Half Term Holiday Day 1 - Chinese Opera

Today was the first day of ‘Half Term Holiday’. Apparently the British school system takes a one week vacation in the middle of each semester. So the girls have no school all week, which is fine, but challenging, as Terry has to work all week and we can’t leave the country (we have to stay here for 4 months in order to acquire our health insurance card from the Taiwan government). So, we’re exploring Taipei!

Thankfully, there are lots of moms from the girls’ school who had plenty of ideas, so we're pretty well stocked on things to do! On today’s agenda was a trip to the National Taiwan College of the Performing Arts (http://www.tcpa.edu.tw/). Every Monday and Thursday morning, the students of this college put on a short show for mostly school-aged children. For less than $30, we were treated to a 30 minute Acrobat show, a short 20-minute video on the art of Beijing Opera (which explained many of the details behind this seemingly strange art form); a trip to the upstairs museum (which contained heirloom costumes and headpieces); and a 30-minute opera.

Our first challenge of the day was to find our way there. The website said to take the MRT (the subway); transfer to a bus and look for a Girls’ high school for our exit. We gave ourselves an hour, took the phone # and address and set off on our adventure! The MRT was the easy part…we’re pros now! The bus…not so easy. We found the right #, but the bus drivers didn’t know what we were talking about when we gave them the name of the high school. Not wanting to tempt fate (we heard that they start the show promptly at 10am), we decided to catch a taxi. All was going well until our cab driver didn’t understand that I needed 177 Neihu Rd Section 2, and not Section 1. As I had NO idea what the Chinese word for ‘Section’ was, he proceeded to drive in a circle. As I was starting to get frustrated, I called in the cavalry and phoned Terry (yes, I FINALLY got a cell phone…an iphone which I’m enjoying thoroughly!). With one simple word, the lightbulb clicked with our taxi driver and we were able to find the college with no problems :). Despite my stress over time, we arrived JUST as the show was starting.

We entered into the theater and found very few people there…great, I thought…a REAL amateur show. I did NOT have high hopes and just prayed that it would at LEAST be worth the $30 or so that I paid. Once the lights went down, the acrobatic show started a bit slow with some basic tumbling and very basic fire throwing. However, as the act wore on, we were treated to some beautiful traditional Chinese acrobatics. My personal favorite was when 12 women glided onto the stage with 3 sticks, about 3 feet long in each hand. On top of each stick was a bowl which they proceeded to twirl…how they did this w/o dropping the bowls was a mystery (I actually thought the bowls may be glued on somehow until 2 performers dropped one set of bowls). The beautiful part was that they made up a pond of lilies while 2 dancers performed a ‘pax de deux’ (sp?)…a ballet duet. Just lovely!

As time went on, I became more and more impressed by this gem of a find. What a perfect way to introduce us all to this particular art form! Apparently the college accepts performers at age 10 and they study for 12 years before they 'graduate'. At that point, much like any other university, it is up to the individual to pursue the art form professionally. While it was obvious that the performance was an amateur show, it was not painfully obvious. I am happy to report that it really did meet my expectations.

After the acrobatic show, we watched a video which helped explain the Chinese opera, which has always seemed ridiculous to me. After the video (which was in English, thankfully), I had a much better appreciation for the art form and found myself actually looking forward to the performance later. The tour of the museum was ok and Elaine began to get bored. I tried to keep her entertained by handing her the phone and asking her to take some pics :).

I was AMAZED that the girls sat through the 30 minute opera as well as they did. Mind you, the ‘opera’ had very little singing. From what I gather, traditional opera involves so much more than singing. It involves dance, acrobatics, acting and singing. The performers are extremely talented and made the opera more interesting with their many fight scenes (and the hero in the story was a female warrior, which was fun too!). At the end, I was thankful for the brief introduction, as it very much achieved the objective of educating the audience and introducing us to the opera without overwhelming us.

We left, or at least, I left, feeling productive and culturally fulfilled as this was an unexpected thing to do on vacation. I would very much recommend it to anyone visiting as it's relatively short and was very informative!

The best highlight after the college was that we managed, after 2 tries, to find the right bus to get us from the college to the Miramar shopping area, which contains the world’s 2nd largest ferris wheel (2nd to London, supposedly). We would have found the right bus faster if I could pronounce Miramar correctly. I discovered that just because the shopping area we were looking for is labeled ‘Miramar’ in English, this apparently is NOT what the Taiwanese people call it. One phone call to Terry again provided the right pronunciation, and we successfully navigated our way there (the pronunciation, btw…is ‘Mei Li Hua’). Unfortunately, after that, some demon came over each of my children throughout the day and we cut our afternoon of movies and fun entertainment short. I will spare everyone the gory details, but let’s just say that I am truly hoping that tomorrow will be better!