The first night we went for the obligatory Peking Opera. We had an idea of what to expect, namely, long, unintelligible dialogs, high-pitched voices and a lot of drama. Well, the voices were mostly high, yes, but the show was actually very entertaining. They sat us at tables and served us tea, peaches and Chinese snacks. There were two short shows (about 1/2 hour long, each of them), thankfully more action-based than dialog-based and there was a LED display that did a very decent job of translating said dialogs. The first show was actually funny and the second one was about a forbidden love story in which a goddess had to fight the other gods for her mortal beloved (why she would fall in love with such a wimpy guy is besides the point.) Most amazingly, no-one died, so the whole thing was unexpectedly very light-hearted.
On the second night we went for a Kung Fu show that was more like a Broadway production. It told the story of a Kung Fu monk from the time he's left at the monastery as a child to the time when he becomes the new master. There was no dialog, so it was pretty easy to follow. It was cool, but we weren't supposed to take pictures and, while Julie dared, I didn't.
On our last evening we saw an acrobatics show. While it was the most mindless of the three, it was also easily the most entertaining, because the acrobats were truly amazing. I was constantly awed by the way they kept attempting increasingly difficult things. And it was humbling in the sense that, no matter how much time I could spend at the gym, I'll never be in such good shape (I can't even do a handstand!)
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