Peking opera fun

Tomorrow, October 1, is National Holiday here in China, and the country celebrates by taking a week off of everything and travelling. So, I'm doing the same. No school next week and then tomorrow, myself, Dave and Valerie (another CTFer from Huijia) are heading to the bus station to try our best to get to Taiyuan, another city in China home to a few of our CTF friends. From there it's our plan to head on to Xi'an, the ancient capital, to take in such sites as the famous terracotta warriors. Should be a fun trip, assuming we leave at all. Since the whole nation pretty much travels, it's pretty busy to say the least. We already couldn't get train tickets, so I'll let you know how we get off.

On Wednesday night, our school took us to see some Peking opera at the Forbidden City Concert Hall. Actually, it was the Beijing Symphony tribute to Peking opera, which was definitely a good introduction to the whole thing. Peking Opera, if you haven't heard of it, involves huge, colorful costumes, lots of overdone makeup, and lots of loud, crazy instruments and crazier singing. I've heard a few hours of it is basically torture, so while we got to see some actors perform, it certainly wans't the whole deal. For this I am glad. Though, the whole deal was interesting.

The show was a presentation for "foreign experts" such as my self, so there was English translation throughout, and without that I never would've been treated to my favorite part of Peking opera: the lyrics. The whole thing is so melodramatic and ridiculous. For example, possibly my favorite lyric of the night went like this: "Finishing reading the plenary meeting communique, I feel so excited" a girl sang. Songs praising the "ardent enthusiasm" of a recent Communist convert and a stalwart daughter of a revolutinary who vows not to give up til the last "wolf" is dead. Stuff like that. A lot of intense nationalism comes out around National Day, and this has been interesting to see, as well.

I have more thoughts about Peking opera (I was so interested I actually took notes) and if you're interested, ask me some time. Oh, tonight I FINALLY secured a copy of Batman Begins and spent--ta da--the equivelent of $1.20 for it. Watched it just now and loved it. I also got Brothers Grimm for the same price. I haven't seen that one since it came out since I left for China, so I'm curious. Looks good. Hope all is well back home. By the way, I've been falling behind on emails lately and will be out this next week now, so sorry for slacking on the keeping in touch. Consider this an IOU to all of you who've been sending stuff on to me. I'm glad so many people are reading this and I hope it's giving a good glimpse into my life in China. If you ever have any questions, shoot me a comment or an email. Maybe I can do a Q&A post or something like that sometime. Every week there are a million things I could post about, but never enough time.

Anyway, everyone have a great first week of October at home, and think of me travelling! Hope to get back in touch with you all later next week. I'll say hi to the terracotta warriors.