Day 1 Shanghai

April 17, 2003 Tuesday

Today are just going to rest and wander around Shanghai. We move on to Hefei tomorrow afternoon.

Chuck was very interested when I ordered a custom made cashmere sweater the last time that we were in Shanghai. He had decided that he wanted a striped one in UCLA colors. (He had seen a red and black one at the shop, so knew that it was possible.) We decided that this would be our first stop.

Since we were awake before the birds, we had to fritter away some time at the hotel. This was the view from our window. I am always struck by the juxtaposition of big new expensive buildings right next to hovels.

The hovel on the left definitely has people living in at least 2 sections.

The breakfast here is much better than the last time we visited. Now, they have a real buffet and a guy making eggs. Unfortunately, they removed the coffee machine and now seemed to be putting out instant already in a pot. Really vile stuff. We switched to tea.

Our first big adventure was using the metro. We walked several blocks (in the pouring rain) to the stop. Bought our ticket without a problem and then looked at the map to see which direction we want to take. One of the many many helpers in the station came right over to help us. We showed him where we wanted to go and he showed us which side of the platform we wanted to stand on. It was the wrong side – but I’ve been helped before – I always check the information.

At the sweater shop Chuck was measured in all directions. The lady and I had much discussion about the sweater. Since I don’t speak any Chinese and she didn’t speak any English, this was quite a feat. We determined the neckline (v-neck), the color (from the sample chart) and the pattern (from the red & black one – a 5 x 2 rib – I counted the stitches.) Then we had to show that we would not be in Shanghai again until June 6. With the help of the calendar, I showed us flying away the next day and then flying back on the 6^th. We paid our deposit, received a receipt and waved goodbye.

Our next stop was the Yu Yuan Garden. (Yuan might mean garden. I’m not sure.) Chuck wanted to go to the famous dumpling restaurant for lunch and I wanted to price the flower teas at the tea house. We flagged down a taxi (it was still raining) and showed him on our map where we wanted to go.

When we arrived, a bunch of people raced up to the cab, all shouting at once. I thought that they were fighting for the taxi, but really they all wanted to guide us through the area and sell us stuff. We pushed by and escaped into the large (and more expensive) store right at the edge of the complex. They even had a bathroom that we could use.

We went to the teahouse and did the tea ceremony. (When I had been there before, I didn’t do the ceremony, just tea and nibbles.) We tasted several kinds of tea served in different ways. Two flower teas in large cups, and a jasmine tea in tiny cups.

For those who want to place an order for the flower tea: at the teahouse, the box with 8 different types in individual compartments is 100 ¥. A box of 8 all the same is 80¥. I might be able to get it cheaper at one of the little stores in the area.

When we were all tea’ed out, we went to the dumpling restaurant. We had been there before with our friend Douglas Wang, so we sort of knew the ropes. We ended up in area on the top floor where they have a menu in English. We chose the tasting menu for 50¥ each. It had soup, shumai, sticky rice (in the cutest little one bite bundle), 2 bao type (one with vegetables and one with a green paste), 2 baked (curry & bean paste), 6 of the crab dumplings that the restaurant is famous for and then the ubiquitous watermelon for dessert.

Next, we went to the Flower, Bird, Insect & Fish Market. This was covered and quite loud and smelly. There were about a zillion little birds in cages, tons of fish, some kittens & puppies, many kinds of turtles and lots of crickets.

Since it was still raining, we decided to catch a taxi and go back to the hotel for a nap before dinner.

We met Douglas, his father and his step-son at a restaurant near their apartment. Douglas had called our hotel and told them what to write on a card for us, so that we could show it to the taxi driver. This restaurant is on the top floor of a large department store, much like the Japanese stores. Douglas met us at the door of the store and took us upstairs. Mr. Wang and Oliver were already at the table. They had moved to a better table because Mr. Wang said that the first one had been surrounded with large groups that were smoking and very loud.

We had Cabbage with sea blubber, sweet & sour pork ribs, bean curd, pumpkin, spicy beef with mung bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and lotus root noodles, bok choy mushrooms lettuce corn and dumplings, and stir fried rice. Oliver is 6 and during the meal sang the English songs that he knew – If you’re happy and you know it, clap you hands, and Doe, a deer, both with hand movements, both many many times.

We went back to their apartment after dinner. We had a package for them and they had kept a bag of stuff for me. We also had to see (and experience) Mr. Wang’s new massage chair. It had been a present from Douglas. It does everything but undress you.

