Song Dynasty Show

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June 8th 2010

Published: June 8th 2010

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No Knee Mcgee

Song Dynasty

Poster of the show we were about to see

So this was probably the best night I've had in Hangzhou. We got back from the water town, Wu Zhen, and then the travel guide suggested we go see the Song Dynasty Show, and that it would cost about 180 Yuan. After everyone heard that second part, nobody wanted to go. Deborah Brown, on the other hand, wanted to go. She suggested that if she could get 20 people interested in it then she could probably get NC State to pay for it AND we could reuse the bus we had hired for the day. Free being my favorite number, I jumped at the opportunity.

So we got there and everyone was taking pictures of the Americans, or "meiguo ren". We had a little while before the show started, and we briefly watched some pretty Chinese ladies play some music. Anyway, the show.

We sat fairly close to the front of a large theater. There were about 4 rows in front of us on big platforms. During certain parts of the show, these platforms would move to make more room for the dancers. The show was a combination of a movie being projected, music, dancers, and a light show.

Some group and some chinese

Too many guys in this picture if you ask me

There were warriors, dancers, lovers, kings, queens, fools, all kinds of things. The show was amazing and I really can't do it justice by talking about it, so I recommend looking at the pictures. Something that I didn't manage to get a picture of was this guy swinging around from the ceiling, holding a universal joint in his mouth, with a girl at the opposite end of the universal joint holding on with nothing but her teeth, spinning incredibly fast. There were a lot of parts of the show where I was just so impressed I forgot to take a picture. I took plenty of videos, but they take a really long time to upload so I may or may not post them here on Travelblog.

After the show, we went to a haunted house which was only mildly scary but still a lot of fun. We checked out the shops and then Tan and I found this awesome obstacle course. There were 6 or 7 different things you could do, and no matter which one you chose, failure resulted in falling in shallow water. The first one we did was walking across these seesaws laterally. The second one

Instrument Lady

I have a good video of this.

involved swinging from rings onto a log then rings again. The third one was two really long chains crossing the water to the other side that you had to cross. The one that was the most fun included platforms that sank into the water if you spent too much time on them. Having my fast, young, American legs, i decided to try it out. I flew across the first batch of them, which was also the shortest one, and got some applause from the crowd watching. I did each one in succession, and they got longer each time, and got a lot of applause. Finally, Tan and I decided to try to do a u-turn while running across the platforms. I made the first 90 degree turn, but I couldn't keep my momentum on the second one, and subsequently sank (nice alliteration no?) and got a nice loud "OOOOOOH!" from the crowd. Tan also tried and couldn't hit the first 90 degree turn. Then this little kid came out and just walked across all the platforms like they were solid ground, because he didn't way enough to push them into the water. We had so much fun that we didn't

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realize how much time had passed, and I didn't even get to take pictures. My phone also got wet when I fell in the water and the screen no longer works, but everything else works fine. We had to leave, but got 4 girls to take pictures with us on the way out. Definitely the most fun I've had so far.

The homesickness is getting to me. Right at the halfway mark right now. Wo yao hui jia. I'd like to thank all of my followers real quick for reading my blog because it makes me want to keep it up. Zaijian!

-No Knee Mcgee

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