Foshan, Man...Fo' Sure. Fotos
Foshan was a blast. Fotos have been posted. I will write more on the subject tomorrow. I am tired. Goodnite.
I was practicing my mandarin of Xiaolan Bus Station: "Xiaolan Qi-che zhan" to tell the motorbike taxi. On the way out the door i was continuing to practice it so I wouldn't screw it up when I spoke to the motorbike taxi. But, low and behold, I got to the driver and screwed it up. But then I said it again properly and he understood. Foshan was cool. I got to the bus station at 8am. Yumi was the next to arrive and then Coco arrived at 815am. John and Jolleen were late so I called him and he was like yeah, I will see what I can do. Take the next bus we will be there at the one afterwards. I said OK.
So, we got our tickets and Coco bought four. I was like, NO! John isn't coming. "Oh...whoops" she was able to return it. We could't get the next bus because there were only 2 seats left so we took the 900AM bus which was pretty vacant. It was an 1.5 hour ride.
While were waiting in the station and on the bus, we were looking over the Foshan map I had. I was thinking we would be able to hit many things. I even wanted to visit a university to see about getting a job there. I brought along my resume and some diploma copies.
We got to Foshan and I called John and they hadn't even left the bus station yet! What's going on over there, its 1030pm. He was like, well, I had trouble getting out of bed. And then Jolleen came over and was all like, "Oh, I need to do my hair and put on my make-up, do this and do that." Total girl b.s. He said they would hop on a bus soon and i told him to call me when they have spent an hour on the bus to give us a heads up of when they would arrive in 30 minutes.
So, Coco, Yumi and I hopped a cab to Zu Miao.
Zu Miao is a grouping of a bunch of old taoist temple buildings. They were built in 1037A.D. In addition there is an add on building that houses the Wong FeiHong museum. We met up with Coco's sister and nephew, Kevin who's 4 years old, outside the entrance gate in front of the fountain. Kevin looked really excited to see his aunt and me. very energetic. The sister headed over to get park tickets and I brought my vid-camera out to videotape the blind man playing a 3 stringed Erhu and tapping a cymbol with his foot. Coco and her sister were like, "Hurry up, Phil! there's a performance starting." What? "A lion dance troup." SWEET! I am totally there. We entered the park and i saw them doing some dancing across the way. Kevin was excited and wanted to run so I grabbed by his arm and we ran there. It was pretty funny.
We got to the performance area and it was kids no more than 13 years old practicing. The performance hadn't started yet. These kids were good though. We watched the show and I videotaped it all. And one of the lions that performed scaled the 20 foot tall poll to get some leaves. That was kool. Then he sat on a table. People would feed him donations and they would get this paper that says something like, "Good Luck and Good Health". Kevin went up and couldn't make his way thru the crowd so I picked him up and stood him on the table. Yumi then went up and gave some money too.
John called and said he and Jolleen had just showed up but they would head to lunch.
After the lion left a bunch of kids started showing off some of their gung fu skills. AWESOME!these kids rocked. Lucky little kids.
All of this was videotaped.
Next fter the show was over, we headed over to the Wong FeiHong museum. This was really kool. Finally got to learn about the true stories and, most likely, communist tainted history. There was a sign that said No Photographs, but I didnt see it. There was lots of kool stuff. There is a photograph there that is the only photo ever taken of him. There was a section of the place that was dedicated to all the movies about him. As of 1996 there were 100 movies, I mistyped what I said about over 200 movies...there are actually now over 100 movies. They had a listing o them all and some behind the scenes fotos. They also had short biographies of all the actors that have played him. We found out that at 3pm there would be a wushu/gong fu performance in the opened area. Kool beans. So, we would have to stay for that. I noticed it was getting late and we hadn't heard from John and Jolleen. It must have been a long lunch.
Coco's sister and Kevin had to take off, so I gave her my resume and some of the documents to give to her school and Coco told her to make copies and give to another friend. Sweet. Making contacts, yo.
So, we decided to head and get some food on the grounds. I looked at the time and it was alreday 1pm. Oh wow. I didn't realize. We headed to the temple areas cause thats where there is some food. We ate by the Wan Fu stage, the oldest performance stage in China, I think. Then we walked around the area and checkedout the wishing pool and headed into the Main Hall. That place was huge and it was really kool. Lots of amazing ash sculptures and it was very ornate. Very kool. Also,very dusty. I have video and pictures.
From there we meandered back to the Wong FeiHong museum. Then when we got there, I called JOhn and they said they would arrive in 10 minutes. So, we hung out and then headed back to meet them at the entrance.
Once we got them, I noticed something else that I missed before. SO I went exploring. Man was it gorgeous. It was the Confucian School grounds. They had this thing called the Wishing Tree. A tree covered in red wish ribbons and plastic tomatoes...go figure. Jolleen had told John about the tomatoes and he thought that people were throwing tomatoes into the tree to try and get them stuck there, hence making a wish. But no they werejust hanging plastic. Its possible they could have been mandarin oranges, but they looked like tomatoes. We walked around and took some fotos.
After that we headed to the museum again for the gung fu show. But it was 230 and they had another child lion dance performance. So, John and Jolleen hung out watching that as we finished our tour of the museum. At 3pm they rolled out the carpet on the freshly cleaned courtyard floor. Too bad the carpet was dirty and dusty as hell and sent dust everywhere. What a waste, you just ruined a cleaned floor. So chinese.
The wushu performance was ok. The kids were young about less than 20. I videotaped it. Then right after that there was a group of older people doing lion dancing. This was really good. It was much of the same as the kids, only much better.
After that show was over, we headed out. It was 430pm. We grabbed bus tickets for 5pm and headed back.
The bus heading back was a pain. I slept about 1 hour of the way home which was good, everyone on the bus was passed out it seemed like. I was sitting in the front. They need to fix the horn on that vehicle. Every time he honked at someone it was as loud inside the bus as it was outside. What use is that. We got back to Xiaolan and Coco went home. The four of us decided to go to dinner at the restuarant above the CRC shop...the resturant where my cell phone was stolen. Therefore it already had 1 strike against it.
We walked in and I saw on the TV the news story I was on. Giggle thats funny. Everyone eating were looking at me and talking. The man who poured the tea was giving me a big smile and thumbs up. Stop, I am blushing. It looks like the video was different than the one they played on Christmas Eve. Hmm, hopefullly I can get a copy.
Dinner wasnt really that good but the company was good. We paid and took off. On the way out we ran into May, one of the english teachers I work with and the teacher of the two horrible 6th grade classes.
We then seperated and went our seperate ways. I headed home and yet to sleep. I was tired. Goodnite.