In the Dirt...then Acrobats!
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
27
41
Trip End
Aug 2008
Beijing,
China
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Don't get me wrong it is great fun, and I even continued my incredibly annoying habit of buying local propaganda posters by picking up a collection of 8 "authentic" posters from the Cultural Revolution era of China's past. I know they are reproductions, but the lady who sold them to me was so enchanting that will be our little secret. I have now bought historically questionable propaganda posters in Russia, Germany, Mexico, Central America, as well as good number of American World War II War Bond, 60's Civil Defense, and other goodies from our collective paranoia driven past.
My roommates are trying to single handedly increase the rapidly widening Spanish-Chinese trade gap, by picking up souvenirs for every imaginable family member back home in Madrid. Uncles are receiving tea sets, Aunts porcelain vases, and their sister is getting just about something from every stall...Chinese I-pods (which are fake and are reported to actual play MP3 based content for about the length of time it takes to play all 3 albums of Yessongs, before it malfunctions and melts down in your hand) She is getting jewelry, she is getting Olympic pins, she is getting swimming gear (quite the Swimming star, and perhaps a contender for the 2010 London games, I understand...) and well, it seems thousands of other things. We spend hours slowly making are way through the huge market, and we all have a wonderful time.
As the day starts to fade, one of the Spanish Brothers has the brilliant idea that instead of heading home, that we hit a Chinese Acrobatic Show that evening. Wow...that is fantastic. What a great idea, and I'm so excited. I saw a great Chinese film many years ago that followed two friends as the went from early childhood mired in the poverty of Central China before both were plucked out of their lives by an acrobatics master who brought the boys to the city, trained them, and then after years of carefully study, the boys joined his Acrobatic troupe. It was equally incredible and sad to see the boys have such amazing skills, but also how the troupe became their only family and their childhood was immediately gone as soon as they entered this life. I'm sure a lot has changed, and this probably doesn't happen now in this Modern China, but it might a good idea we can borrow to get the kids of America to put down their Nintendo WII controllers for more than 45 seconds.
So here's the plan, we figure we'll stop by the theatre pick up our tickets for the evening, go home drop off our treasures, have a little early dinner and come back for the show... Great plan, so we hop in cab and point to the Chinese symbols in my travel guide for the Chaoyang Acrobatic Theatre. We arrive to find that on Saturday's there are two shows, one at 5:15 and one at 7:15...and now it's 4 pm...new plan. Let's eat something around here, go to the show at 5:15 and then go home...even better. So with the treasures of China's past in our bags we start to wander the streets beside the 3rd Ring Road in search of a nice, fast restaurant. Across the busy street we see the international symbol of greasy pizza, the swooping red roof sign of a Pizza Hut. So we swim upstream against traffic until we can dodge the never-ending on coming crazy drivers across the 6 lanes of motorway to get to the glass doors of a Pizza Hut. I have misgivings because as Pizza goes, I'm not the biggest fan of the Hut. I have over the years kind of become a pizza snob, and only certain pizzas will do. Some develop a taste for caviar, some can tell he difference between 12 year old single malt Scotches, others still can tell you if the Merlot was a 79 or an 80 vintage with a single sniff and the tiniest swirl in their mouths. I however, have developed an incredible palate for cheesy pepperoni topped offerings after international samplings of every cultures attempt of the world's most complete and spectacular culinary invention. So we slide into the tiny Pizza Hut to find only a podium and about 35 people sitting on boxes reading magazines, eating Ramen Noodles and playing cards. We all assume we must have come in the back by mistake and ask to be seated. Our hostess shakes her head and we ask to see a menu...and she shakes her head. I look at the podium and it has multiple phones and a map... I'll give you one guess, yes...it is a delivery only Pizza Hut. I didn't know this but apparently, the only way in Beijing you get pizza from a "Pizza Place," and not a full on restaurant that serves other things is by delivery. Even the smallest college town Pizza Station has at least one tiny round table tucked in a corner by the front door, but not here in China...interesting.
So we move on...down one street, then another, and then one more... Where are all the restaurants? Finally down an alley we spot a group of restaurant looking things. We do the point at the picture on the menu thing and other a handful of dishes. I order a mutton stew with dumplings that looks absolutely amazing in the menu photo... When it is brought out it comes in this huge urn made of brushed bronze. Under the urn is a quite sizable open flame that one would assume is there to keep the stew warm. So I dig in and find mysterious items in the stew, and I do my best to avoid the razor sharp bones that are hidden in the mutton, but as I start to take items out of the stew, the amount of actual stew decreases and what remains is now being superheated by a flame that would keep most of Toledo Ohio warm through all of January and February. The stew is now in full on boil and is as I reach in with chopsticks to retrieve another piece of meat or potato, the heat of the pot is so great, the hairs on my hand are starting to ignite. Perhaps I have had enough...Let's see the acrobats!
I can only say... Incredible. These kids do so much amazing stuff I can't begin to tell you...but don't despair, I'm sure not one of them can get past the 4th level of Halo, and even the best of them haven't held their positions on that snowy hill in Call of Duty 4... so there. Alright Chang so you can do triple back flips while balancing dishes on your forehead and you can leap 40 feet, doing somersaults through hoops to land on you brother's shoulders while he supports two girls who are juggling fire batons from his hips, but can you beat me in EA Hockey 08? I'm even let you be the Senators and I'll take the Blues, and I'll pull my goalie the whole time... Not so "cool" now, huh?
