September 30, 2006

• Til the fat lady sings

  As I have mentioned before, the program was not just about learning chinese medicine, but also to be exposed to chinese culture- and as everyone knows, when you hear culture, you think bacteria opera. So we were taken courtesy of the program to see traditional beijing/peking opera

  
  
  Flashy opera house, yesno?
  
  Once again, here is almost our whole group-never did manage to get everyone in one pic, but oh how i kept trying.
  
  The inside of the theater is nto quite what we expected based on the outside
  
  So what is peking opera like? well it’s hard to describe
  .

   jackie chan and sammo hung both acquired their martial arts skills here, as the opera trains its actors in acrobatics. The story being shown above is about the battle of monkey king
  
  

  
  And this one is about someone bringing the rains down to africa china.
  thinking the costumed beauty above is pretty talented?…well, IT’S A MAN, BABY

  For the next couple weeks we amused ourselves by trying to duplicate those sounds…ee sa! I know, i am terribly culturally insensitive, but thankfully i have learned to live with it

  
  here is me with monkey king himself-and no, i did not prompt him to make the internationa symbol for asian in a photo-it is just instinct

  Well after so much fun, several of us were not ready for the night to end. So when the bus taking us back to the hotel stopped at a red light near San Li Tun Bar Street, we told the driver to stop so we could get off. While a bit nonplussed that several passengers had decided to get off for no apparent reason, the driver complied.

  San Li Tun is the expatriate bar street, and as such, the prices are way more expensive than elsewhere in china for alcohol-we had to pay almost 30-40 yuan per drink ($4-5) compared to our normal 8-16 ($1-2)…I know! tai gue le (translation-too expensive)

  
  you know i cant resist corny pics like this-and if you didn’t, welcome to my site for the first time ever
  

  if the pics are a little out of focus, well that is because we were all a bit tipsy. Not pictured are my mom and brother who also came along for the drinkering. Yes, once again i went drinking with my mom-i am such a bad influence, but what the hell is still always the right decision.

  In Several of the bars, live bands were performing and the majority of the bar patrons were just sitting there passively listening to the music….not us Americans! We got up on stage with the singers and joined them…
  
  Here is phil, busting a move…later I took over the mic and regaled the br with my rendition of sweet child of mine-i’m a sucker for guns and roses

  So ended our night…laughing, singing, drinking, and good times were had by all

  -J

  • 12:01 pm
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