One thing I’ve realized from being in China is that you can’t say no. When a student brings you a snack to class, you don’t refuse it no matter how weird looking it may be. When you go to what we call “the dirty black spoon” (aka Asian Jack Black) for dinner, you will eat the combination of vegetables that the owner makes and you will like them. You want to mix eggplant and tofu together in the same dish? Well tough luck, those don’t go together, according to her. You have to get two dishes – one with eggplant and the other with tofu and whatever vegetables she decides go with it – and you will like them.
This morning I finally got to explore the mysterious park that Nick and Jessica have been raving about since they discovered it earlier this month (this month is almost over…whatttttt?). It was a whole new side of Jishou that I had not yet seen. It was only 11 AM but the park was bustling with dozens of old people playing Mahjong and other card games, fortune tellers (I think that’s what they were), and old women square dancing. As everybody knows, Chinese old people and Chinese babies are two of my favorite people to interact with in China, so this was the perfect setting.
Our interaction with the old people began in the square, bustling with loud music that the women square danced to, government propaganda in the background, and conversation. The old people were just as intrigued by us as we were by them. Before we knew it we were encirlced by a group of old people talking to us and taking pictures with us. I have never seen 70 year olds with this much energy. They jumped, yelled, laughed, and posed for pictures with us – always throwing up the peace sign on both hands, of course. Then we joined in on the square dancing as some of the old men took out their phones to record the Americans trying to square dance. As much as an outsider as I looked, I felt so welcomed at the same time.
As Sofia and I were leaving an old man pulled us over and told us to follow him downstairs to watch the drummers. “We already watched them,” Sofia said to him, explaining that we had gone earlier. Yet he insisted that we follow him, so we did (you will do it and you will like it). Before we knew it we were both up on the drums learning some rhythms and trying to mimic the drummers’ rhythms and dance moves. I think we also put on a pretty good show for the crowd. In the end, we couldn’t have been happier to have listened to him. We did it, and we liked it.