Dumplings: Fish, Rice Noodles, Walnut, Sweet Potato, Mushroom

There are pics today. Tomorrow we go to Lhasha, Tibet for 4 days, followed by 3 days on a river boat. I don’t know how good the Internet service will be. Be patient, I’ll post when I can.

Last night’s dinner was a lot of fun. We ate 16 different dumplings. Each was shaped to represent the filling. The pictures for some of the better dumplings didn’t turn out, but these will show the idea. We had 3 tables with 8 people at each table. None of the tables ate all their dumplings.

Masked Warrior Dance

The music afterwards was quite entertaining. Tang Chinese tunes played by Tang instruments were accompanied by pretty dancing girls. I’m a sucker for pretty dancing girls — especially the ribbon dance. I tried taking pics, but the camera couldn’t handle the lighting. This one came out the best. And, of course, the opening and closing numbers included those fabulous big Chinese drums.

Bike

The next morning Danita stayed in the hotel. I and many of the other tourers went to the city wall. Chinese walls are much more impressive than Western walls. The wall is 14 KM long (8 miles). The top of the wall is 45 feet wide. Some of us rented bikes and a few of us rode all the way around the wall. Chris was anxious to finish within our allotted 45 minutes and set a brisk pace. I decided to ride with him. It was a little faster than I would normally ride. We could only ride this fast because it was before 9 AM and the tourists hadn’t shown up yet. It’s the most fun I’ve had in China so far.

Biggest Drum

Drum Show

We were all done at the center city by 10. We joined everybody up and went to the Drum Tower. The Drum Tower and Bell Tower were used for time keeping. There’s still plenty of big drums at the drum tower. If an adult American starts drumming one of these with their hands, it will make a most pleasing drumming sound. Before long, a safety officer (kind of a sub-police person) will come see who’s playing with the drums. When he sees who it is, he will shake his head and go back to whatever he was doing. (I wasn’t the only one to disturb a safety officer’s harmony.) While we were there, we watched a very cool drum demonstration. Nobody does drums like the Chinese do drums.

Muslem Shopping District

We still had time before lunch to visot the Muslim shopping area. Since it was a sunny day, pleasantly warm; and a holiday weekend to boot; it was mobbed. We were offered the opportunity to walk part of the 1.5 KM long shopping area. Danita and I walked one block and that was enough for us. We were feeling all toured out, so we both skipped a visit to the folk art museum. (It sounded a lot like Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum.)

Bell Tower