Thanks to Douglas, I now have a Chinese sim card for my phone. It is a prepaid one, so I gave him some money to put more minutes on it. When we go back through Shanghai, I will return it.

Fading fast, we flagged a taxi (in the rain) and went back to the hotel.

The plane trip from hell

April 15, 2007

Hell is not a fiery inferno. Hell is not demons and imps with pitchforks and scourges. Hell is being locked for 14 hours, thousands of feet in the air with CRAZY PEOPLE!!

I had asked for 2 aisle seats. No problem said the guy checking us in. Unfortunately, Chuck had an aisle seat and I had a window – but not next to each other. The man sitting next to me was very pleasant at the start of the flight. I said that if he wanted to curl up and sleep, we should change because I would need to get up every once in awhile. “No problem, I never sleep on planes. I wish I could.”

It turned out that he had smuggled a bottle of bourbon on the plane. I don’t know how. He also had 3 beers from the stewardess. So, the man was pretty drunk. The man in front of him kept putting his seat back. My seat partner started off by pushing it slowly back into the upright position. Then he started getting annoyed and started smacking the back of the seat every time the guy started moving it. The woman in front of me moved her seat back every time the man tried. So, my seat partner gave hers a few whacks, too.

Finally, he fell asleep (passed out?) The guy in front stopped moving his seat and when the woman tried to move hers my knee was in the way, so she stopped trying also. I decided that I wasn’t going to wake him unless it was an absolute emergency.

After a few hours, just when I thought that all was well and it really couldn’t get any weirder, the plane started getting a little warm – so my guy roused just enough to take his shirt off. Luckily, he stopped there.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We didn’t even have to wait at the taxi stand. The Hotel is a little off the beaten path, so we did have to point out a turn and make go on go on motions, but we arrived checked in and fell into bed.

Branwen's Birthday

April 14, 2007

Branwen is going to be 1. Today was her first birthday party. She had a new party dress and spiffy white sandals.

She is choosing to walk almost all the time now. She had gone through what I called her meercat phase. She would stand up in the middle of the room, look around and then go back down and crawl where she wanted to go. Now she walks. It’s a good thing – crawling in a party dress is very hard.

The theme of her party was “Under the sea.” There were two colors of blue balloons with long blue streamers, blue table cloths, little fish hung around and of course the cake.

Jef had baked a delicious 4 layer chocolate mint cake with blue frosting and then Alec decorated it. (Who knew that all those years of painting tiny figures and building models would be put to this use?) The island in the center formed the one; there was a shark with jagged teeth coming out of the side (his fin came out of the top), a whale’s tail, the treasure chest, a scroll, and a ship. The candle was the mast of the ship.

Branwen and I had a good time looking at everything.

When it came time to blow out the candle, Calder was glad to help. Notice his sea themed shirt and next to his hand was the craft for his friends. They made aquariums.

A change of clothes was necessary before diving into the cake and inspecting the turtle.

The classic 1^st birthday face. She was very excited to have her own home made ice cream. She knows that she likes ice cream and had never had her very own portion before.She collapsed and had a little nap on Pop-Pop. This was nice for both of them, since we won’t be seeing her for a long time.

Nov 16 Tour of Jewish Shanghai

Lucille had found what sounded like a fascinating tour and needed 4 people minimum. I said that it interested me and she could count me in.

We all met at the Peace Hotel on the Bund. This is a famous hotel from the 20’s on what had been the main business street on the waterfront. It turned out that the guide had many more that he needed because Calvin College had a group that was visiting from Beijing. They are doing a semester in China. The good thing about this group was that they had a bus that we could all fit on. There were 9 women from the conference, 2 extra American women, a British couple and the students with their chaperones.

After meeting in the lobby, we all went up to the ballroom where Dvir gave us a short history of the Jews in Shanghai, and told a little bit about what we would be seeing. The first group came from Baghdad, by way of Bombay. There were 3 men who became extremely wealthy. One built the peace hotel. One of the families is the current owners of the Peninsula Hotel chain. The next group came from Russia in the early 19th century. The last group came as refugees from the Nazis. Shanghai was an “open city” so you didn’t need any kind of papers to come here.

Then we went up to the roof garden restaurant to see the skyline. Unfortunately, it was raining so we couldn’t see as well as we would have liked. After using the bathrooms, (this is my second most important survival tip in China – whenever there is a western bathroom, USE IT! My most important tip is to always have a card from you hotel with you. That way you can always get home.) we traveled by bus to the Shanghai ghetto.

