::A Geek in Korea::

As the group got back to the hotel after the opera, we had a discussion with some of the other people on the tour. We decided that since we had been taken to so many crappy places in the day, we needed to go out to see something for ourselves. We grabbed a few of the revolutionary conspirators and headed out of the hotel to see the nearby Beijing train station.

I brought my GPS along, just in case, but the Beijing train station was one of those "can’t miss" sorts of buildings. It’s easily four or five times larger than any train station I’ve ever been in, and Seoul Station and some of the European train stations I’ve visited weren’t exactly small either. This thing dwarfed everything short of airport hangers in terms of scale. It was absolutely enormous.

We didn’t exactly know the protocol. They scanned luggage as you walked in the building, but we passed through security by simply waving our hands in a "I don’t know" gesture. They didn’t demand to see our tickets, since we had none, and we walked around. We went to "Store number 8" which had exactly the same things for sale as all the other stores in the building, but was located at the end of the hallway we eventually walked down. Seeing as our options didn’t change the more we explored, we went inside.

The people we were with looked into buying Chinese jelly candy, while I walked around. I did however find some things picture worthy:

 

Who in their right mind would buy that candy? Anyway, we eventually got the transaction completed despite a lot of communication problems on both sides. The Korean people my wife and I had went with didn’t know if they were buying candy or soap, which turned into a hilarious set of pantomimes that baffled the cashier. The cashiers were under the impression that  by speaking louder, Chinese was easier to understand.  My wife would also try to clarify things in English, which they also didn’t understand. They would just speak louder in response to anything we did. It was hilarious and frustrating at the same time.

The people waiting at the train station had brought blankets and were sleeping on the floor. A policeman with a golf cart would roll around, almost drive over them, then stop and pull out a bullhorn. He’d yell at them, then get out, make threatening gestures, and reach for something on his belt clip that looked like a night stick. The people would get up long enough for him to drive off, then set their stuff down, go back to sleep, and he would move on the next set of people, threaten to beat them…etc. People did eventually move out of the area as we walked through it. They were sizing up the people I was with like fresh meat, so we decided we had enough adventure for the night and headed back to the hotel.

Of all the things I had heard about on my trip’s itinerary, the "Chinese Opera" was my least favorite. I have some sort of mental breakdown when exposed to Chinese music. I’m not talking about nice instrumental music, but specifically anything involving Chinese music with vocal elements. I simply react with a flight reflex, as if my ears were going to start bleeding at any moment. It’s just not something I want to be around.

After the bus ride of terror, I had no choice but to go see the "Chinese Opera". This show was to take place at the same theater we had seen the acrobat show the previous day. We were ushered into a smaller room on the second floor, and we had to grab seats where ever there was room. One side of the room had a scrolling LED sign with a brief synopsis of what was going to occur in English. The other side of the room had a sign in Chinese. My tour was Korean, yet I was the only person that knew what was happening. Brilliant.

We sat for a while, but eventually a pudgy Chinese man dressed like a flamboyant Chef Boyardee impersonator came into the room and started screaming Chinese. I knew from the synopsis, this guy was supposed to be visiting someone at an inn. Another person arrives, and the two start dancing around in a sort of "Kung-fu" show. The idea was that the lights of the inn were out, and the two were fighting blind in the dark, yet we could see what was happening. They were supposed to be feeling their way around the stage, listening and swinging their swords trying to hit each other without seeing each other.

Except, they COULD see each other, and we could see them. It was like trying to watch two extremely near-sighted people fight. It was a little comical, as they would sit on a table and move just as the other person reached for them. The timing of some of the prop "sword" battles meant they were swinging at each other without hitting one another, which took skill. This was a mostly non-verbal performance, thankfully, so we could be spared the problem of listening to the actors speak Chinese. When it was over, people clapped politely.

The next "show" was another thing entirely. This act was a god blessing Earth by singing a song that caused a rain of "flowers". This had the joy of both interpretive dance and full on Chinese singing. The woman came out wearing a traditional Chinese robe with really long sleeves. She would dance around, singing at the top of her lungs, and then twirl the sleeves as she sang about virtues or something. The music was provided by a group of musicians that sat in the first row of the theater and played Chinese instruments way too loud. The music itself was like rubbing a cat on a washing board, but it also was as loud as possible in the tiny room. People were covering their ears because of the music, and I actually took out my ear plugs to keep myself from having a headache. It was beyond awful.

I have a tremendously high tolerance for "absolute complete bullshit", but the Chinese Opera at that point went far, far, FAR beyond anything I was willing to try to understand. At one point, I started to write down a transcript of the song she was singing. This is an approximation of what I sat and listened to for 10 minutes:

"AH-AHHHHHHHHHHH-WEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-WEEEEEEEEEEEE OHHHHHHHHHHHHH-OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, OHHHHHH-AH-WEEEEEE-AH-WE, SAAAAAAAAAA RAAAAAAAAAAA NAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, OHHHHHHHHHHH! OHHHHHHHHH! SHI-NAAAAAAAAA!"

It went on like this, over and over, and at one point, I think she sang the A-B-Cs, except something more like "AHHHHHH BAAAAAAAAHHH CAHHHHHH!" for a little while. It was, by far, the worst thing I have ever been physically present to witness, and I’ve been to middle school dances in the 90’s during the popularity of Vanilla Ice. Consider that for a moment.

This singer is responsible for the torture of hundreds of tourists. I don’t normally walk out on people trying to entertain me, but even people that had traveled to China specifically to see the opera as a highlight of their trip walked out. That’s got to be harsh. The third show, which I didn’t stick around to see for sanity reasons, was a "Monkey King" messes with people show. It was supposed to be action packed, but at that point my brain was a puddle of mush and I couldn’t do anything but crawl out the door to the relative sanity of the theater outside. 90% of the tour was already waiting for me, as they didn’t have the benefit of ear plugs and probably were in more pain than I was.

All good will about the trip’s planning for the day had dissolved. The people that had wanted to go to the opera were curled in a fetal position covering their ears when we got back to the bus saying, "We really regret what we did. Sorry." The tour guide even said, "That show wasn’t very good, I’ll sing something else for you to cheer everyone up." We just wanted to be left alone for our ear drums to recover.