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Published: September 12th 2011
It’s been a lazy weekend for me. Saturday I ended up spending a lazy morning sleeping in and reading. It was rainy so that ruined my plans to go to West Lake, and my pen pal Jenny was with her family this weekend for the Mid Autumn Festival, so we couldn’t get together. None of my plans worked out, but I was okay with that. I went to the downtown shopping area with Carey, Balazs, and Brittany because they wanted to go to H&M. The stores were so crowded! I didn’t even know what to do with myself since there were so many people. We got a lot of stares while we were there as well.
After the store, we came back to the apartment to get ready for our own Mid Autumn party with the pen pals. Not as many showed up this time because many were at home with their own families. We had moon cakes and fruit and talked to everyone. Moon cakes are sweet breads with different kinds of filling, some nuts, meats, or coconut, tea, red bean paste flavors. I’m not a big fan of them, but the Chinese love them. Miss Li gave us the
history of the festival, it is a celebration of the harvest, and especially of the moon. The story is that in ancient times, there were ten suns that scorched the earth. The hero Hou Yi shot down nine of the suns with his bow and arrow and made the last sun to rise and set, and people honored him for this. One day he ran into the Empress of Heaven Wangmu who gave him an elixir that would cause anyone who drank it to rise up to heaven and become a celestial being. Hou Yi had a wife, Chang E, who he didn’t want to part with, so he had her hide it. A man named Peng Meng saw it and when Hou Yi was off hunting, he attacked the house and made Chang E give him the elixir. To prevent him from taking it, she drank the whole thing and soon rose up into the heavens. When Hou Yi returned home, he knew what had happened, he called to his wife and looked up into the sky, where he saw a bright moon with a shadow that looked like his wife. He tried to go up to her, but
always the moon moved away from him. So he set up a table with Chang E’s favorite foods on it and burned incense to her. Other people began to arrange incense tables to pray to Chang E for good fortune and peace, and that is how people in China started worshipping the moon.
Yesterday was not especially fun for me because I woke up with a cold. I ended up not going to English Corner because I didn’t want to be sniffling over everyone in the rain. I ended up reading another book and sleeping the morning away. We met in the lobby at 3 o’clock to go to the Song Dynasty Park. Some Spanish students studying here went with us. The park was pretty neat with everyone dressed as if they were in the Song Dynasty with little shops. One man was walking with a goat and a monkey! Some guards periodically stopped visitors to see if they matched a criminal’s wanted poster, and we got some fun pictures of them pretending to cut off their heads. We went into a ghost house, which had really good “scary” decorations, but was a little hokey compared to our haunted houses
at home. We had dinner in a restaurant of the park, and it was the best meal I have had in China! Everything was delicious! (Except for the chicken feet, which I didn’t try.) There were clams, duck, tofu soup, sweet and sour pork, beef and peppers, sweet lotus root, and many other things. Every time a new dish was brought out, the server would shout the dish, as they did in the Song Dynasty.
After dinner we were led to an outdoor stage for the moon ceremony. Since we came with a group from a popular newspaper, we were special guests, so sat in front and were given sticks of burning incense. There were dancers, and the “emperor” came out with a pig sacrifice. Our group got to go on stage to bow to Buddha and stick our incense in the altar. The others (mostly Chinese) in the crowd were going crazy taking pictures of all the white people participating in the ceremony. Once that was over, we went to the theater for the performance, and I have to say, this was absolutely amazing! It was like nothing I have ever seen and it is easily my favorite thing
we have done so far. Again benefitting from being with the newspaper, we had really good seats, right in the center and up high enough to see the whole stage. The show began with a scene of an ancient time when the people were in the jungle. Four men did some cool acrobatics on a trampoline type surface, bouncing up and holding themselves suspended on bamboo poles, jumping and bouncing over and under each other to climb back up the poles. Next, they showed Buddhism coming to China, then the palace of the emperor with belly dancers and drummers, all in beautiful costumes. Then a battle was portrayed with the king Yue Fei, who is the most famous king in Zhejiang’s history. The choreography here was phenomenal. To my great surprise and delight, horses periodically ran across the stage in the battle (the riders were terrible though.) Then they performed China’s Romeo and Juliet story which took place at West Lake. They actually had water for this part, pouring from the ceiling and creating a “lake” on the stage. Mist even poured down on the audience. Since it was the Mid Autumn Festival, they showed Chang E dancing as a
shadow on the moon, and then displayed Hangzhou’s tea culture handing out tea to those who were in the most expensive seats. The show ended with something like a fashion show, with all the performers coming on stage. Everything about this show was top notch, from the dancers to the lighting effects (the best I have ever seen). I have a better understanding of some of Zhejiang’s history, depicted in the drama, with the music and traditional Chinese dance. I hope I have the opportunity to see another of these performances. I get to write about this experience for my internship, but since this will be in the travel section, it’s a full page spread. I hope I can do it justice!
We don’t have classes today since it’s a holiday, so we start tomorrow! I’m so excited to have an actual schedule and have things to do every day!
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Jas
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Performance
Wow! That does look like an amazing show. I love the different colored lights that they use. That must have been impressive!