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p.s. Obviously backdated so it appears to have been published on a Sunday. These pictures were taken a week before but I have been to lazy busy to do anything about them.
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Sundays in My City – From Dives to Skyscrapers
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Tag Archives: tourist trap
Sundays in My City
I am in downtown Chicago with the kids this weekend. NO laptop. I have aniPhone with no SIM. But it has a camera: look out, world!!!
I am sitting in the hotel lobby using the free Wi-Fi, trying to blog via my iPhod thingy. Ok. Seriously? How the fuck does anybody type on this thing?!?! So far I have accidentally published this post twice. Ugh. FWIW, Here it goes…
Speaking of tourist trap, how about let’s just forgo all pretenses, and admit that this is all for commercialism
and souvenir shopping is the main reason why you are all here?
The exhibit of the Emperor Sedan is now directly inside this souvenir shop. Pay and you get to have a picture taken with it, up close and personal. Pay more you get to move to the left side, where you can dress up and the Emperor and the Empress and have your picture taken on a replica throne.
The Legend of Kung Fu: cheesy, cliché yet awesome. Like all best scenes from all kung fu movies condensed into 1.5 hours awesomeness
It is 1.5 hour of sheer awesomeness if you love this kind of stuff. To say the least, these folks have a lot of years of training and practice under their belt.
AND, the narration (there is a storyline) is done in ENGLISH. Yes, English, with Chinese captions. At first, the abrupt switch to English gave me pause about the tourist-trap nature of the show, but the excellent combination of acrobatics, ballet, and various styles of Chinese kung fu (really) and martial arts won me over. Although they could have done without the red lanterns in the theatre, I am definitely a fan.
If you are in Beijing, and you don’t mind some Las Vegas show biz, esp. if you are traveling with boys (and men who are boys at heart), then you have to check this show out. The Red Theatre where this show is on every day of the week is in the same area of the Temple of Heaven, so plan your day accordingly.
This picture was taken during curtain call.
since we were rule-abiding people and did not take pictures when the show was on.