Opera, Karaoke, and 798

Friday afternoon Chinese table was at a Northeastern Chinese restaurant. The food was very good and the railroad track decorations were a nice touch. That evening I rode the bus with Xu Laoshi to see my parents at their hotel. Xu Laoshi brought this beautiful white flower, common in his region of China. The word for white, bai, sounds like 100 in Chinese. This year is my parents twenty-fifth anniversary. The white flowers symbolized the hope that my parents will be married 100 years! It was great seeing my parents and we went with them to a theatre called the peach blossom (Li Yuan) to see some Beijing Opera. The first excerpt involved a wealthy woman looking for her lost lover and a seedy old boatman. It consisted primarily of singing. The second excerpt consisted mostly of Kung Fu fights between Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) and warriors sent to capture him. Afterwards, Xu Laoshi and I went to a karaoke bar with some of the other students and teachers. A lot of fun.

Saturday afternoon we went to the artsy Soho-like area of Beijing, 798. the numbers 9 and 8 in Chinese sound a little like the word for bar, so I first though we were going to a bar named "7" or 7 bars. The area was quite nice with galleries, fancy restaurants, and fancy stores. Bought some nice stuff for Josh. Josh would have loved this place, especially the factories turned galleries. After that we quickly toured the Olympic Stadium "Bird's Nest".

Met my parents again last night. Slept in and had brunch with them and their friend Chuck. He recommended a book called Anastasia by Vladamir someone (I'll look it up back in the states) about Ceder trees, some of the finest of which grow in Northern East Asia.

Meeting with Yale students for lunch later today.

Some corrections from earlier notes. Xu Laoshi is from near Korea, but he is ethnically Mongolian, not Korean. The neighborhood where I eat is actually lower middle class, just with Beijing sky high rents those buildings are the best people can get in the area.