Journal Entry #37: Saturday, June 19, 2010

Breakfast was great, again!  This was a day that we had almost nothing to do except get rested up for our long journey home, buy whatever else we might want, and do some packing and repacking for our trip. 

I also took the time to have the hotel concierge service call China Southern Airlines and confirm our flight reservations.  Katherine Liu was particularly helpful to me.  Customer Service was her specialty!  She was so helpful that whenever I needed anything and she was busy, I wanted to wait for her attention.
 
We soon headed back to the Pearl Market to look for some more gift items for a few people and to try to buy a Nikkor lens for my Nikons really cheap. The vendors just wouldn’t budge very much on the price of some rather expensive lens so I gave up and walked away.  I did buy some more 120 GB flash drives for $10 US each!  I also bought a new backpack and Donna bought a wristwatch.  We did have a bit of trouble with lunch.  This was really the first venture out of the building without a student guide or one of my Harding students to translate for us.  We ended up eating at KFC which seem to be everywhere in China.  They immediately handed me an English menu when I stepped to the counter to order.  Do I look like I can’t speak Chinese?  For the evening meal we simply went across the street from the hotel and were able to order something from a picture menu.
 
Through Tina and Eileen we had ordered some tickets to the Peking Opera for Saturday night.  We had the tickets delivered to the concierge at the hotel and had left money with their service to pay for them.  The concierge service at this Park Plaza hotel was as good as I have ever had.  They spoke good enough English to get anything that I needed help with but Chinese enough to amuse me while I interacted with them.  They were delightful young employees that seemed to revel in the fact that they could speak English and help us so much.
 
The Peking Opera was… we’ll just say that it was Chinese and cultural, but to me it was brutally horrible! The music was obnoxious, and the singers were just bad!  The Choreography had a few moments of “wow,” but for the most part it was just excruciatingly hard to listen to and watch the performance.  The costumes may have been the best part of the show.  There were lots of colorful and intricate dresses with lots of traditional Chinese attire. One of the acts had a ribbon dance routine that was better than the rest of the show but overall my word for the review is still brutal.  The pre-announcement for the evening was surprisingly in Chinese and English.  The announcer went over the rules; no talking during the performance and no photography allowed.  They must not have said that in Chinese because everyone around us was talking constantly and the picture taking was a constant roar of shutters and flashes.  They didn’t just do this for a few minutes at the start of the show, but the audience did this for the entire three hours of this painful show!  There were even people with tripods set up in the center aisle.   I kept thinking that it would end soon but with every act ending no one got up to leave so soon another act started.  Finally, it was over.  The crowd went wild with applause and animation and the lead characters were showered with flowers.  I love the theatre and live performances.  But I missed something on this one.  However, all in all, I’m glad I went, so that I could say that I did!