Saturday in Guangzhou

We had a lovely outing on Saturday in Guangzhou. As usual, Miss G slept through most of it on her daddy's chest. After lunch at IKEA, we headed to the other side of town for a puppet show. I was expecting New Year's lions and cute little cuddly puppets - like singing frogs or something - but instead it was a Chinese folklore puppet show. Quite disturbing actually.

The essence of the story was this. There was a bad monkey warrior and a good monkey warrior. The bad monkey kept impersonating the good one, who was only trying to protect his good master on a pilgrimage to a holy mountain. The bad monkey stole the master's purse of gold, so the master's other companion (a pig with big porcine boobies) went to find the monkey. He found two, though, and couldn't tell them apart. So they went to seek enlightenment. First, to Kuan Yin, the female bodhisattva. She was no help. Then they descended into hell, where some officials looked in important books, but still could not tell the two apart. Finally, they all ascended to the BIG buddha, who discerned the true monkey from the false one through a series of profound questions. Then buddha told the good monkey not to hit the bad one (which was odd, because they had been stick fighting throughout the whole show), and then banished the bad one for 500 years.

The show had decapitation, hanging, hell, demonic smoke and lights, swordplay and other dark things. All for kids. It was a very interesting cultural experience.

After the puppet show, we took a stroll through Shamian Island, which is full of green trees and old European buildings. It is also where all of the adoption tourists normally stay (at the White Swan hotel), so no one was surprised to see a baby strapped to our chest. They did still ask us: "Is that a Chinese baby?" Perhaps they do not often see non-Chinese babies, so they do not know how to recognize babies of different ethnicities.

All in all, a very good day. More pictures here.