Day 8

In the morning, I sent a couple postcards. I was really excited about the stamps, because they use this paste to stick them on. Here is a picture of me painting the back of the stamp with glue.

I finally bought a chi-pow! I tried on a bunch of them in the store, and they all fit! I don't know what happened, I must fit that store's model. We went to a different market area than last time to look around at clothes. This one was mostly for food, and all of the stores give out free samples! I was so excited, I ate every single free sample they had and went back for seconds. I had this delicious fried tofu that was soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. Here is a picture of my mom in the market.

For lunch we had bah-wan, which is Taiwanese for meat ball. They are sticky and clear covered and stuffed with pork, mushrooms, bamboo, etc. Then two types of sauces are poured over them and the ones we ate were steamed. Here is a picture of them in the steamer.
That night we went to the Chinese Opera. It is in a huge building which is part of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. My second aunt treated my mom and I, which was so nice. We took the subway to the opera, which was surprisingly clean and big. They had air conditioning and it didn't smell bad either, even though there were many people on the subway. I think a ton of people must take the subway, because at 10pm at night when we took it back home it was pretty crowded. Here is the subway map, which has both Chinese and English wish is nice.
The opera was really magnificent. All of the music was made by traditional Chinese instruments. Each movement that the actors made was significant and practiced; the way the women walk looks like they are floating. And some of the characters had really long sleeves, which they would roll up in a specific way by flicking their wrist. The way they moved seemed like a mixture of twitchy and smooth. The costumes were also extremely elaborate with layers of embroidered bright fabric. The story was about a female general, and when they dressed in the general's outfit they had these long feathers probably five feet long sticking from their heads like two antennas which would tremble when they moved. The singing was really beautiful too, and they would sing without taking a breath for a ridiculously long time.

The girl sitting next to my mom was by herself and a couple years older than me. I couldn't understand a lot of the opera because the language is like Shakespeare's English, so my mom had to help translate. The girl got so angry! She yelled at us during intermission. It's funny though, I don't know why she chose us to yell at. People clap during the performance when people come on stage and finish singing, etc, so people also talk all the time. There was a hilarious man who kept yelling "hao!" which means 'good' at everything, he must have really really liked the show! And the old man sitting behind my mom and I sang along! It was so funny, I had to chuckle every time he started singing.