“My Humps” blares over a loud stereo system. All around me, gyrating pelvises signal that at least someone is having a good time. The smell of alcohol is heavy in the air, and pink collared shirts abound. White faces drift in and out, pushing their way through the crowd, paired into newly-formed couples. Bubbles fall from the ceiling, as the DJ cuts off the music and the audience finishes the chorus of a popular Justin Timberlake song.

No, this isn’t the living room of SAE; this is Beijing. But at first glance, you really couldn’t tell the difference. Welcome to the Beijing Expatriate (or “expat” as its constituents lovingly call it) community — a community in which I have unwittingly found myself a member.

The scene is the dance club “Mix,” not to be confused with the nearly identical club “Vics,” across the street. A throng made up of roughly 70 percent Europeans, 10 percent Americans, and 20 percent native Chinese people (mostly older men ...) populates an area the size of a small barn, dancing in a way that would suggest precisely this location.

Every five minutes or so, the masses are rained on from above by a torrent of oddly malodorous fake snow. They listen to American rap music, and a screen in the back projects images from a randomly generated set of rap videos, which have nothing to do with the music being played. All around the club are bars, in which the attendants and customers alike speak English more or less fluently. The only sign that you are in China is the fact that the English isn’t perfect. These bars have odd names, such as “Moscow Army Bar” and “Purple.” Men stand outside of them and encourage you to enter with promises of “good time, tasty drink and pretty girl.”

Upon entering, you see a menu filled with fish and chips, onion rings and even burritos (who eats burritos in China?!), written entirely in English. In terms of drinks, these bars have a bit of a habit of tacking on a few zeros to the end of regular street prices, and getting away with it. A can of coke can end up costing eight American dollars, a literal 3,000 percent increase from what you would pay on the street.

All this aside, it is almost like a parallel universe, a theme park wonderland for Westerners. What a treat: We expats can experience all the wonders of a foreign country, without ever leaving home! Several streets away, small shops hawk the relics of Chinese history, in even more broken English. “Looka looka,” they yell. “Handsome boy, you buy purse cheap”. Terracotta warriors and various reproductions of Chairman Mao memorabilia plaster the walls of a long alleyway. Though ostensibly separated into stalls, almost every single stall sells identical merchandise. And again, almost everyone around me is a Westerner.

Most of these people, however, are not expats (who live in or stay in a foreign country for an extended period of time), but rather belong to another breed of foreigner: The tourist. Taken in by what they believe to be authentic cultural goods, they spend their precious few nights wandering these alleyways and buying knock-offs at exorbitant prices. Like the expats, most do not speak any Chinese, relying on a calculator to do their talking. But the similarity really stops there. The tourists in these alleyways at least show some appreciation for Chinese culture. Most would simply like to decorate their mantels with interesting overseas finds. It is another question entirely whether these tourists are romanticizing a culture they are barely aware of.

As I travel to various Chinese landmarks, I notice a huge number of fellow foreigners, wearing their cameras around their necks and sticking out, like me, like a sore thumb. I can certainly identify with this group somewhat, given my need to see the famous sites of this country. But they lack a certain shame, a guilt that is made apparent by their being tourists in the first place. And they simply cannot get any greater kind of understanding about a country.

The feeling I get is that neither the expat nor the tourist is going about things the right way. On the one hand, selfishly ignoring the culture of another country and supplanting it with your version of Western decadence is morally wrong. This is the worst incarnation of the cultural salad bowl, in which the French croutons are actively poised against the Mandarin oranges.

But on the other hand, going to a country simply because you believe it is “exotic” is ignoring the truth behind the cultural experience. A culture cannot be defined with a series of hokey posters and faux-bronze statues. I have no idea how to define a culture, and certainly no idea at all how to define Chinese culture, but this surely isn’t the way to go about it.

These two poles, the expat and the tourist, are in many ways opposite sides of the spectrum. It seems like the truth should lie somewhere in the middle. I would like to believe that the way to “get a feel” for China is neither to go clubbing with Europeans nor to go buying “Long live Chairman Mao” posters. Rather, you can only get this feel through talking to its people, and they are more than willing to talk. The only thing that is left is for you to do is listen.