Suzhou to Shanghai: June 2007

Rehearsal

The Studio

The boys practice their "Stick Dance"

Jiabin, the dance master, contemplates on how to help them out.

This kid's name in English is Fly. I guess I shouldn't call him a kid at 29. People are freaken out about his age and are like "is that for real or is he joking". The funny thing to me is that being 29 is suppose to be a joke? It's like dog years versus dance years- I suppose I'm ancient.

They start them young on their scooters.

This is by the Daoist Temple of Mystery. I have no what those statues were about, but that girl was cute enough to make them picture worthy. Below is some lollie making going on. You can't have a bad day if your day includes a rooster sucker.

A lot of food action

In front of our apartments every night is this festival of foods. This is were you get your fried rice, dumplings, spring rolls- you name it. All for 1 Yuan (that's 13 cents!)

Of course it's something the dancers look forward to.

Here Oliver inspects his meat. No doubt his Ipod is creating a nice soudtrack for the experience.

Not too sure were this mama and baby came from. You don't see children in my "community"- they're not allowed. Plus it was late.

The food action continues inside

As I got home some of the Chinese contingency part of the cast was having their own smorgasbord.

The chinese bookended by an Australian and a Canadian.
Karina, Yulin, Liu Peng, Dian Lin Ma, Xue, Wen Xhin Yu, Chao Lun Zheng, Hua Yang and Emily.

Never mind learning the language, learning the peoples names and pronouncing it correctly is daunting enough.

Pub Street

Suzhou is a quiet place at night not too much going. We ventured out to an Aussie Bar to appease the Aussies in the company.

People love their games here. It's common to see in any bar or club you go into people playing cards or dice. Next Friday I see they are having a rock, paper, scissor tournament- I may have to check this one out.

Buses end around 8 o'clock so we caravan in taxis home. I was glad this was not my taxi.

More of Suzhou

Crossing the street is a tricky feat. You don't walk you run. There's a lot of waiting until you can find a safe window to cross.

I like trying the different goodies but honest to god I have no idea what I'm eating at any given time.

Every time I go out I make an effort to go down different streets and each time I think this best street, no this is the best street.

Lost in Translation, that's the truth

To obtain a work visa we had to go through a thorough medical. That was some sort of science fiction fun

. As a parting gift we received the "INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL HEALTH PROTECTION BOX". One pill makes you grow taller, the other smaller, choose wisely. Actually, we got a pamphlet: the green pill is for a middle degree headache [adverse reaction- drug rash, bleeding erythema, dermatitis exfoliative, photosensitiviy, drug fever, allergic shock, neutrophilic granulocytopenia, liver lesion, hematuria, renal failure, HEADACHE, malaise, hallucination, skin eruption, anorexia (what?), heavy sweating, mouth cavity inflammation and vomiting]. On my spell check some of those words aren't even recognized, what are they even talking about? Anyway, thanks, but no thanks. I will take the middle degree headache.

I don't think I've seen one thing truly translated right, even in a government hospital we got the "registvation line".

They have the most random, wonderful sayings on everything from notebooks, to mugs, to my favorite coffee drink here "Mr. Bond". At the bottom of the can it says "I'm young...I'm coffee". Uh, ok.

The Police

That knocker was straight out of Labyrinth.
"I don't know, we're just the knockers" always was one of my favorite lines.

Today we just begun class when we noticed police standing by the doorway to the studio. They interrupted to say they needed to speak with the foreigners. We all gathered around thinking 'what the heck happened'. They said they were concerned for our safety and questioned to whether we were going out at night-we should be in at 8 according to them. We told them that wasn't possible, rehearsals are during the day, so in the evening is our only time to go out. We assured them we travel in groups and they seemed to be fine as long as we traveled with at least three persons. The whole thing was totally bizarre, because it's completely safe around here. We asked "what are you afraid will happen to us?" "Well, maybe your wallet could get stolen". Big frigging deal- been there done that in Italy and Russia, not the end of the world. Sure be cautious, but did you really need to interrupt our work for that. Finally, they asked to take photos with us- oh, okay, maybe that's what is was more about.