My class at the Loashe Tea House
I’ll start this post off by telling you about one of my favorite dishes here in China. Its called “Dao Shao Mian.” The translation is roughly hand-cut noodles. The chef takes a knife and shaves off noodles from a big block into a boiling broth. Add a little fatty pork, some veggies and voila! “Dao Shao Mian.” Check out the video I uploaded to see the action in progress.
After lunch, my entire program took a mini field-trip to a famous tea house near Tiananmen Square. Its a place where you can drink delicious 花茶 (hua cha) Jasmine Tea, eat some traditional Beijing snacks and watch an array of performances. Its actually a pretty famous place. The walls are covered with pictures of heads of state that have visited the tea house. My two favorites were former President Bush Sr. and Henry Kissinger. The only downside was that it was relatively expensive. We sat in the very back and it still cost 60 RMB. The front tables can cost up to 150 RMB.
The performances:
- A puppet show roughly telling the story of Journey to the West.
- Traditional Chinese song (both traditional singing and instruments)
- A magic show
- An acrobatics show where the performer did some amazing balancing acts with a clay pot
- Sound imitation, sound imitation has been used in China since the warring period. These two performers could imitate everything from a bird singing to a large army preparing for battle.
- Sichuan Opera performance where the elegantly dressed performer could instantly change the mask he was wearing.
However, that wasn’t an immediate option. There were about10,000 people being held back by police from entering through where we wanted to exit. Eventually, the crowd broke though and put about a 10 minute delay in our departure. Check out the video I uploaded to see the massive amount of people.
