Beijing Opera

Beijing opera, or 京剧, is one of China's cultural traditions.  It dates back to around 200 years ago, starting out as a joint performance of Anhui （安徽） and Hubei （湖北） dance troupes.  While it was definitely a worthwhile experience, I don't think it's something I'd enjoy listening to or watching all the time.

I really enjoyed the music from the traditional Chinese instruments.  It was very distinct from Western orchestral works.  You can hear the pentatonic (5-note) scale, which is what "makes it sound Chinese."  This stands in contrast to the heptatonic (7-note) scale that we are more accustomed to hearing.  I also enjoyed the elaborate costumes and the acting, which can be seen in the pictures below.  However, the singing did not quite suit my taste.  Beijing opera's Chinese is a special dialect similar to the Anhui and Hubei dialects from which this musical and artistic style developed.  Also, the high-pitched and "whiny" voices just sounded really strange and foreign to me.

Musician playing the erhu （二胡）

Before the show:

Musician playing the guzheng （古筝）

A performer painting his own face before the show

First performance:
There is an emperor who has been surrounded by his enemies, and his favorite concubine does a final dance for him with swords and tears before committing suicide.

Second performance:
A Chinese general (white clothes) is traveling, and staying in an inn along the way.  However, the innkeeper (black clothes) is suspicious of him, and he is equally suspicious of the innkeeper.  So, a fight breaks out in the pitch-black night.  It's actually pretty comical because they pretend they cannot see each other, oftentimes purposely coming really close to each other, but without any contact.

Third performance:
I actually forgot what this one was about, maybe it's the start of what I think is the 4th performance?  All I remember is that the guy wore a really awesome hat with two huge antennae!

Fourth performance:
This is the story of a concubine whose emperor has gone to the West Palace.  To soothe herself, she drinks a lot of wine and gets drunk.  I think it was supposed to be funny -- and the acting was -- but I'm pretty sure at least a few of the jokes went over my head.

At the end:

Group picture!

798 Art District

The 798 Art District is actually a bunch of old military factory buildings that are no longer in use.  Today, it has become a thriving art community.  I will admit that I cannot fully understand and appreciate art, but I have to say, a lot of the stuff was pretty awesome, or at least quite... interesting.

Since it's all about art, I'll use pictures (again)!

We do as the statues do

Art...

Striking similarities, right?

Another red statue

A strange-looking little guy

Pretty sure this tree was made to be climbed

Environmentalists...

Taking a group picture in a convex mirror -- look at us artists!

I high-fived art!

What does the sign say?  See below...

Ohhhh... so that's what it says!  Reminds me of bathroom stall graffiti ^_^

Does Chinese graffiti look better than American graffiti?

DINOSAURS!

Posing like statues is awesome -- people passing by took our picture, too!

WHY IS THIS GUY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SQUARE???

Took a few tries.  But we're awesome.

Wangfujing

This is a very famous shopping street in Beijing, and as such, it is a very popular tourist destination, so we decided to check this place out.  It was indeed packed with tourists!

Yup, there's a lot of people

There were a lot of interesting things we saw, and I think pictures are a lot more effective than words here:

Entrance to the "Snack Street"

Mmmm... starfishes, sea horses, and LIVE SCORPIONS!

Lots of small things you can buy

A golden cat that shakes its paw at you

Buy your very own terracotta soldiers!

Of course I went in there

This cool toy car drives on the wall... too bad it's 1000 RMB

Buy your very own 京剧 (Beijing opera) masks!

Interesting...

A small 京剧 (Beijing opera) performance in front of some snack shops

Electronics Department Store

On Friday, we visited an electronics department store.  I was thrilled to come because I am really interested in computers.  People said that there were ten floors in all, but I only made it up to the third floor because we only had an hour to look around.  The outside didn't really get my hopes up, since the building doesn't look like anything special, but the inside is really bright and modern!

The outside of the building

The first floor had a lot of cellphone and camera stores.  The sellers were all pretty aggressive in getting you to see the stuff they were selling.  They’d say stuff like “I know you need a cellphone” or “Let me help you find a camera you need.”  I guess that’s the product of the insane competition there – pretty much everybody was selling the same thing, so you gotta do what you gotta do to sell to the customers.

Look at all these computer stores!

I didn’t look at the cameras, but the cellphones were really expensive.  A standard Android smartphone could go up to 3000 RMB, which is around 480 USD!  Sometimes the price would be even higher.  We also stopped by an Apple store, which may or may not have been a real Apple store.  Apple doesn’t have that many official stores in China, but I see them everywhere, so I think a lot of them are fake.  Anyway, they sell an entry-level 13” MacBook Pro for 8400 RMB, which is a little over 1300 USD.  In the USA, you could get that for probably $1000 – 1100, so that means buying a Mac in China is around 25% more expensive.  Yikes!  That’s also why some Chinese people ask their friends in America to bring them Apple products when they visit because it’s so much cheaper in America.  Saving 250 USD is around 1600 RMB – not a small amount!

On the second floor, they mostly sell laptops.  Again, I was approached by 2398523957129038 people asking me to go look at their stuff, so I ended just telling them all that I didn’t bring any money, which seemed to work.  The laptops in China are pretty much like the Macs, in that the price is really jacked up.  The PCs usually have a price increase of %15 – 20.  I really like having a bunch of computer monitors, so I asked a guy how much they sell for in China.  The price of a nice LED monitor is actually pretty comparable to those in the United States.  I also noticed HP had a slightly different strategy of getting customers to visit: every single HP store had an attractive girl dressed up in an HP outfit!  But I feel like many companies or stores in China do this…

The third floor was really cool.  It was mostly about computer hardware.  I asked around (or rather they went up to me and told me) to see how much motherboards, CPUs, video cards, etc. cost in China.  Most of them were pretty close to the prices in the USA, although slightly on the expensive side.  However, one guy told me that an i5 CPU was for 3000 RMB, which is like 450 USD – a total rip-off!

This i5-3570K is a pretty high-end i5 CPU, but it's only $204.99

This i7-2500K, which is better than the i5, sell for $289.99

Also, it was funny because I’d ask them a lot of questions regarding the specifications of the stuff they had, and they’d ask me if I was Korean.  I really don’t know why, considering that I look nothing like a Korean, but I got the hint that they think the general Chinese population is not as good with computers as the Koreans.  My not-too-awesome Chinese probably also led them to think that I wasn’t Chinese!

 

Later I was told that you can haggle over the prices to bring them down to reasonable levels, but it might be really difficult to get them down to American price levels, especially for me – a foreigner!  I want to go back to have a look around and maybe buy a cheap monitor, but then I’ll have the new problem of figuring out what’s real and what’s not!

I want something like this...

Chinese Calligraphy

At HBA, on Mondays after class, we can sign up to take a calligraphy class (书法）.  Since I want to make the most of my time here in Beijing, I enthusiastically signed up for this wonderful opportunity.  (Also, my mom thinks that this stuff is really cool!)

It was kind of difficult at first: holding the brush felt kind of awkward, and you're supposed to hold the brush perpendicular to the table at all times.  There are also special ways to make the strokes by following various patterns and applying varying amounts of pressure, so now I realize how much practice it's going to take to be able to control the brush well enough to draw beautiful Chinese calligraphy.

The first class, we practiced writing 福.  At first, they were really ugly, but after practicing writing only 福 for an hour, I think I was able to make some progress!

The fruits of my labor!

It was really fun, so I decided to join again the following week.  This time we wrote a real phrase!

NOTE: It reads from right to left!