Today I went to the circus with Michael. It wasn’t all that great, but it was interesting to see how different it was from America. First off, a lot of the performers were VERY young kids. Many were 7 or 8 years old, and were doing 4 shows a day. There were far more people than the tent could hold and the ushers just handed out folding chairs so that people could sit in the isles. The circus was very low-tech. When there were people on ropes, you could see the group of 5 guys on the ground holding the rope. People were taking pictures with flashes all the time (I am starting to realize that in China you can take pictures of whatever you want whenever you want). My favorite act was one in which a group of girls had chains with flaming balls at the end that they twirled around and tossed into the air. It looked really cool and was something I hadn’t ever seen before.

For dinner, I went to Wu-jie’s house to eat hot pot. Hot pot basically means a pot of boiling hot water into which you add meats, vegetables, etc. that all cook together. You then pick out what you want to eat, dunk it in a bowl of peanut sauce, and eat away. Well…..Wu-jie had a TON of stuff to put in it. Every kind of meat you could imagine, fish, octopus, shrimp, noodles, and about 40 different kinds of vegetables. Everyone was very friendly and kept putting things on my plate for me to try. Unfortunately I just do not eat as much as Chinese people and didn’t come close to finishing what they gave me. I ate about 1/10th as much as Wu-Jie’s husband. Another strange thing was how different their manners are. Everyone kept slurping and burping. If you behaved that way in the states, you would be considered a rude pig.

After dinner, Henry wanted to show me this video on his computer of Yao-Ming. It was about when Yao-Ming first came to America. The movie had a lot of clips of Yao-Ming speaking in Chinese and then his translator putting what he said into English. I was able to understand a few of Yao-Ming’s Chinese words correctly which made me feel AWESOME!