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May 18, 2009

Day Seventeen - Culture Zoo & Traditional Kung Fu

Today we had a morning and afternoon class lined up for us; the morning class was given by a Chinese professor, who spoke on China's legal environment. My attention spanned the entire first hour and a half of the lecture, but after we took a break and resumed, I got lost in sketching. The top portion of my notes turned into a royal palace. I could tell the rest of the class was also not feeling it, as the lecturer did not make many ties between business and law. I managed to snap back into it towards the end, before another lunch at Yan.

While at Yan, a few of us made rough plans to go see the China Nationalities Park (or Minority Culture Park, as we like to call it), and make it back in time for a Martial Arts performance at the Red Theater! Brad had just mentioned this morning that it was last-minute notice, but that we had tickets to the show tonight. We decided to take a cab from the park and go straight to the performance.

The Culture Park was very beautiful, and very empty. We were literally the only people there, other than the kiosk vendors who were selling us things, who we ran into an our later at a different end of the park. We couldn't understand why nobody was around - it was only 4:30pm and the park stays open until 7. There was one time when we got to a site at the end of a small performance (which we missed), so I snapped a quick picture with a person in costume. We were told that the entire park should be filled with people in costume, replicating different ceremonies that the minority groups in China would practice. Unfortunately that didn't happen for us, so we spent the afternoon roaming around, stepping into various thatched huts, and taking in the scenery. It was a gorgeous day for photography.

We allowed an hour to hail a taxi and get to the Red Theater. At ten-to-seven, the cab driver had to pull over and ask someone directions, which was a bad sign. I was pretty set on seeing some extreme martial arts and practically wanted to run out of the cab and find the theater myself. Luckily, as we pulled back onto the road, I spotted the theater on the left! We saw June, one of our tour guides we know and love, and she waved us over and told us that we were the first group to arrive (it felt a lot like the Amazing Race), and that the show actually started at 7:30 but she told everyone 7 because she wanted us to make it there in time (tricky, but perfect). We walked around to look for some food and ended up in a market which housed lots of potato chips and fellow members of the China trip!

Once inside, everything was RED - they weren't kidding by calling it the Red Theater. We took our seats and the show started promptly. I was entirely blown away from scene one; the show reminded me of China's version of Broadway in the way that it was themed as Martial Arts but also had a story line and incredible choreography that demanded attention. The story was about a young boy who had to leave the comfort of his family to become a master of Martial Arts. It was also about the overall goal to reach a higher level of Self-Realization through the release of the ego and the mastery of one's body, mind, and spirit. It was beautiful. I tried to sneak a couple of photos - while doing so I got struck by a guard's laser pointer (haha), so I had to stop.

We rode the bus back to the hotel and rested up for a little while, in preparation to go out for Shreyance's birthday! We ended up going to Lush, a local place about a couple of blocks from our hotel. Thus, today my dinner consisted of potato chips, some of Annie's french fries, and a pina colada - a large step forward from the Clif bar.

Tomorrow we have a day of sight-seeing planned!

Miss you,

Karen

Posted by rockwood at May 18, 2009 07:41 PM

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Posted by: tbruens at May 21, 2009 10:34 PM

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