Last night at a Zhengzhou restaurant, I met a teacher who grew up near me in the Philadelphia area, a bar owner who went to high school near the city where I worked on my first daily newspaper and a Ph.D. student who goes to college near my home in New Jersey.

Talk about a small world.

The encounters took place at Zax BBQ, a new restaurant specializing in Southern U.S. cooking that’s owned by an Atlanta native and his Chinese wife. I went there with four other teachers, and together we made up our own mini United Nations: Greg is from Tasmania, Amos is from Singapore, Darren is from Scotland, Peter is a transplanted Brit from France, and I’m an American from Joisey.

After dining on delicious ribs, burgers, coleslaw, hush puppies, sweet potato fries and homemade apple pie, we hung out with about two dozen foreigners and locals who had gathered to celebrate owner Zach’s 29th birthday. Free shots of tequila and slices of strawberry cheesecake added to the festive mood.

One of the first people I met was Karl, a 29-year-old Zhengzhou teacher who grew up in Philadelphia and South Jersey. A journalism major in college, he came here five years ago and is currently teaching literature, current affairs and writing at two high schools. His Filipino girlfriend also teaches here, and they plan to move to the U.S. next year.

Later I was introduced to Brian, who owns the popular Tao bar in Zhengzhou. He has spent much of the last eight years here as a teacher and businessman, and he married a Chinese woman. Brian is a native Californian whose family moved to South Carolina when he was 13 years old. He lived in Spartanburg, which is just up the road from Greenville, where I worked as a reporter in the 1970s. He graduated from Wofford College in Spartanburg with a philosophy degree and got an MBA from The Citadel in Charleston.

Brian’s bar is one of several in Zhengzhou that have recently been told to stop serving foreigners. No one knows exactly why or where the order originated, but he’s hopeful that the ban won’t last. “When shit like this happens in China, you never know who’s behind it,’’ he said. “No one wants to be accountable.’’

Before leaving Zax, I ran into Megan, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology at Princeton University, which is about 25 miles from my home in Old Bridge, New Jersey. Megan said she’s studying  “unpredictability and movement,’’ which translates to how people react to unforeseen situations and why they move around. She came to Zhengzhou because it’s a major transportation hub, with rail and bus connections to almost everywhere in China.

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In a crowd filled with native English speakers, a Chinese woman was the most articulate English speaker I met.

Zach’s wife Teresa didn’t start studying the language until she was 12, but now she talks with no discernible accent and such clear diction that you’d think she grew up in the United States. “Something just clicked in my brain when I started speaking English,’’ said Teresa, who teaches an SAT course to high-school students who want to attend college in the U.S.  “I knew right away that I would be able to learn it.’’

She met Zach in 2010 at a Zhengzhou bar. “He was drunk and I was sitting in the corner doing cross-stitch,’’ Teresa recalled. “I wanted to be left alone, but he asked me a million questions.’’

Zach bombarded her with messages for six months before she finally agreed to go out with him. The messages were kept on his phone until he lost it two weeks before their wedding in December 2011. “Great timing,’’ she said with a smile.

Now they’re running a popular Western eatery in Zhengzhou. The city has a lot of U.S. fast-food franchises like KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s, but Zax is the first Southern barbecue place in town. “We wanted to open a restaurant that would change everyone’s idea of what foreign food was like,’’ Teresa said.