weekend activities

Hi everybody!

After my first (!) visit to the park nearby (you can find some pictures of the park experience in my German blog http://worldofsannegmailcom.blogspot.com :-)) and a more or less unsuccessful shopping attempt on a very hot, humid Saturday, I decided - in spite of many warnings of apprehensive team members - to watch a "Peking Opera", in order to get some more local experience. :-)
Luckily Emily (our local student translator) went there with me, and she persuaded the persons at the door to let us in before the official opening time and to meet the actors in their dressing room. I was a little timid about that (then, at last, I realized that I would never be a good paparazzo..), but we finally entered the dressing room and made pictures of the room itself, the costumes, the stage props and of course the actors.

I met the main actress - woohoo!!

the second but one actress getting ready for the show

will book make up lessons with these guys

Emily in one of the costumes

having an important role in the opera orchestra

Emily sitting on the stage probs (it's the rich girl's seat in the story...) before the show

Since the show was fully booked, unfortunately we could not sit near to the stage, so my pictures are not the best (no, I do not have a fancy camera) - I also made some films, but I can only upload the shortest here (given the current bandwidth..) to give you a small impression of the spectacle. Actually there were nicer parts, honestly!

the show can begin..

the female voices are... let me put it this way: sort of an acquired taste

It was a 150 minutes show (no break!!!) and for sure a very unusal experience. The costumes were bright, the songs were not that bad after all, the music was interesting and passionately performed - the female speaking parts were really horrible, though. They have a very, very strange way of speaking and sometimes it was not that easy to bear (let's call it "sound intense").
I am happy that I had the chance to be there. I was for sure the only foreigner in the whole opera building, so I gained a nice insight into true Chinese culture.

Actually, they treat this event in a very different way than opera is "consumed" in Europe: they bring their children, walk around, no cell phones on mute,...

Obviously not many people dress up to go to the opera. I saw men in shabby jeans and "wifebeaters", you really need to get used to that sight!

So this was my Saturday...


On Sunday Thiago and I followed the invitation of the marketing lady of Ambow Training Center to have lunch at her home. We asked Lucy to come with us to translate the conversation and so it was a very nice lunch that lasted for more than 4 hours (lots of food, as always in China). Mrs. Wu and her husband were completely stunned by Thiago and his beauty (she was the one who gave him the name "King Handsome"...  do I have to add something?) and it was extremely funny to watch them being so honoured to have such a unusually good-looking guest.
Here are some pictures for you:

lots of ingredients for a Chinese lunch

table with half of the food that was offered

our hosts (both wanting to stand near to Thiago)

proud Mr.Wu

myself with the very nice marketing lady

So this was my weekend full of local experience in Shijiazhuang. I really liked it a lot.

Talk to you soon...  - Sue