Beijing Night Show

Photo Credit: Charlie Reece

Here's the basic format of the conference: The shuttle leaves from my
hotel for Peking University at 8 am. I spend the next 9 or 10 hours
listening to powerpoint talks, with an hour lunch break somewhere in
there. Then there's usually some sort of Evening Thing planned,
either by the conference organizing committee or by small groups of
us. It sounds stupid when I say it, but it's hard work to sit and
listen to this stuff for 10 hours a day, and I'm usually ready for bed
by 9 or 10.

Last night they put us on a bus a little early and shipped us off to
the Beijing Night Show. How can I possibly explain the Beijing Night
Show. It was a tourist-oriented exposition of Chinese culture and
history, but it was also dance-themed dinner theater. Mainly it was
people in fancy costumes doing traditionally-influenced modern
interpretive-style dance to incredibly loud modern music, but with
some acrobatics and kung fu thrown into the mix - a sort of
spectacular (in the literal sense) combination of Cirque du Soleil and
Disney World's Frontierland Review show. If it had been described to
me ahead of time I would've probably been pretty dismissive, but I
acutally had a great time.

Ok, so now I've got to sit and listen some more.