This is the plaque in the park in the center of what had been the ghetto:

It is written in Chinese, English and Hebrew. Dvir said that if we think that there are a lot of mistakes in the English signs that we see, the Hebrew is even worse.
Lois, Connie, a student and Lucille on the tour.


Because the Japanese didn’t really understand the Nazis hatred of the Jews, the ghetto here was different from the ones in Europe. 1. Only “Stateless” people had to live there. Which meant that the jews that had been there before could live where ever they wanted and go about their business as usual. They could send in supplies, etc. 2. Because this had been an area where Chinese also lived, they continued to live there and could get permits to enter and exit. 3. There wasn’t a wall, only checkpoints. (To me this means that it would be possible to enter or leave without permission.) The Germans had sent the “Butcher of Warsaw” to supervise a “final solution”, but the Japanese were too busy with their hereditary enemies, the Chinese, to really get into the Nazi agenda. So, although conditions were very bad, because the people were very poor and lived in crowded conditions, it was nowhere near as bad as Warsaw. (I saw pictures of the ghetto in Warsaw when I was there last summer.)

This was a building used for administration:


Chinese people are living here now. Here is a woman washing something in her home:

A street. Doors open into rooms. When the communists took over and assigned people living quarters, they assigned 1 family to each room, so 3 or 4 families would be living inside each door.

To see more about this you can go to www.shanghai-jews.com

We saw the synagogue, which houses a small museum and watched two short films about the time and the area. After the war and the communist takeover, most of the Jews left. During the Cultural Revolution all foreign influence was destroyed, so the Jewish cemeteries were eradicated and all of the headstones were taken away. Some were thrown in the river, but others were put to various uses – paving stones, washboards, etc. Dvri is trying to find them and is creating a film of his experiences.

We returned to the Bund for the end of the tour. Several of us went for lunch to a rooftop restaurant in the area. It was great to be warm and dry. We all had soup.

I went home afterwards to put my feet up and have a little rest.

They were setting up for a wedding:




Chuck, Vahe and I went to a Sichuan restaurant. We ordered way too much food, but there were so many things we wanted to try.

By the time we returned to the hotel, the bride was in a different dress. We learned that she might change 3 or 4 times during the evening.

The rooms are well soundproofed. We could hear the festivities in the hall, but once we were in our room it was very quiet. The other good thing is that Chinese weddings seem to end early – by about 9 or 10 o’clock.

Nov 15 I think I can call myself a “streetwalker” after today.

Another day of wandering with the yarn shop addresses as a sort of guide. I headed west from the hotel and found the street. This street seemed to specialize in diapers for children and also for the elderly. There were about 6 shops that only had diapers:

The top one with the orange had pictures of gray haired people the bottom ones had babies.

I passed an elementary school:

Stopped at an appliance shop to see what was available. ( Stoves (much smaller than ours) Refrigerators, washing machines, small appliances etc. )This was a mid range fridge with 3 temperature zones

I stopped in at a place that was either an investment place (people seemed to be sitting and looking at a ticker tape) or a betting parlor. It was hard to tell, but since they had a bathroom that was traditional but clean, I didn’t really care which.

I walked on to Yu Garden. I had been there before in the pouring rain with Douglas, so I decided to see it on a nice day. It is really a labyrinth. One just wanders, looking at the views. A man was feeding the goldfish and then catching them and throwing them into the air:

I stopped for tea in a famous tea house just outside the garden. They specialize in a “flower tea”. The pot comes with just a bud at the bottom. When the boiling water hits it the flower blooms:

The tea comes with small snacks.

Walking back to my hotel I passed a building with 3 floors of wedding dress shops. I stopped in to use the bathroom there, too.

Then I came upon a pashima feeding frenzy. This had to be a good deal. It looked like the Filene’s wedding dress sale in miniature. I fought my way in and joined the scrum. At the door was a girl with a fistful of money. She counted your shawls, took your money and gave change.

I had to walk all the way home because I didn’t have any more money. Footsore, but feeling successful, I had a great day.

That evening was a show at the conference. Acrobats, a magician, folk dancers, a Peking Opera style actress (really a man) and a group playing modern music on traditional instruments. It made the performance in Hefei look really good.

We took a UCLA group, which included 3 Chinese grad students, to a Hunan restaurant that Chuck had found in his book, “The 50 best restaurants in Shanghai.” It was really, really really HOT, but very good. He was so proud of himself when the next day, one of the Chinese guys came up and asked for the name of the place because he had heard about it from the students who had been there.

