My Saturday was quite eventful. At breakfast I was told that it was Bryant’s birthday! He is ten or eleven; I haven’t quite figured that out yet. For his birthday, we had a special lunch with birthday cake!! I was asked before lunch if I wanted rice or cake. I was a bit confused by this because was I suppose to put my food on top of my cake if I wanted that instead of rice? I told her cake, hoping that this would not be true. We started out our lunch by having Bryant’s blow out his birthday candle. This candle was quite interesting; because it was very large and looked like a flower they had not yet bloomed. When you lit it, it slowly unfolded. Pretty much the coolest thing ever. His cake was quite beautiful too. It had two tigers on top in very color whipped ice cream. After he blew out the candle, we started our lunch by eating cake! It tasted just as good as it looked. I am quite sad I did not get a picture of it…arghh… Oh well. After we ate cake, we ate the rest of our lunch. And no, I did not have to put my food on top of my cake. I guess having cake and rice is too many starches?? Which is strange for the people who seem to only eat starches.
After lunch, I left and met up with the rest of my classmates for our Saturday Excursion. We went to Jingli Street. Jingli Street is an old town area that has a lot of places to shop. It sort of reminded me of a craft show because a lot of the stuff was all hand made. Which of course means it is expensive, so I did not get a whole lot of things. Once we shopped for a couple of hours, we went to dinner at a restaurant called The Old House. I was told that it was the most famous restaurant around. It was quite fancy. Though, it was not the best dinner I have had lately. I have discovered that I cannot no matter how hard I try eat tofu. I almost got a little sick for how disgusting it tasted. I can eat rabbit’s brain, but not tofu. I’m weird what can I say?
Once we finished dinner we went back to Jingli Street for the best part of the day…the Opera! The Opera was located outside in a sort of outdoor amphitheater. As I sort of thought, the Opera was not as we expect in America. Although there was some singing, it was more like a variety show. Different skits performed doing little stunts and shows. The first performance was two young boys with these long teakettles. They threw them up and around and then poured tea into small cups in awkward positions. It was quite cool. The second skit was this lady with this huge puppet. She could make it do all sorts of things. At the end she came down and I got to shake its hand. Oh I forgot to mention, I got to sit in the very front row in the very middle. It was amazing! The next skit, was this man who could do shadow figures with only his hands! He made all sorts of animal shapes that could move and everything. It was quite extraordinary. The next skit was of a wife who was very angry with her husband. He had apparently lost a lot of money playing Mahjong. Since she was mad at him, she was making him do all sorts of stunts with this fire on this head. This one was quite funny even though it was all in Chinese and we had no idea what they were saying. After that, was your typical throwing of the knives show. The two men were arguing over who would have to have the knives thrown at them when they decide to get someone from the audience. They pick this poor tall American boy. He kind of looked like he wanted to die. They take him to the wall, and grab hold of them and are just about to throw the knives at them when the guy stops. He then pulls out this blindfold thing and puts it on his face and starts to throw the knives. The poor kid looked like he was going to faint. His face was red, and knees were a knocking. The knife guy then takes the blindfold off and puts it on the boy. They then make all the noises like he’s going to throw it, but the other helper guy takes the knives from the thrower and just puts them on the board next to the poor boy. When they took off his blindfold, the look on his face that those knives were right beside him was priceless. This was probably the most funny of all the shows; we were rolling off our seats laughing. The last show I think was the most amazing. I sort of had an idea about what they were going to do, but it was awesome to see in person. These 5 figures dressed in traditional Chinese costume come out with these masks on. The first two come forward and they could blow fire and it looked like their faces were on fire. The last three were the most amazing. I am not sure if I can even describe what they were doing, but I will try. Each of them had on a mask and had a long cape or big fan. They would be dancing around and flash the cape in front of their face for like maybe two seconds and then their mask would be different. They kept doing this and I was thinking ok they are just un doing it somehow but there is no way they could put it back on. Oh but they did. They made their faces completely bare, and then somehow put little masks back on again. It was mesmerizing. By far my favorite skit of the evening.
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