Sunday, July 18
Today we spent the afternoon at an attraction called Splendid China/China Folk Culture Villages. (see here) It’s a cross between Epcot Center, Colonial Williamsburg, and China. The Folk Culture Villages has buildings and people in costumes from different ethnic groups around China. Ostensibly, it’s a cultural preservation attempt. Unfortunately, the bulk of the information written about the different areas was not translated from Chinese, so we felt we could have gotten a lot more out of it if we knew what was going on. The shops were filled with cheesy “Chinese” stuff rather than interesting folk art. We heard there was a zip line, but we couldn’t find it. There were many opportunities to dress up in fancy ethnic costumes, however only Patti was determined enough to do that in the sweltering heat. I just couldn’t bear the thought of enclosing myself in heavy, sticky long sleeves, even with a fan blowing right on me, even for the best picture in the world. It was a hot and humid day.

Splendid China had miniature versions of 81 major cultural or natural scenic spots.

Today I walked the entire length of the Great Wall, visited the Yangtze Gorge, saw the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Temple of Confucius, the Leshan Grand Buddha, and many other Chinese highlights that I had never heard of before. I also visited a grove of trees planted by the most famous people in the world, including the Prime Ministers of Poland, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ecuador.

The Terra Cotta Warriors are probably much more impressive in non-miniature, but there were a few life-sized examples. I used one to try to make up for the apparent shortage of Chinese acrobats, since I had not seen any yet.

I finally got to see a few acrobats when we went to the stage show in the evening. Oriental Dress at the Impression Theater was an elaborate costume drama, “a poem of Romantic Stories, A Ceremony of National Splendor.” It was the most elaborate costume drama I have ever seen, and perhaps the only drama I have seen about costumes. It started out with dancers in nude leotards posing behind a scrim, then went on to include lotus headpieces, umbrella-shaped hats with beaded curtains, sleeves four feet longer than your arms, skirts that stuck out a foot from their waists, pants and breastplates that make the wearer look like a yak when they get in the right position, showgirl feather contraptions fancier than any in Vegas, and much more.

Note to Adelaide, if you’re out there, the Shimmy Sisters might want to consider performing with live white peacocks perched on your heads.

The show also had a blacklight butterfly scene—I didn’t know Technomania Circus had an international following! (For anyone reading who doesn’t know, we created a similar scene in a show we did in San Diego 8 or 9 years ago.) And, apparently the culturally historic music of Tibet is techno. There was also a beautiful tissues act—a duet where the partner wrapped the silks around the flyer. It was very tender, and was a great way to solve the problem that apparatus often has where the performer spends a lot of time tying herself up and a very small amount of time actually performing in an interesting way. We later found out the tissues act was telling the story of the woman in the moon. A husband and wife were going to take medicine to live forever together in the moon. A trickster (maybe) came along and stole some of the medicine. Somehow the woman still drank it and now she is alone in the moon and the man pines after her forever.

It was so hot, sometimes it was just grueling to be entertained in this way. But I guess we saw China in the way China would like us to see it. I am still wondering if this really is the ethnically traditional interior of a mountainside dwelling in a rural area.

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