Moving to LA, But no Salsa “Chinese”

After coming back from Shanghai and staying in New York couple of months, I finally moved to Los Angeles area.

California has always been my dream place to live. I haven’t found any place in the world where the weather is so pleasant. Now it is almost December, but the temperature is still in 70 something;  in New York it is already 50’s. The sunny day is almost every day here.

Only thing I am missing is the New York culture activities. This is probably nowhere can compare with her.

After staying in Shanghai for a year and going to couple of Salsa classes and parties in Shanghai, I found the Chinese in LA don’t have as much passion as the Chinese youth in China. After I came here I went to couple of Salsa parties, and Salsa classes, I found there is only few oriental look people in the parties. But very likely, they are not from Asia originally; they are the people who were born in US. And in the Local Chinese dancing society, almost no one is interested in Salsa. There are couples of Chinese dancing clubs or parties, but they are all the ballroom dancing. I haven’t gone to the school’s dancing parties, but I guess they are almost same. Somehow I feel the Chinese here (young or old) are more traditional in terms of dancing than the young people I met in China, especially in the big Chinese cities. I don’t know why. So far my dancing friends or classmates are all “foreigners” here.

I am writing this and hoping the Chinese people in US could catch up with the young people in China in terms of dancing. The dancing is an evolutional event; it always involves the new form and style. It is a free self expression; it is not a rigid body movement. The trend of dancing is kept changing all over the world. Now the Latin music and Latin social dance is so popular in the main stream worldwide. Yet, even though we live in the western world and we have lot of advantages than the people in China in terms of dancing, we didn’t really take this advantage. We still stay in the dance forms which are at least 30 years old. I am not against the traditional dance by any means, I myself is from there. Yet, I am the person who views the main goal of dancing is to free express one’s self, who likes to adapt the new form, likes to explore the new things since that will keep me younger.

I really hope in LA we will have a meetup group dedicated to Salsa soon, like the people in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen have, and most importantly, like the main stream people here have.