Nov. 14 Wandering and exploring Shanghai

Being almost constantly with 7 other people, even though they were lovely companions, made me want to just explore by myself. Since I was now in the center of a city, this was easy to do.

Across the street is a hospital. This is the gift shop:

I have a list of yarn shops here and found that there was one across the street from the hotel. That was my first stop. Then I just walked up that street. Found a cashmere yarn shop that wasn’t on the list. Found a shop where I commissioned a cashmere sweater. The salesgirl spoke no English and I spoke no Chinese, but we understood each other. She measured me; I picked a color; we determined a style. She showed me the approximate price. (A combination of the cost of the yarn, plus 1.5 RMB for each gram used.)

On I went through People’s Park:


Nanjing Road is a big pedestrian shopping street. They were having a dance performance there:

Stopped at Micky D’s for lunch. I was the only round eyes in the place.

After walking around for about 6 hours, I hobbled home to get ready to go to the reception. In the US, the receptions are often just wine and cheese, and a few finger foods. They often run out because the grad students scarf it down fast.

This reception was held in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. All of a sudden this trip, we are being moved to the dignitaries tables. We had gold patterned plates, gold spoons and chopstick rests and special red chairs with gold ribbons. It does mean that I can’t take as many pictures.



The menu was: Cold dishes, Chicken shreds & Scallop Soup, Sautéed River Shrimps with Vegetable, Fried Sliced Beef with Black Pepper, Fried Pork Knuckle with Garlic, Sautéed Chicken Meat with XO sauce, Fried Mandarin Fish with Sour & Sweet Sauce,
Seasonal Vegetable & Fresh Mushroom, Fried Rice, Fried Cake with Meat Floss & Sesame, Steamed Corn Cake with Milk, Glutinous Rice Dumpling in the Wine Syrup.

All of this special reception was in honor of T. D. Lee’s 80th birthday. He is a co-nobelist with Yang and he is really the father of China’s physics. He has mentored 2 generations and they are very proud of him and very grateful for his leadership. They had a large birthday cake:

Does the top look a little weird to you? It did to us.

Another evening when they never stopped pouring the drinks. We are wondering what the Banquet (which is normally the more important dinner) is going to be like.

Nov 13, On to Shanghai

Chuck went to see where the detectors were being built while I packed. I made him take his ticket because if they stayed too long, he could just meet me at the airport.

Luckily the other guy was just as insistent that they get back to the hotel on time, so there wasn’t a problem.

Half the plane was made up of STAR collaboration people. It is strange knowing soooo many people in the airport.

The first afternoon we walked to see where the conference was being held and had an early dinner with Connie and Tom. We went to Café 1931. It evokes the atmosphere of Shanghai in 1931. We had an early light dinner and went home to bed.

We are staying at the Ruijin Guesthouse hotel. It is an oasis of serenity in the midst of a busy city.

The problem is that you have to walk forever to get out the front gate. The breakfast room is in another building (a problem in the rain.)

The room is lovely – but dim. There are about 10 lamps which combined are about 25 watts.

We have a couch, desk and king sized bed. I thought that I liked a firm mattress, but this one is a marble slab with sheets. I have to make a little towel pillow for my waist to hold it in a better position.
But all that being said, we went to bed at 8:20 and slept until 6:20!

Nov 12 Our last day in Hefei

For our last day, the ladies decided to go to a park that has small replicas of important places in Anhui province. We don’t know what it is called because it was in a guide book that was all in Chinese. Since there was only 1 entrance, we didn’t
Hefei is a city of 4.5 million even though it is a backwater in a poor province.

The circle shows the park that we were visiting.


We finally found our hotel. It has a giant dome and we were all calling it “The Taj”:


We wandered around this park, climbing the miniature 8 man mountain:


We “made a donation” (bought) a package of incense sticks at the buddist temple planning to divide them up and each light some. It turns out they are done in a clump so we made a joint offering and thanks for a really nice trip. Luckily we had a helper to light the sticks, because it was much harder than it looked.

We left the park and went to the university. Several of us had reasons to be there. I had asked to take a tour (since this may be my home for a month.) Ota’s husband was getting an award and she and Maria wanted to be there, Lucille’s husband was giving a talk later that was for the students and he assured us that it was simplified and the history of the project so that we could understand it too. We all planned to go to that.

Our tour guides’ English was minimal at best. They kept walking at the back of the group and didn’t understand that we needed them in the front. We stopped and had lunch with our husbands and then split up. Only 3 of us were going to do the tour, so I insisted that the students shouldn’t miss any of the important talks and that I was perfectly capable of following the map and finding my way around. I promised to be at the 4:00 talk.

