(Part one and two were written together, but are too long to post together. Here is the link for part one.)
Back to my busy and fruitful days. After the caves, a few of my friends and I took advantage of the opportunity to see a Chinese acrobatic show. The story was very interesting, and very Chinese:
A woman is sought out by the Fire Devil, but a shepherd comes and saves her by hiding her in a basket. They end up falling in love and have a daughter named “Deer Girl.” They are very happy together, until the Fire Devil comes back and kills the mother in an intense battle. The Deer Girl is then determined to avenge her mother, but meanwhile her father and grandma pass away from either grief or bad food…(I honestly couldn’t tell). The Deer Girl hears about a special potion that will vanquish the Fire Devil, so she and her best friend travel to a rich emperor’s palace to find it. He gives it to them and they go to the Fire Devil, but he takes the potion away from them and kills her best friend. You find out that the best friend was able to get the potion back though, and she gives it to the Deer Girl before dying. The Deer Girl grieves yet again, but finally vanquishes the Fire Devil and brings happiness to the land.
I like this story because the heroine is a young girl, so I see Deer Girl as kind of a Chinese Buffy (except a Fire Devil in place of vampires). The acrobatics were very good, and I was able to capture a few pictures. The Chinese audience liked to lean forward in their seats, talk during the show, and stand up to take pictures in front of you—definitely a very different experience from a Western audience.
Today we woke up early, ate a Western style breakfast (except I made a bee-line for the 饺子aka dumplings) at a hotel shaped like a castle. Then we rode the bus for five hours through the Gobi Desert—which was bright and desolate, just like a desert should be. I used my first squat toilet in a small town bathroom, and commented with some other girls that we will “never take Western toilets for granted again”. On the bus, I got to lie down on the seat and listen to my iPhone music—a lot of Coldplay and the Twilight New Moon soundtrack music (save the judgment, the Twilight movies actually have fantastic soundtracks).
We made it to the hotel in Jiayuguan, quickly ate lunch at a small market, and then hurried back to the hotel to take the bus to the Great Wall Fort in Jiayuguan. That took up most of the afternoon, we came back, and my friends and I grabbed food from a Chinese bakery and ate it at a large plaza opposite from the hotel. Lots of people were milling about, some brought their puppies to play, and bright lights were flashing on signs and hung up on trees. A large water show timed to music played in one section of the plaza. We slowly ate our baked goods, which were extremely cheap and extremely delicious. The evening weather was fantastic—a perfect and relaxing end to a busy day.
Tomorrow brings a seven hour-long train ride, so I definitely feel like I’m at a meal and stuffing myself full of Chinese culture and geography. Somehow I still have energy, so apparently I’m still on the appetizer portion of this immense trip. See you at Day Four!
