China: Day Eight - Square Dancing

Wednesday started out just like the other days: no water, breakfast, class, lunch, no water, class, dinner...

Joel and Liz at lunch

back up the stairs to dinner

 some of the beautiful Yi women, old and young, we saw in JinYang

The students broke into groups and wrote stories together one sentence at a time. They were very creative! Some even wrote theirs as a play. We also learned about various Chinese celebrations, like Spring Festival, Mid Autumn or the Torch Festival.

The Torch Festival is the most important holiday for the Yi people. It celebrates a famous wrestler that drove away a plague of locusts from their crops using pine torches. Now they celebrate with dancing, wrestling, horse races, beauty contests and lighting torches.

But after dinner, it was not like any other day. EVER!

In most cities throughout China there is dancing (for exercise) every morning and every evening in the city square. All the women go and do some kind of group dancing. Jin Yang was no exception. We had been told this during the “Our Community” lesson by some of the teachers. And some of our students wanted to take us out for a night on the town after dinner for dancing. They (Juicy, Mary, Jessica & Mary) came and picked us up at the hotel lobby and we all walked through town to the square. It’s so fun because it seems like everyone is out and about in town there just dancing or watching or listening to the music.

You also have to remember that I don’t dance. Ever. I was perfectly happy to watch Sue dance and take pics. When I saw how many women were already there, I was sure I wasn’t going to dance. 

We always attracted and crowd and once we started dancing it didn’t take long for the crowd to get a bit out of hand. Before we showed up at the square there weren’t any men. In about 5 minutes there were men, women and small gangs of children everywhere! I am fairly certain we probably went viral on We Chat. 

When you’re famous, you also get to meet the dance instructor and her daughter (who spoke wonderful English). 

We took a break from the heat and crowds to get some ice cream and rest.

We enjoyed the ice cream but didn’t get any break from the crowds; paparazzi, remember? But we did take about 20 selfies taken with various strangers.

There were also some of our teachers there with their kids and families. So fun to see them outside of class where they live. 

Then it was back to dancing. 

And they decide to do some traditional Yi dancing even though they never do it on Wednesdays…

Yi dancing is done in a circle and is much harder than exercise dancing. But I had to try because I had the sweetest little girl who desperately wanted to dance with me and I just couldn’t tell her no. 

Just as we were getting started, the dance instructor’s daughter from the other group came to get me so I could come and dance on stage with her mother. I told her I needed to stay her and dance with my new partner. That was not about to stop her. She said something to her in Chinese and her face absolutely lit up. What little girl doesn’t want to go and dance on stage with The American? She was so excited but I did draw the line at being on stage. So the instructor came down and danced with Sue and I. 

By this time, Sue and I were done. Mary and Juicy walked us back to the hotel and Chrissy stayed behind with Jessica to keep dancing. 

We were totally going to go straight back until we walked up to the most beautiful supermarket we had ever seen. It was lit up in all of it’s LED glory! 

And it had a downstairs! 

There were no other stores like this anywhere else in Jin Yang. We had to go! 

It made you feel lovely to be there. Sue said it made her feel clean just to stand in it. Soon all of the shop girls had flocked to help us and try to take pictures of us on the sly. Eventually one was brave enough to ask for a selfie and then the floodgates opened. We had all the help we could have ever needed and more. 

Sue and I finally found some of the beautiful sun umbrellas we'd seen everyone with. Juicy and Mary bought us each one as a gift. We realized we had to stop taking students shopping...

The store was so  beautiful that we went back two more times. 

On the way back to the hotel, we walked by a bakery that had what looked like cinnamon rolls on a tray out front. Sue was so excited that Juicy convinced the store owner to let us try one for free. It wasn't cinnamon though. It was red bean filling. While it was yummy, it was a bit disappointing when you were expecting something else. 

Intent on finding us a cinnamon roll, the girls took us to their favorite bakery. No cinnamon rolls but they did have some interesting cakes... :) 

That was my best day in China!