老舍茶馆
星期三, 十一月 16, 2005
The entrance to Lao She Teahouse
A few pictures from last week's class trip to 老舍茶馆 Lao She Teahouse. This place is a replica of a classic teahouse where people can watch performances of various traditional Chinese arts. We saw acrobatics and contortion, Chinese Opera (an scene about the Monkey King stealing peaches), ventriloquism, and - this was my favourite - sound imitations! These two guys came in and did the most amazing imitations of birds tweeting, dogs barking (big and small), pigs snorting,) horses galloping (differentiating between racetrack horses and wild horses, and even a train chugging along and arriving at a station (北京站!).
Unfortunately, my camera battery died soon after we arrived at the Teahouse so there aren't photos of the performance - or the traditional Qing Dynasty style 小吃 snacks we ate. There were little cookies and pastries, and plates of 瓜子 guazi - dried melon seeds, which you eat by cracking the shell to extract the sliver of nut inside (don't eat the shell!). I also finally tried 冰糖葫芦 bingtang hulu, which are a kebab of tiny candied fruit. Hawthorn is traditional, but street stalls sell bingtanghulu of candied kiwi, strawberries, clementines, even entire bananas.
And all this was washed down with copious amounts of tea.
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