China's Best Kept Secret

Finger/Shadow Puppets

Being on a tour is busy!  Unlike travelling on our own, when on tour, every minute is accounted for, squeezing as much in as possible.  The days are spent running around to different sites and the evenings are spent hanging out with the group or watching some sort of show.  And since China is such a large country, the travel time to get from one place to another is extensive. Gone are the days of reading, working on my blog, watching movies on our laptop or playing chess.  

Changing of the Masks

At the end of our Yangtze River boat cruise, we take 4 hour bus ride to Cheng Du, where we get take a city tour of the city, walk around People’s Park and catch a tea ceremony/shadow puppet/changing of the mask show in the evening.  The next morning, we wake up bright and early to go to the Panda Reserve Research Centre and watch the delightful giant pandas, lazily grazing on their bamboo all day.   Apparently, 60% of male pandas have no libido which is pretty strange for a species that has been around for over 8 million years.  Thus, in an effort to preserve this dwindling endangered species (less than 2000 left in the world), most of the female pandas at the reserve are artificially inseminated and their offspring are zealously protected.

Tang Dynasty Show

From Cheng Du, we take another overnight train to Xi’an, the historical and cultural centre of China.  We spend the afternoon in the Muslim Quarter before catching the Tang Dynasty Dumpling Banquet and Show.  The next morning, we spend the morning seeing the famed Terra Cotta Warriors and spend some time at the City Wall before catching our last overnight train to Beijing.

Terra Cotta Warriors

Overnight train travel has been an integral mode of transport for our time in China.  Vic and I find the sleeper trains to be extremely comfortable, with each compartment housing 6 berths.  Our train rides tend to be fairly uneventful, with the group chatting, reading or playing cards with each other but but this particular ride has a bit of a surprise. 

On our last ride, we have a group of young female Chinese elementary school students and 2 of their teachers sleeping in the compartment next to us.  A couple of our group members go over to chat with the teachers and students who are also going back to Beijing to visit their families.  Unbeknownst to myself on how it came about, one of the teachers starts to sing a series of Chinese songs out loud as entertainment for our group and shortly thereafter, we soon get one our karaoke singing specialist to belt out his rendition of “You Ain’t Nothin but a Hound Dog”.  Curious local onlookers are soon peeking from their compartments at the ruckus we are causing as random singing out loud on a Chinese train is definitely not the norm.  One of our other group members then busts out his speakers and starts playing and dancing to loud rave techno disco beats.  And from there, things get a little out of hand. 

Not to be out done, the other Chinese teacher jumps up suddenly starts belly dancing and actually lifts up her shirt so that we can get a close up glance of her doing some funky moves with her abdomen.  When she is done with the belly dancing, she starts doing what appears to be a cross between a “Beyonce on E” and pole dancing routine, shaking every body part like she is on mad steroids before grinding to the ground.  By the time she is finally done, there is an entire audience looking at our end of the train and our tour leader is blushing red and shaking his head.  “That was the weirdest thing I have ever seen on a train” he says.  That definitely isn’t hard to believe.

With teachers like that, it’s no wonder the kids in China study so hard.