China Part 3: Chinese People Love Performances

A few of Emmy's students did a convincing job in the fall talent show as Persian belly dancers.

Kunming is mainly known to tourists as the place you have to go in order to get to paradise-- Dali, Lijiang, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and Shangri-La (XiangGeLiLa in Mandarin). If you stay a couple days in Kunming, maybe to buy train tickets to these more exotic neighbors, your guidebook will recommend the West Mountains (XiShan) and the Bamboo Temple (QiongZhuSi). Those are pretty cool, but we recommend Green Lake Park (Cuihu). Located right in the center of a city of five million people, Green Lake is basically a giant party for Kunming's old people. Wander through the park on a Saturday afternoon and you'll pass hundreds of completely free mini-performances, by and for the town's senior citizens. Many of the singers sing off-key, out of time, with their only backup some stranger on an electric guitar or a zither, but they'll still draw an audience. The most successful stars bring extra music so bystanders can sing along. We haven't learned to read the music yet, so we settle for taking pictures.

In the foreground, an impromptu chorus, plus the obligatory flute and saxophone, belt out Chinese classical music. In the water, ducks romp with paddleboats. On the far side, four guitarists accompany a man playing a leaf. There's something for everyone!


The sun sets peacefully over Green Lake Park. All our senior citizen friends got cold and went home.


Due to overwhelming popular demand, here's the leaf man.

Kunming contains a lot of things you wouldn't expect to find in a Chinese city, or really anywhere.  For example, a 200-foot tall statue of Optimus Prime from the Terminator movies.  Or a dwarf village.  Intrigued and horrified by the idea of a tourist-trap dwarf village, Emmy wandered all over the city showing random people pictures of dwarves until she got directions.  She ended up an hour's drive out into the countryside on the back of a motorcycle. She finally found the ticket booth and bought a ticket, but it turned out to be for the world's largest plastic tree. Luckily, the people selling admission to the tree knew how to get to the dwarf village.  The moment she entered, swarms of Chinese tourists decided that a big sweaty blonde girl was more exciting than waiting for the dwarf show. The announcer quickly pulled her up on stage to play games and look foolish. Just when Emmy and her dwarf partner were beginning to find their rhythm in the three-legged race, the show began.  Dwarves reenacted historical scenes, sang, and of course cross-dressed.  The Chinese tourists laughed, and the American cringed. But no matter how humiliating, the village does apparently provide a decent salary and comfortable lifestyle for the dwarves.  If physically unusual or disabled people aren't making a living on stage wearing a toga or a feather boa, Chinese society doesn't provide many opportunities for a comfortable life. Just witness the blind woman stepping gingerly onto a bus, only to have the driver slam on the gas and send her into the arms of the teenagers hogging the handicapped seats.  There's no welfare, but there is a "welfare lottery" where seniors choose lottery numbers for a chance at a retirement pension. I bet the Senate could really rally around a universal health care lottery.

On top of the fairies and moonhouses, notice how many cultural groups are simultaneously represented!

By early November, Kunming University was already buzzing with excitement about cancelling class from November 15 to 18 for a "Sports Meeting." Thus we found it odd when November 15 came and went without a word about the sports meeting. Don't worry, at 8pm on December 1 it reappeared as the December 2-5 Sports Meeting—our school doesn't reschedule, we just rewrite history.  All the foreign English teachers arrived groggily at the city's main stadium the next morning at 8am. Luckily, our chaperones knew that when Americans get up early for athletics, they need a typical American breakfast: a Coke and a Hershey's bar.  Before forcing our gurgling stomachs to jump rope and three-legged race against the other departments, we were treated to a fantastic display of Chinese discipline. Every one of the university's 10,000 students performed dances and high-stepping routines in perfect synchronization with the rest of their academic department.

Here's the English Department. Challenge: Name any Amherst College department capable of performing this synchronized high-stepping dance routine.

Amos immediately fled to Hong Kong to take the LSAT and missed the second day, when crafty English, physics, economics, and history teachers all tricked poor Emmy into running the 50 meter dash for them. In jeans and her teaching boots. She was compensated with a five-star "hot-pot" banquet, in which you dip raw meats and vegetables into a boiling soup,lose them, and then find them wrinkled beyond recognition at the end of the meal. That's all for today, so get excited for our next post: How to get a Chinese work visa!

Challenge: Name any Amherst College department capable of getting its students to stand at attention.