Street of fun!

So! I is back from annnnnn authentic Chinese bar! I is going to type about today now so that I dn't forget it all with the excess of cheap, swedish beer I was forced to consume. ^^

So! Today Emma and Sally took me to the 故文化街, very old culture street, very famous, very full of expensive/touristy shops - twas tres pretty, those two kept making me take photos of things, what's worse is that they made me stand in them *shudders* Chinese people have a horrible habit of taking photos from low down as well, in order to fit the background in. A good idea for the background, a bad idea for the people- Emos learnt this long ago on myspace, you either take a photo from above or straight on, underneath = NONONNONONONO! Hence none of the photos of me are making it on to the internet Identity protection and all. yeah.
First shop we went in to was a music shop, traditional instruments like erhu 二胡 and pipa 琵琶, twas choc-a-bloc full of these things. There was a man testing out a slightly round pipa, he played a little (it sounded quite nice) then his friend said something (not a clue what) and Emma told me they were going to sing for me o_O; It was very nice of them, but one guy played the erhu (which was slightly out of tune) and the song the other guy chose to sing was a Beijing Opera type song If you've heard Beijing Opera you'll understand, very loud, very screechy, very harsh - a guy with a broken instrument and another 50 years old performing this was an interesting experience to say the least. I a have a video of it, which I'll try to upload *incompetent*

We also spent a good while trying the foods along the street *photos abound* one woman sold a white flour-type thing, whcih she put in to a bowl and heated it, then she got it out and covered it with various fruity goos ^^ Actually very tasty, then Sally took a bite out of the plate and I had a fit - turns out the plate was sugar paper though, so that's ok

We also went round a temple - there was a man outside begging for money, but he didn't seem to have the mental capacity to beg, he just held his twisted limbs out whenever someone walked past, the rest of the time he spent swaying back and forth China really sucks for this, health care isn't free so if you don't have the cash they don't treat you, this means there are an awful lot of people begging in subway tunnels and under bridges with the worst burn scars imaginable and missing limbs However, the general lack of sympathy everyone shows towards them makes me think that maybe they do this to themselves to swindle money out of others (medieval style), but then again, the burns tend to be on their faces, and by burn scars I mean a mass of scar tissue completely covering the face... so I'll put forward the suggestion that people here are really mean and jsut don't care

The temple was really pretty, there were huts at the sides of the two courtyards, each one housed several deities. I had no idea whether this was a Buddhist, Daoist or Confucian temple, but whichever religion it might have been built by, it's been completely over-run by the Chinese practice of ancestor-worship - nearly every single figure was historical, a person famed for their genorosity, skill in battle or skill with medicine. Emma gave me some incense to "pray" with, but her literal words were "Ok, take this, make a wish" The concept of having something to wish to isn't alien to me (most westerners wish on stars, anyway) but it was the fact that the things I was supposed to wish to were housed in a temple, it made it slightly strange. The 4 dragon kings of the sea 龙王 were there, they were definitely gods, and I felt really bad "wishing" to them, but to Emma the idea of asking a god to give you what you want in return for nothing seemed normal - one hut had some statues of people that we didn't recognise (Emma and Sally included) but they prayed to them anyway. They found it strange when I said I didn't want to pray to someone I didn't know. It probably sounds picky to them, but I don't like praying to something when it could represent absolutely ANYTHING *spazms*

Eventually, Emma's feet gave in because of the ginormous high-heels she was wearing and teh heat started to kill us, so we headed for the car. The original plan was to jsut drop me off, but they decided to take me to pizza hut, which I was grateful for, but after the heat I just wanted to go to my room and collapse~
Apparently in China guests aren't allowed to roder for themselves either - they asked me whether I'd prefer pizza or salad, I said pizza, after that it was a case of they chose... but they didn't choose a pizza each, we all shared, so we all shared a pizza roughly 5 inches across *sobs* So hungry, so hungry *flail* It was ok though! I'd bought some mahua 麻花 in the culture street so I had 4, doughnut-y/biscuit-y things to fill me up until tea~

When we got out of pizza hut there were horribly loud bangs going off I'd heard loud bangs before on the building site, but normally they numbered one or two -> these were continuous, they kept going off, a child was screaming and it's dad was trying to cover its ears, all the people in the street were moving to the sides, covering their ears and many were going in to shops. There was brown paper falling from the sky and I was thinking a bomb had been set off >_< I asked Sally; What the hell??? and she said: When the bride reaches the hotel, they set these off.... O____O WTF?? Firecrackers that force people in to neighbouring buildings for cover are a little excessive (to say the least). If the emperor had arrived and was attempting to strike the fear of hell itself in to his subjects, I could understand, but on an alleged happy day, when everyone is supposed to be celebrating for you, is that a good time to piss everyone off?? Oh well, my one happy thought is that there was a life-size photo of the bride and groom in the hotel a few days ago. HAHAHHHHAHAHHAHHA. This makes me joyful XXD