put it) “Really good!”

    It’s nice to know that James Bond and Ocean’s Eleven, the owners of both A Fun Ti Carnival and The Kingdom of the Ming Dynasty, have decided to open up a barbecue restaurant as their third themed location, because the moment we tasted the pulled, slow-roasted mutton, I dressed in sackcloth,threw myself to the floor and promptly declared to James, “That is the best meat I have erer tasted in my life.”

    And the delights kept coming: lemon beef cutlets, extended sticks of chuan’r (there’s even a thirty meter chuan’r stick for special occasions), chased by traditional na’an bread, stuffed dates and a special Xinjiang berw served up in long, baseless,exotic glasses at rest in vertical wooden cradles.(Phallic imagery and sex in general permeate the entire experience.)

    The iconic hosts of the evening_a Gandolfini_esque  grandfather  and a  sagacious  Uyghur patriarch-welcomed guests with, in addition to the breathless introductions by a bilingual motormouthed lass, both subtle and raucous Xinjiang folk tunes seduced out of their respective instuments:the dutar (think: Middle Eastern banjo), and a flat, rattlesnake skin drum said to cost 20,000 RMB. Three Xinjiang beauties, euelashes aflutter, performed a set of traditional dances throughout the night, one of which involved balanced bowls of water and a lot of spinning. A sultry siren spiced things up with a belly dance bordering on that erotic form of art that is so hard to define (“I know it when I see it,” said Justice Potter Stewart) and also in troduced the first round of audience participation by casting her spell on one lucky man; inviting him to join her on stage for some (mostly welcomed) hip-thrusting.Rounding out the talent from China’s far western region was another Xinjiang alpha male who wooed the fairer sex with his charming, rattlesnake-likeUyghur movements (think:Sasha Baron Cohen performing Gere’s “All I Care About” from Chicago).

    A spectacular spectacle of spectating then unfolded as a crew of young Kung Fu hip-hop performers charged the stage, leaping and bounding off each other, with kicks, screams and red fans (representing the blood from all the whoopass).According to the narrative within the narrative,when one of the Xinjiang beauties is taken captive

by a sinister evildoer, a young hero in white emerges, kicks ass (thind: Rafiki) and subsequently gets some.

    Now let’s talk about that snake.

    When the Xinjiang beauuties behoove you to join them on the stage:don’t do it-not unless you want to behold the raw power of the flexing serpent first-hand. Here’s how it works:The host explains a game invoving music and hugging(think:musical chairs with no chairs and a lot of sexual tension). The last man standing (it always seems to be a man) is declared the winner,blindfolded and invited to take a seat,center stage. The sexy siren saunters in from out of the shadows,gripping a live snake like a lightning bolt from Zeus,and the two of  them (the girl and the snake) writhe it out for awhile while the audience scratches their heads and puts two and two together: “Jesus Crispy!She’s going to put that snake on that dude!”  

    When the snake’s mouth starts dripping with pearly liquid-spraying all within fangshot (including our resident beer eschewer)-the sexy siren takes him out for a stroll. That’s right-right up to your table, where you can pet the little guy, or even try him on for size.(One size seems to fit all.)

    A well-dressed businessman in the audience, with a slightly more pronounced case of ophidiophobia than me, leapt out of his chair and made way for the exit, underscoring that ancient Sino-saying: “It’s all fun and games until someone gets their feelings hurt!”(Meanwhile the dude back on stage sitill thinds all eyes are on him.) Short story longer: the sexy siren makes her way back to the stage, robes her hero in scales and awards him one of three prizes: a restaurant voucher (boo!), wine (boo!) or the girl (yay!). (He chose the voucher.) (Boo!)

    There’s a broken table hanging from the ceiling near the back where you enter, which Jackie Chan himself destoryed while participating in the final act of the evening, in which all willing guests, both young, old and the artfully martial, can cathart their pent-up Xinjiang mania by playing stomp atop the tables with the talent and waitstaff. My theory is that the 100 decibel hip-hop soundtrack and falling balloons are designed to invite customers to call it a night-exit music on steroids.

    And sadly: as China’s local OSHA counterpart imposes more and more health regulations and safety standards on the Wild Wild East, the pure and uninhibited cultural events of A Fun Ti increasingly face extinction. You’d better get yourself over to Chaoyangmen Chaonei to have a look before it’s too late. Just sit in the back with your rack of lamb if you’re more of the voyeur type.

 

Hours:11am-11pm

Add: No.2 Houguaibang Hutong, Chaonei Street, Dongcheng

东城区朝阳门内大街188号后拐棒胡同甲2号

Tel: 6527-2288/6525-1071

Part One: 7:45pm-8:30pm

Part Two: 8:45pm-9:30pm

Part Three: 9:30pm-late

Reservations?   Definitely.  Bring  a   change of clothes.