The campus is very pretty. It has many lawns and trees.

Couldn’t this be any campus in the US? Including the couple making out in the foreground?

There were a group of children doing an art project. They were doing pen and ink drawings of the trees. The faculty, and I think their extended families, live on the campus and Chuck says that there is an elementary school there.


This is the guest house with the lotus pond in front of it:

We made it to Art’s talk at 4. It wasn’t a simple as he promised but it had a lot of pictures of the people involved when they were very young, so it was a lot of fun.

After the talk we were going to yet another banquet. This one was smaller and I think we were included because we are going to live there. A bus took us to a hotel in the center of Hefei. While we waited for the bus, we had to stand inside. Thousands of birds roost in the trees just outside the auditorium at sunset. The bird droppings sound like raindrops. Everyone who had to use this street was running fast. The street’s name means Hard Way – but the it is pronounced the same as bird shit.

This dinner was more “westernized”. They had cream of pumpkin soup and a few other things that were a little strange with the mix of Chinese food. There were many, many, many toasts.

We staggered home to bed.

Nov 11 More excursions in Hefei

The ladies decided to go to the “Anhui Province Celebrity Museum.” Every famous person in antiquity from this province (and also some who were just passing through) is recreated in wax. Some of the figures move. There was a whole ship battle with flashing lights. Some look like they should move, but pressing the button doesn’t do anything.

Here is a picture of Deena with the first recorded anesthesiologist. We made her pose with him because she is also an anesthesiologist.


This museum was far away from everything. We asked at the ticket office if there was a restaurant nearby. They pointed across the street. This was a giant street; we didn’t see any restaurant from our side; but we took it as an article of faith and trooped across. I think they must have called the restaurant and told them to watch for us, because the waitresses came out the door and were calling to us.

One of the waitresses spoke Engish – how lucky can we get? She helped us order and then wrote: “please take me to the zoo” for us. (She had to write it twice, since we are now 8 and need two cabs.)

It is amazing that we manage to flag down 2 cabs and all get to the zoo with very little trouble. The air quality at the zoo was quite a bit better than downtown Hefei, which was a big relief.

You know that I am a connoisseur of zoos. This one had an excellent camel collection, which obviously people feed, because they were hanging out at the fence greeting everyone who came by.

They had a seal. For a small sum, you could get your picture taken with it.

He put his nose to the ear for every photo and kept it there until the trainer blew a whistle.

Best of all, there was a panda. We decided that a trip to the zoo would be quite expensive for the Chinese. The entrance fee was 25 RMB, except if you were less than 1.2 meters. Instead of charging less by age they do it by height. There were other activites like rides and fishing for goldfish, all of which had additional costs. There was a supplemental charge of 10 RMB for seeing the panda, and another 10 for the reptiles. We passed on the snakes.

First the panda ate leaves:


Then he got a special snack which he took a long time eating. He actually licked the pavement to make sure that he got every morsel.

Then, as he was moving back to the leaves, he POOPED. (This last bit was put it because I know that Calder will be very impressed!)

After the panda, we divided into two groups. My group decided to head back to the hotel. We left by way of a huge aviary. The other group stayed longer, missed the aviary, but saw the lions, tigers and bears.

That night was the collaboration banquet. They held it at our hotel which was really convenient. Because we were sitting at the table with the Vice president of the university, I didn’t feel that I could take pictures. Here is the menu:

1.) Mixed spiced platter, 2.) 6 cold dishes, 3.) fish puree soup, 4.)boiled shrimp with sauce, 5.) stewed bean curd FengYang style, 6.) sautéed spring chicken, 7.) stewed abalone and mushrooms with baby bok choy, 8.) boiled bull frog in hot spicy(sic), 9.) spare ribs with lilac, 10.) steamed Duobao fish, 11.) cabbage core with minced red peppers, 12.) boiled vegetable with sauce, 13.) turtle and special mushroom soup, 14.) dim sum, 15.) fried rice YangZhou style.
Once again everything was yummy. I would have preferred just having the broth of the turtle soup, but the head of the physics dept. told the waitress to divide it up and give everyone some – oh joy!

This time we just had to walk upstairs to our room to go to bed.

Nov 10 Hefei Old and New

I wanted to check out the realities of living in Hefei, so I convinced the other wives to go to the Carrefour shopping mall. Since most of us have lived for a time either in Geneva or Paris, they all knew Carrefour and want to see how this one was different.

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.