Peking Opera Day

The second day Judy and Lisa were in Beijing, we did some sightseeing in places that I had not seen yet, since it was a Sunday and I had the day off.  After hitting the zoo to see the pandas (which I had seen previously)...

...we went to the Five Pagoda Temple, just north of the zoo.  While the inside of the temple had been turned into a bomb bunker (and thus not particularly photogenic), the outside was intricately carved with millions of Tibetan buddhist images and figures, and it was relaxing to visit too since it was off the normal tourist path.

We then took the metro back closer to home and checked out a cool park called Taoranting Park, west of the Temple of Heaven, which was a HUGE park with a big lake, paddle boats, and scores of children and adults alike playing on the exercise equipment.  Judy was fascinated with all of the mechanical exercise equipment available in Chinese parks (she's a PE teacher and is always looking for new things to do with her kids) and thought several of the machines were great ideas.  I think they are very cool as well, and a great way to get the population exercising without having to worry about vandals or damage from the weather.  We agreed that the threat of legal suits against city governments probably keeps such equipment out of US cities, which is sad.

A big modern Chinese gate in the park

Then we went to a restaurant specializing in food from Hubei Province, where my friend Aubree lived for 2 years - I visited her and her school in October.  It was Judy and Lisa's first genuine Chinese food experience, and the reviews panned out, thankfully, it was pretty good even though I hadn't been there before.  We managed to get 'ri gan main', or hot dry noodles, a specialty I had enjoyed while visiting Aubree that I have not found in Beijing, as well as some pork ribs, veggies, and a big fish soup. 

(I can't find my picture of this meal, so instead here are Judy and Lisa on the leg thingies that I think are so cool!)

After dinner, we went to a short show of tidbits of Peking Opera.  I had heard that Peking Opera can be quite shrill and painful, not to mention long and boring, but I had a fantastic time.  Its true the story was condensed into an hour, and there were english subtitles (there were chinese subtitles too, I guess it was too shrill even for the Chinese!) but the story was a fun one involving gods incarnating themselves as humans, love, betrayal, evil priests, repentant husbands, vengeful sisters with big swords, and lots of mock fighting on stage with dance-like motions and acrobatics.  At our table, we had Oolong tea and a variety of snacks; peanuts, dates, little fake fig-newtons, oranges, you name it. it was really quite fun and I would consider going to see a full-length opera someday, provided I'd read the story first if there are no subtitles!