Drama Salon

Megan and I were invited to an event on Saturday night called "Drama Salon" put on by the Foreign Languages Club at the university. While there was a distinct absence of hair cutting or styling of any kind, the event turned out to be a good time. A few groups of students put on some skits in English and Japanese, but the show could be more accurately described as a multi-lingual talent/variety/game show.

The Salon was held in a large classroom with a bit of a stage at the front, and when we arrived we found that a few seats in the front row had been saved for us. As always Megan and I, along with a Japanese professor, were the guests of honor. On this occasion, that meant that on the desk in front of our seats sat a banana, 2 oranges, a pile of sunflower seeds, a few candies and a bottle of water. Megan and I are happily growing accustomed to this this kind of hospitality everywhere we go now.

Our seats stocked with sunflower seeds and fruit!

Waiting for the show to start.

The show started with one of the emcees of the event crooning a popular Chinese ballad. The guy was an absolute lady killer. His voice was good and he had the moves to pull it off, complete with the mic cocked vertically and the classic "eyes-closed-arm-outstretched" move that R&B singers have been perfecting for decades. Years of karaoke have clearly paid off for this gentleman. There were several more songs performed throughout the drama salon and none lived up to this first song.

The star singer. This photo does not do him justice.

Two other singers who were not quite as charismatic as the first singer.

After the opening song there was a performance of a famous Japanese folk story that I'm pretty sure I read in Japanese class in college. I didn't understand it then and I didn't understand it now, but it involved a girl who has a horrible deformity on her face, which was displayed in the skit by sticking a ping pong ball to a girls face.

The girl with the ping pong ball on her face.

The Japanese skit was followed by an English skit about a guy and girl who lament to their friends that they need a significant other. Coincidentally, one of the guy's friends is the brother of one of the girl's friends, and the siblings decide to set the lonely pair up on a blind date. When the time for the date comes the boy introduces himself to the girl and declares her the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. Unfortunately, the girl was revolted by the boy and ran out on the date. The moral of the story, as recited by the entire cast at the end of the skit, was "Love should be expected, not made."

Next came the game show portion of the evening, in which volunteers from the crowd were made to play musical chairs on the stage. If a contestant was eliminated, they had to perform some sort of punishment in front of the crowd. The punishments included popping a balloon between the back of another person, making the noise of 5 different animals, or singing a song in front of the group. The winner of the game, who was quite a ham, decided he wanted to sing in front of the group as well, even though he didn't have to. He wasn't a great singer, but his song was redeemed when about 1/3 of the way through two of the hosts and the runner-up decided the urge to sing was too strong and joined the winner on stage for a spontaneous quartet. It was awesome.

Musical chairs!

One of the punishments. They're popping a balloon between them.

The spontaneous quartet. The winner of musical chairs is far right, and very into the song.

There were a few more skits and songs, but those were definitely the highlights of the night. We hope to be invited to more similar events in the future.

Hoops

I've found that if I only play basketball when I am invited, I will still play at least 3 times a week. After perhaps only ping pong, basketball is the most popular sport in China. Based on the huge number of hoops on our campus that are almost always filled with students playing, I would say that that is true. So naturally my students frequently ask me to play with them and typically I accept.

I must admit that I do not have as much fun playing basketball here as I do in the US. The main reason for this is the considerably low level of competition , which results from that fact that none of the students have ever been formally coached. Instead, the students try to imitate their favorite NBA players' moves, resulting in varying levels of hilarity. Also, no one ever tries to shoot from outside the key. Generally, there are just 10 people standing in the key at one time, and no one has any space to do much of anything. Adding to the lack of space is that everyone just plays half court games. A few weeks ago I played a 6 on 6 game, half court.

Due to my height, I basically just stand under the hoop, collect missed shots, and make layups. This is a pretty boring way to play, so I try to play like Chris Webber in his heyday with the Sacramento Kings. I stand at the high post, get the ball, hold it as high as I can, and make passes to cutting teammates.

One of the most disappointing things about playing basketball here is that people rarely keep score. They just play until they don't feel like playing anymore. Today the students I played with actually kept score, and I enjoyed the game a ton more. Players were more competitive, especially when it got close to game point. Maybe it is just my capitalistic American nature, but I think sports are way more fun when you're actually, you know, competing. 

Here they are asking me if "Rebound" is a verb or a noun.

English Corner

Last Wednesday a few of my students invited me to attend their English Corner on Friday afternoon at 4PM.   I of course accepted without hesitation because I have started to realize that every event Jordan and I are invited to seem to end up being pretty entertaining.  

Jordan and  I both finish classes on Friday afternoons at 4, so our usual Friday afternoon routine is to take a bus into the city after class, buy some movies, get Pizza Hut, go home, binge.  Last Friday we decided to postpone our ritual and I forced Jordan to come with me to this English Corner.  There were two classrooms packed with English students, and Jordan and I both entered a room full of cheering undergrads (which is basically what we have come to expect upon entering a room, so everyone prepare yourself to treat us with that kind of respect when we get home).  The students had already arranged the desks into groups of about ten, so Jordan and I were both ushered to different groups.  On the board, the students leading the English Corner had already written our discussion questions:

1. What is your opinion on the clone?

2. Where do you think the women should stay?  At the home or at the company?

3. What do you think about the gays' marriage?

Let me tell you, it was an interesting 2 hours.  I tried to correct any grammatical errors I saw in the questions, but mainly I was just interested to hear what they thought about these topics since I doubt they have many opportunities to speak freely on such "taboo" topics here.  We basically touched on each question and then started talking about life in America.  How do Americans feel about the clone?  Jordan was apparently asked if he "was a gay marriage" (I guess they didn't realize that we were married, or perhaps they still were struggling with what exactly it meant to be gay).

I saw a bunch of my students and I was impressed with how dedicated they are to their studies.  If only I had made an effort to start some sort of Chinese Corner at CU, and then actually attend it on Friday afternoon!

We have already been invited back to English Corner this Friday afternoon, and we're looking forward to seeing what questions they'll have this time.