Yesterday we went to ancient culture street - much like Faneuil Hall in Boston. Lot's of street vendors and little shops selling all kinds of traditional chinese things like scroll paper and brushes, tea kettles, toys and jade carvings. Yesterday was the Lantern festival, the last day of the two week new year celebration so we got lucky and had a chance to see a parade while down at culture street. On top of that I really got a chance to experience some interactions with local folks. I made my way to the front of the crowd to take pictures of the parade and when some chinese folks saw that I wasn't really able to see, they made people move so I could get up to the front. Then one guy in particular basically cleared a path for me and made me walk THROUGH the parade and up to the front. I ended up getting swept away among the crowd and lost the rest of the group for about an hour. It was really neat to be in the square in the middle of all that. There were other press photographers there to cover the event and I don't really know if people thought I was also press, but they kept looking at me and were very happy and willing to have their pictures taken.
People here are quite fascinated by us and are very friendly towards us. They rattle off all kinds of things in chinese as if we understood the language and when we look at them with blank stares not understanding a word, they just keep talking and maybe point and signal. It's been quite an experience making ourselves understood. We've been to the grocery store a few times and somehow or other we make it through all these adventures without a word of english. I've been trying to work on my chinese but truthfully it's been hard. This morning Wendy our guide helped me with some pronunciations so maybe I will attempt a few sentences this afternoon. I'll let you know how that goes later.
2 comments:
Anamaria,
Sounds exciting, but were you ever a little frightened to lose the group for an hour? Guess ya'll probably have a designated place to meet if you get lost. Sounds like ya'll are being treated like royalty.
Thanks for the post
Greg and Minette
Ana, thanks for the fun post! Somehow I'm not surprised you got swept away from the group :) Ana Sophia loved to hear about the Lantern festival. She had just learned all about Chinese New Year in school last week, and what a treat it's been for her to see all the pictures about China. Even the three red "wedding" cars caught her eye, and she said "oh yes, I know, it's because red is the color of celebration in China".
Hello to everyone!
-Sylvia
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