Day 8: TGIF, Moving, Beggar’s chicken, and the Truth behind the legends of Sirens.

Mission: Second Honeymoon

Day 8:  TGIF, Moving, Beggar’s chicken, and the Truth behind the legends of Sirens.

 

The cold continued, along with intermittent rain. 

Amazingly, we both got done with work by 11 am.  I’d planned to spend only 25 hours working online during the week and managed to come in a few minutes under target.

A combination of online research and calling a few people indicated that the Miao village our new hotel wanted to send us to was even more of a tourist trap that the old town was.  Since we had a few more things to do than available time, we decided to save that sort of side trip for a future visit.

The first hotel had a book on display in the lobby.  It was full of sketches and details of the architecture of Feng Huang, and it was bilingual.  I hadn’t seen it anywhere else, so spent a little over 200 RMB to get a copy while checking out.  Someday, I’ll build a 6 story house so I’ll have room to get my personal library out of its storage boxes.

We hauled everything downstairs and took a taxi to the bridge closest to the hotel (only 10 kuai in that direction ).  There were a few minor obstacles.  First, we had to haul everything down from the road level to the riverside walk level.  Then back up to various levels on the bridge, then down again on the other side of the bridge.  Once back on the riverfront sidewalk, a very nice old lady in traditional garb tried her hardest to direct me to turn up another sidewalk between two hotels, despite the fact that my hotel was directly above another sidewalk only 4 or 5 buildings down and the rolling suitcases worked a lot better on the riverfront sidewalk than on the very uneven streets above.

One room on the second floor was available.  The room had an angled wall on one end, making it a bit smaller than the other, but this gave the balcony a better view of the beautiful bridge upriver.  Another nice feature of the hotel was that both regular and sheer drapes were available (more on this later ).

My lovely wife asked for a recommendation for a restaurant from the hotel owners.  They suggested one not too far away (near the restaurant where she’d previously ordered a plate of bandit chicken).

Being in an alien environment where I speak so little of the language puts me at a severe disadvantage in arguments with my lovely wife.  Thus, after being viciously and severely told that NO restaurant could possibly have moderate servings of beggar’s chicken, I was quite delighted to learn that this restaurant did indeed serve less than a whole chicken’s worth on a plate.   And so, after many years of desperately wanting to try beggar’s chicken, she finally got her first taste of it.  That’s how she found out that she didn’t like how beggar’s chicken tasted. 

 

Since this was our honeymoon, there was still some serious  time left on the agenda.  After lunch, we headed back to the hotel, opened the main drapes, leaving only the sheer ones closed (providing just enough blurring effect to preserve plausible deniability if anyone took pics from across the river) and spent quite some time engaging in a wide array of . . . honeymoon approved activities. 

Just after dark, we headed out to catch dinner before the campfire show.  The temperature had fallen again and the rain had picked up.  I finally gave in and bought a lightweight traditional jacket to keep from freezing to death.

Dinner was a noodle restaurant that had a sign indicating that they had been featured on TV.  They should have mentioned that this was probably a documentary warning about health code violations. 

The campfire show was in 2 parts.  The first was indoors.  The second outdoors.  Row 5 wasn’t too far back, but we were all the way on one side.  As we came in, they were auctioning off some very nice looking pieces of art.  I thought about bidding, but couldn’t tell if they were original paintings or cheaply made prints without a closer examination.

 

 

Finally, the “we’ve charged you to get in, now let’s see if we can get you into a bidding war” phase ended and the good part began.  Among other things, there was a whole musical and dance segment on Chinese zombies.   

 

 

After that, much to my delight, there were beautiful dancing girls.   

 

 

And then even more beautiful dancing girls.     

 

 

Could it get any better than this?  Of course it could! 

(ALERT:  Escaped Lunatic is about to go on a tangent.  Please fasten your seatbelt. )

Ancient Greek legends tell a tale about Odysseus and the Sirens.  According to the legends of the sirens, their singing was so beautiful that mariners would wreck their ships to try to get closer to see the beautiful faces and to hear the beautiful voices.  This used to sound very silly to me.

Long before I came to China, I saw a show on CCTV that featured Miao traditional singers.  That’s when I finally understood that wrecking a ship might seem like a very minor inconvenience if it led to getting closer to a siren.   I’m sure that Miao are behind the legends of sirens.   

 

 

The singers in the show were Miao, Tujia, Yi, and Bai nationalities.  All were great, but the Miao girls definitely retained first place in my eyes. 

The second half of the show was outdoors, but there was a roof covering the bleachers and another covering part of the performing area.  The “campfire” aspect was a bit more literal in this part.  There was a bonfire off to one side of the performing area.

Annoyingly, this part of the show began with an allegedly famous calligrapher writing auspicious things on large wall scrolls that were then auctioned off.  At prices as high as 2400 kuai a pop, they raked in a nice pile of extra cash selling a number of those at the beginning of the show (and were selling more at the end).  Adding to the questionable aspects of “before, during and after the show sales” was a famous author selling a set of autographed books for 200 RMB.  (He had long hair, which in China is considered to be an obvious sign of some form of artistic ability.  I get “Are you an artist?” as a question quite frequently. ) He also had a book with photos of Feng Huang for only 30 RMB (20 plus 10 for the autograph).  I did like that one, so picked up a copy.

 

 

When we got back to Dongguan, my lovely wife tried to look him up online.  The famous author had only one mention on Baidu.  I think someday I should see if I can get a gig selling Escaped Lunatic books and prints at one of these shows. 

Some of this part of the show was a little boring.  A Miao “wizard” did a few fairly simple magic tricks.  The biggest highlight was two guys who liked to play with fire.  One kept rolling flaming torches across his arms and chest, and then finally shoved the torches down his pants to extinguish them.  The other guy had a pair of flaming wooden planks and kept biting burning coals off the ends.

Since we’d canceled any plans to head outside of town, this left us all day Saturday for any final shopping and . . . other honeymoon activities. 

 

<– Back to Day 7          –> Day 9:  Good weather at last, Near-fatal collision, Final shopping binge,  What light through yonder window breaks, and Who woke up the guards? –>