It was set up in much the same way. Surrounding the main store there were many small shops with shoes, jewelry, cloths, dry cleaning, etc. One entered the main store on the household items level. There were the small appliance demonstrators, clothes, books, toys and makeup. We had to walk through to the back of the store to get the escalator to the food level. (It was impossible to go directly to food!) Both sides of the escalator had snack packages (with pictures of Yao Ming and other NBA stars on them). This was a fairly typical supermarket, but with some really Chinese things – like large bags of MSG.
The prepared and semi-prepared foods were wonderful. We won’t starve.
Ready to stir-fry:
Dumplings ready to be boiled:
And what we were calling “road kill pig.” We believe it is a pig because there is a picture of a pig on the red jacket label.
There were lots of great looking fruits and vegetables. I bought 2 jars of baby food for Branwen. On is “Apple & Carrot paste” the other “Apple, pumpkin & Date paste”. They are made by Heinz and have a picture of a Chinese baby on the label.
Getting 8 women around takes some logistical planning. We made meeting times and places, so that we could all look at the things that interested us and wander as we wanted.
We just had a coffee instead of lunch. The hotel has large buffet breakfasts with eggs, hot & cold cereals, fruits, & lots of Chinese choices, so we were still pretty full and we knew that we were going to have an early dinner. Again we had a little room to ourselves and a platter of fresh fruit was included. The cappuccino was made with whipped cream – yum.
We then hailed 2 taxis to go to Bright Pearl Park. (We had no idea what this was – but it was one of the listed places on our tour sheet.) The taxis dropped us off at 2 different places in the park. Luckily each group had one member with a cell phone (we planned this!) After several calls – I can see a windmill – I can see a large white building, we managed to find each other.
This was a large park with a street of European style buildings. Much of it is still under construction. (Actually, I think that much of Hefei is under construction at this moment.)
There doesn’t seem to be much reason for the European style buildings but the Italian church is a wedding chapel.
There was a bride getting her picture taken:
Inside they were setting up for a wedding, so we invited ourselves in to take pictures:
I think this is a promo poster for the chapel. In a shop nearby, it looked like you could get everything you needed – dress, bridesmaid dresses, booze, etc.
A van picked us up to take us to the dinner before the Chinese Folk opera. Sorry no pictures of food – we had too much as usual but we were served and ate fast so that we could get back on buses to go to the theatre.
When we got there, Chuck and I chose regular theater style seats in the third row next to a woman and boy about 12. The boy changed seats with his mom so that he could speak to me in English. He asked me where I was from, told me his name, (and then repeated it slowly, when I asked him to) asked my name and then asked me to spell it. His accent was very good. He seemed to be understanding my answers and we were having a fine time when we had to move to the “special seats” at the tables in the front. These were close to the stage, had tea, fruit and pistachios on them, but the seats were VERY uncomfortable.
My new friend:
Chuck at our table:
Yes, this really is a girl in a tiny sequined costume doing a hula hoop routine. The grad students really liked her. The opera seemed more a vaudeville mélange.
This guy did a dance and went into the audience and shook hands with people. When he was doing this he twisted his head somehow and the mask changed. It must have had 25 different masks. No one could figure out how it happened, but it was very impressive.
This was the finale. We liked the action things better than the singing, but the costumes were fantastic.
Buses back to the hotel. The end of another successful day.
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