Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

I wonder if chickens will ever evolve the ability to fly.

I also wonder what happened to the Drew Carrey show.
Finally I wonder if there really is such a thing as a TPS report.

As you might have surmised from the above, I have had a lot time to … think. I have been at this office for about 45 hours now and I have yet to receive an assignment. To be honest it is pretty hilarious. I’ve just been doing some extreme web surfing. I am pretty sure I have read every article on MSNBC.com, all of the recent publications from the Brookings institute, and clicked on all the links from the blog Clicked. Luckily I was promised at the beginning of the week some work either today or tomorrow, so here’s to holding out for tomorrow! Oh yah I also made a haiku –

Cute bear sticker there,
Who put you on the laptop,
Not work related.

Just try and puzzle out the hidden meaning in that one (hint. There is a sticker on my laptop that says cute bear). Haikus are fun.
So after that productive day in the office I was ready to enjoy the cultural experience that is Beijing. I was not to be disappointed as Coleman had booked tickets to go see Chun Yi: The Legend of Kungfu. It was being performed at the Red Theatre, and Coleman, Julie, and I headed into ‘downtown’ Beijing to see it. It was a 7:30 showing, so we had time to go eat dinner at a classy restaurant: Pizza Hut. That probably sounded like sarcasm for all, those people reading back in America, but here in China the Pizza Hut chain actually has a very Ruby Tuesday’s air to it. That’s right, it was Ruby Tuesdays good. Anyways the food was delicious. It makes me miss American food. After the delicious dinner we found our seats and also found out that the audience was mostly foreigners. This was good because it meant the dialogue was in English as well as Chinese. Right after we sat down the lights went down and the show began.
It was awesome. They had multi-colored lights, a fog machine, complicated sets, and oh yah, like twenty-five kung fu actors! It was a great performance. It revolved around the story of a warrior monk named Chun Yi, following his progression from novice child to full fledged master. The play itself was a frame story, as an elder monk was telling the story to a new inductee. Throughout the play we got to see examples of different styles of kung fu, like mantis kung fu and leopard kung fu, as well as kung fu ‘tricks’. One such trick was Chun Yi laying atop three swords with a bed of nails pushing down on him while another monk layed on top of the nails. And then the really impressive part happened, when a third monk placed a huge slab of stone on the second monk, waited a few seconds, and then used a sledgehammer to break the stone. Chun Yi did not have a scratch on him. Ridiculous. To sum up then, the Kung Fu performance was great.
That’s about all that happened on Thursday, though I do want to mention one thing from Wednesday. Coleman and Janet are rather religious, and on Wednesday night they brought me along to their bible study group. It was quite an experience, attending for the first time a bible study and to have it all be in Chinese. Apparently being Jewish is quite exotic here, and so that was pretty funny. Suffice to say I did not exactly follow all that was said, but it was great being able to meet some of the other people in their congregation and seeing the apartment where their church was located. That’s about it – I am having a great time here in China and I look forward to writing again soon - Ben Goldhaber