The hotel where I stayed in last night didnt have any English speaking staff, so I had to call my friend S' to act as interpretter and through a combination of her and another guest I managed to check out on time, and catch a bus where my S' was waiting for me. When I say catch a bus, I mean that I stood by the road side along with a few of the other locals and waited for a bus to pull up along side, not that there was any signs or postings that this was a bus stop, and it was only the other friendly guest who told me exactly where to wait that prevented me wandering on for ages, getting lost looking for the signs or arrows that just were not there.
For the longest time I was wondering on the logic of catching a bus from nowhere to a stop that I didnt have a clue where it was instead of grabbing a bus back to the airport and taking a organised shuttle to the city centre, but when I saw my friend out of the window waiting for me and realised that I had just saved myself about an hour and 50 RMB or more I had no complaints.
S' saw me almost as before I saw her, but then me being the only westerner on the bus with a huge rucksack on my back I was hard to miss, and together we jumped in a taxi and took us to a hotel that one of her good friends suggested. I normally would welcome such news, but the price was quite high, it was in the middle of nowhere central and none of the staff spoke English here either, so once she left me I would be at the mercy of struggling to get them to understand me.
My room had the largest bed I have ever seen, it could have fitted a fivesome with ease, and the bathroom and facilities were spacious and comfortable, so I knew that it was not a bad hotel, just not really geared up for tourists as it had no tour desk and no maps, etc.
After checking in, I handed over my dirty laundry and then we were ready to head off into the City and see what fun we could get up to. The first stop was a bite to eat, before we then headed ff to Yuyuan gardens, a place of peaceful beauty where there were decorative rockeries and temples hidden away inside an area overrun with restaurants and street hawkers.
Wandering around this fakers paradice I saw plenty of buildings that looked great on the outside, bullied past so many jewellery and wallet hawkers that I began to spot them before they even knew I was there and saw an advert for a Kung Fu Shaloin performance, that sadly finished a few months back ( not that the poster gave you that information of course ).
After we finally found the island within the city we whiled away a very pleasant and relaxing hour taking photos and enjoying the fact that the high walls and trees managed to block out most of the sounds of the hectic traffic outside and gave us a chance to hear ourselves think.
Our next stop was to buy tickets for tonights Acrobatics performance at 200 RMB each, almost half the cost of getting my laundry done, go figure, and then for a nice walk around where she used to work. The weather here was mild but warm and sadly all the trees that lined up both sides of the avenues were naked on their leaves, so we took turns pretending to be trees and took photos of each other before we then ent for Pizza and endles coke.
There were cheaper tickets but I wanted good tickets up near the front and chose some two fairly central tickets only 4 rows from the front. As the lights went up I took a look around and noticed that for once, the tourists heavily outnumbered the locals and this bears out that such shows rely on tourists for much of their revenue.
The acrobatics performance started at 7:30 and was amazing from start to finish. Tumblers, balancers, jugglers, ribbon fliers were in equal measure but what took most peoples breath away was the girl who could balance 6 trays of glasses while rotating and rolling around on a raised platform without spilling a drop.
Towards the end of the show a knife thrower came up and asked for a volunteer from the audience, and it must have been the cheaky way that I pointed to S' moments earlier but instead the spotlight settled on me and I got a big hand for going up on stage. I have seen plenty of magic shows live and on tv to get a good idea that they wouldnt actually through them at me, but then this is China with my life and health on the line all bets were off.
I wondered wheather to ham up my performance a bit, but then when they came and strapped my arms to the sides and threw a jacket over my face I felt that apart from wobbling my knees there was very little I could do except stand still and not seem too confident. The knife thrower spoke fairly good English, and whispered instructions to me about remaining calm and was I ok, to which I just tried to nod and smile with a mix of fear and confidence in the same act.
In total I had 5 knives 'thrown' at me, including bursting the balloon held between my legs, I was released and got a big hand from the crowd, and a wonderful ornate fan as a reward for my bravery, which was perfect as I used to collect fans and only stopped as I found them hard to find in Eastern Europe and South America.
After the show was finished I picked up a genuine dvd of one of their performances and got it signed by one of the stars of the show, before I had to say goodnight to S' and took a taxi back to my hotel.
I was expecting that to be the end of my night, but my other friend in Shanghai, X' texted me soon after and said that she wanted to meet me and that was it too late or not if she and her friend popped over. Although I was feeling a bit sleepy and had not got much sleep, but still it was only 9pm, so I said it was fine for them to come over and for us all to meet up for a few quick drinks.
X' and her friend came over and together we all went to a nearby leisure complex almost on top of my hotel and here we listened to some good classic brit rock and metal and i head banged and sung away while they looked on and laughed at the crazy englishman.
I wanted to play them at pool but some other locals had already grabbed it and painfully took turns trying in vein to teach their female friend how to pot a ball. After almost two hours of them carefully positioning the balls over pockets they still had not finished a single game, if game it in fact was, and as I had foolishly been watching this I had by them time given up with will to live and exhaustion overtook me.
Just before midnight I wilted totally and although X' and her friend were up for more fun and drinks I personally couldn't keep my eyes open any longer so had no choice but to end it here and drag myself up to my room where I was asleep in seconds.
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