Summer Vacation Day 29: Pictures of the House and a Beijing Opera

Hello, Tim!

Today, I spent most of the afternoon in our new house, and I got some pictures!!!

7/27, Friday

Today is Friday, and it means today’s test would be English mock tests, and since I have already finished it a few days ago when Ms. Lin handed them out (oh, by the way, Ms. Lin went to some choir contests, I think, so she had been absent these two days).

Remember my mentioning that Allison lives right in the next alley? Well, today, I asked her if she was heading home immediately after school, she said that she was planning to finish the mock test at home, which means I got the chance to go home with her, just to see how and which bus I am to take to go home. There are two ways to get home by bus, Allison said, one needs changing buses, but it takes us right over to the bus stop just downstairs to my house; taking another bus, you can go all the way to a small plaza that is about less than one kilometer to my house. With such a hot day, we naturally chose the first route.

After getting off the bus, I recommended that we have lunch first, we came across a newly opened Japanese rice ball restaurant, petite but looking nice. We went in there and we were greeted by a small space packed with people. There was a range of flavors to choose from, and I ended up getting two from the menu, and Allison one. It was served beautifully with the seaweed lying flat on the wooden plate. The serving of the white rice was more than enough, and the rice is adequately seasoned with salt, and I believe I’d be going over for more. What I was thinking at the moment was whether this rice ball restaurant is open in the early morning and if I could one day get very nice rice ball breakfast to school.

Delicious. :P

After lunch, I accompanied Allison back to her place, which along the way the casual chatting constantly present. After arriving at her house (the map is in the previous post), I said goodbye to her, and activated the stopwatch function in my cell phone, and paced slowly back to my house. In a totally slow and lazy walking speed, in only need two and a half minutes to walk from her house to mine! Just see how close that it!

I fumbled with the keys I was given with for a whole and finally stepping into the house, alone.

The floor was still messy like it was several days ago. The reason I had to be at my place, by the way, is that there would be workers coming over today to first leave the plastic planks at our house first. The planks with a woody pattern, as I mentioned before, was to be laid across the floor next Monday. I had to help open the door for the worker, so that was the reason I had to be there. Normally, after the worker left, I could have just left for our current home, but there was another activity coming up later then, so I had to stay. Since there was nothing to do, I decided I wanted to sweep the floor to make the living room look more pleasant. The floor was carpeted with a layer of dirt, so I was wearing my sneakers all the time. I started wanting to walk in something more comfortable, so I left the house for a pair of slippers with the aircon still on, knowing that I’d be back within five minutes to return from the grocery store that was in the alley. When I was back, however, I was not alone.

The property owner was standing in the living room as I walked through the door. It wasn’t shocking to me since I knew that the landlady has one of our keys. What plagued my mind was ‘Oh no the air conditioner is still on she’ll think I might have left for thirty minutes or something!’ The landlady is a nice person, giving me advice about placements of furniture. She told me she was here because there are other workers coming over to install the AC in my study. It was another hour later when they left, and during the time, I was trying hard not to fall asleep while sitting on the floor doing Chinese test papers.

Like any normal house is, you see the living room after you open the door. It's about as wide as our living room now, and it has a very square structure, making it easier to arrange the setting of furniture. This is a house with age, mind you, but it has a big window that promises nice lighting, and we don't really have to compromise much when we have to live how we normally do.

This is the dining room. You can't really see it in this picture, but it is directly linked to the living room. We would place our dining table here, and perhaps if we still have space, we would lay a mat over here, so that kids coming over can have a place to play.

This is my study a.k.a. book house.

I plan to sit my bookshelf on the corner on the right, and maybe I'll be able to place against the wall another shelf. The shelves aren't here yet, but I can already picture myself standing in front of it, smiling and ordering the books until I am fully satisfied. 

This is the long and thin front balcony. Looking out, you can see the Tianmu Baseball Stadium and a big sports park.

When I started writing this introduction, I discovered two problems. One: I didn't have the measurements, making describing anything difficult, and second: I forgot to take pictures of my bedroom. Maybe I'll try to redo this thing after all the furniture is in its right place.

Okay, to start with the program of the evening, we would have to wind the time back to earlier this morning, during our Mandarin class, when our teacher reminded me the ‘show’ was today. It was a relief I didn’t make any other appointments today because even though I clearly remembered our teacher has a friend who asked if any of us want to go watch a traditional Beijing opera for free, I couldn’t remember the exact date. Right then, I must be thinking that a new experience is a new experience, so it didn’t bother me much when I signed myself up finding no one else in the class was going.

Theater next to our school; what a classy place!

The show started at 7:30 in the evening, and due to the fact that the theater is right next to our school (i.e. right in Tianmu), I thought it would be better to stay over there rather than heading back to our current home and set off again.

The Beijing opera is a kind of performance formed in the 18^th century. In my opinion, it sounds very much like the Taiwanese operas my mom loves since her childhood.

The title of the show this evening was called Ding Fung Po (定風波), or as it is officially and aptly translated into ‘Ode to the Relenting Storm’, and it is a story about a poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, Su Shi (or Su Dong Po), a guy, as we learned from our intensive Mandarin classes, who lived a life being continuously exiled by the emperor just because Su Shi had disagreements with others in their government. The theater added a large proportion of his works into the lyrics and dialogues, making all my Mandarin class pay off.

This is my first time visiting this newly-built national theater that neighbor my school. There are three stories for the audience, though the second floor has only boxes. I got the ticket for the third floor, on the far-left side of the stage. Here are some poorly-taken pictures.

You look down at the stage, and a majestic and beautiful curtain can be seen. Under the blue light, the large, flat drape showed elegant words in large calligraphy.

The show started as the orchestra in the hidden stage started playing the light and relaxing Chinese traditional music that is supposed to resonate with nature. Among the instruments, I like the flute the most, with its bird-song voice that soars all the way up to the third floor. I found that not only the Chinese subtitles but also the English translation was provided with the projectors on either side of the stage. On more than several occasions, I find the modern (but with beautiful wording) English helpful when the dialogues consisted of hard and incomprehensible Chinese.

It’s an opera, so a lot of singing was in the play. Since having memory, Mom has always loved Taiwanese opera, so with its resemblance to Beijing opera, I knew what to expect. In the show, both characters of men and women sang in an incredibly high pitch with an eccentric tone and intonation. Different pronunciation for words was also very common. I couldn’t describe the way they sing before, but sitting there, being there, and watching the play live, I found the way they sing resembles the most to how Mickey Mouse speaks in cartoons, with the high pitch voice, but also were the tunes high in dose on sentiments. I texted Mom during the intersectoin, and to both of our surprise, this is the show Mom and her sisters are going to watch the next day! 

Curtain.

The play ended at roughly ten in the evenig, and I started my trip home with a brand new experience in my memory.

This is all for today.