Last Friday Tudou celebrated its 3rd anniversary party in the Tudou Warehouse in Shanghai. About 200-300 people attended the party, that already started at 8 PM (parties in China always start a lot earlier than in Europe). The entrance lane to the Warehouse was decorated with lights, and the new Tudou logo was projected in several colors on the outside walls. Inside, part of the first floor was redecorated as a club with a small stage and professional DJ’s. As usual during our parties there was an open bar, with among others Absolut vodka mixes (Absolut sponsored some of the drinks) and all kinds of beers (several US microbrews and of course Tsingtao). After a not-so-good experience with Absolut during an earlier Tudou party (where I cannot even remember how I got home), I mainly drank the microbrews, and they were excellent.

Around 9 pm a video of the past 3 years was shown (I missed it, because I was trying to direct guests to the Warehouse – it’s not easy to find), and then Gary gave a short speech. Then the evening really started with professional dancers doing a show. Later in the evening Gary and I cut the 3-year anniversary cake (that was made by Yang Lei, good job!), and I was glad that this time people ate it instead of throwing it all around like during our 2nd anniversary. The first floor hallway walls were still virgin white, and soon the party goers were putting graffiti all over it. Now those walls look as cool as the second floor, that was covered in user-generated content two years ago already.

On the middle rooftop we had a BBQ and we played some older music (think ABBA), and it soon got pretty crowded up there. I was not sure if the roof would hold it (it luckily did) and did not want to stand in the “yang rou chuanr” smoke, so I went up to the top roof. We brought along some beers and soon a lot more people followed us up the steep steps. We had a lot of fun up there, especially when others volunteered to go down to supply us with more cold beers and even some birthday cake (thanks Koen).

It was a great evening, and we were lucky that the weather was also quite good so we could spend most of the night outside. Around 2 AM we decided to call it a night, when I realized I had not seen my wife for quite some time. It turned out she had called a meeting of some of her staff and they were just finishing up (she is very dedicated to her work!). She then went home, but Gary and I decided to continue the celebration in Lounge 18. We managed to get a table there and had a few bottles of champagne. Once again a Tudou night to remember!

I put some pictures on my Flickr account, but doing a search Flickr on the words Tudou party should give some more results. Also on Facebook I already found some pictures, for example this set by George Godula.