Day at the Theater

Before we go into our day at the theater, we need to go through a very important change in the blog. From this point forward, we will not refer to Anne as Anne anymore. Instead, we will always type her name as Annie because that is how EVERYONE in China pronounces her name. At first, it was very annoying because Juliet would break into song “Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow,” but everyone has now come to accept that we left Anne in Dallas and in China, we have Annie.

So Saturday we headed off to the Shanghai Grand Theater for Mamma Mia – little did we know when we purchased the tickets we had chosen to attend a matinee on the hottest afternoon of the year. When we arrived at 1:00pm the temperature was approaching 100 degrees with every single drop of humidity in Asia concentrated in Shanghai. Of course there were no signs around, so we wondered aimlessly with the masses until finally finding the entrance…now sweating profusely.

The show itself was great – very good story and the ABBA music is mixed in very well. It was in English with Chinese subtitles on large screens to the side of the stage. One thing we learned in those two hours was that ABBA is HUGE in China. People dancing in the aisles and clapping wildly at times – it was a lot of fun. Another lesson we learned is that it is A-OK to BYOF&D (Bring Your Own Food & Drink) to the theater. We were the only people in the place who didn’t bring a bottle of water, soft drink, or yogurt milk with them and don’t even get me started on the tuna and ice cream (thankfully not together) that appeared after the intermission.

When we left the theater, the temperature had cooled off a bit. It is actually hotter here in the late morning and early afternoon, than later in the day. The reason (we hypothesize) is that by late afternoon, the smog has built up so much that it actually works kind of like sunscreen – blocking out some of the sun’s most harmful (and hottest) rays. So it’s really the lesser of two evils – we can either bake in the morning or stay cool in the afternoon…but feel like you’re hacking up a lung.

After leaving the theater we headed for a return engagement at the California Pizza Kitchen (no condiment pilfering this time – however the manager did remember us, which scared us a tad.) We ate quickly in order to make it to Annie’s 6:00pm doctor appointment where we learned that smoking in hospitals is still very much allowed here. In fact it brought back memories of “Thirsty Thursday” nights in college as we smelled like we had spent the last few hours in a smoke-filled bar (or bowling alley).