Roger's FreeWheel Beijing visit
Roger from Battery visited FreeWheel Beijing office before the spring festival. It generated quite a stir. The team was very excited to hear that FreeWheel was selected as one of the ten companies that Battery would present to their investors at their annual meeting.
Since Roger is mostly a vegetarian, I opted for "culture cuisine" instead. Andrea arranged the welcome dinner for Roger with FreeWheel Beijing team at XinJiang Red Rose (新疆红玫瑰餐厅), to give Roger a taste of XinJiang culture - a very distinct minority culture. Our first choice was 阿凡提嘉年华, however, we couldn't get reservation due to China's end-of-year-company-banquet tradition. It turned out that Red Rose experience worked out great - Roger got invited to dance with the hottest performer on the stage!! I got sooo many inquiries of the video afterward, it is a hot commodity now.
I took Roger to LaoSheTeaHouse 老舍茶馆 the following evening, a good place to experience different flavors of traditional Chinese culture. I took Mike and Steve to the same place, they liked it. A typical show at the tea house would include a short episode of Peking Opera 京剧, face off 变脸, ventriloquy 口技, double light drum 含灯大鼓, cross talk 相声 etc. Peking Opera was ok that night, they embedded some modern comic cross talk in the opera, which I was not a fan of. Faceoff was nice, it is an upper scale version of the one showing at a Sichuan restaurant I like (巴国布衣). We enjoyed ventriloquy, the two performers mimicked birds, different sounds of nature, transportation vehicles, etc. Very talented. Double light drum is a strange performance, the two singers sang with bamboo stick in their mouths, on top of the bamboo stick, there were two lighted candles. They sang beautifully for the entire performance without blowing off the candles...I wonder how they did it...I liked the cross talk, unfortunately, Roger couldn't understand any of it. I couldn't really translate anything without losing all the comical meaning — I felt powerless...I guess that is what you call "lost in translation"...
LaoShe tea house is a good place for foreign friends.
Since Roger is mostly a vegetarian, I opted for "culture cuisine" instead. Andrea arranged the welcome dinner for Roger with FreeWheel Beijing team at XinJiang Red Rose (新疆红玫瑰餐厅), to give Roger a taste of XinJiang culture - a very distinct minority culture. Our first choice was 阿凡提嘉年华, however, we couldn't get reservation due to China's end-of-year-company-banquet tradition. It turned out that Red Rose experience worked out great - Roger got invited to dance with the hottest performer on the stage!! I got sooo many inquiries of the video afterward, it is a hot commodity now.
I took Roger to LaoSheTeaHouse 老舍茶馆 the following evening, a good place to experience different flavors of traditional Chinese culture. I took Mike and Steve to the same place, they liked it. A typical show at the tea house would include a short episode of Peking Opera 京剧, face off 变脸, ventriloquy 口技, double light drum 含灯大鼓, cross talk 相声 etc. Peking Opera was ok that night, they embedded some modern comic cross talk in the opera, which I was not a fan of. Faceoff was nice, it is an upper scale version of the one showing at a Sichuan restaurant I like (巴国布衣). We enjoyed ventriloquy, the two performers mimicked birds, different sounds of nature, transportation vehicles, etc. Very talented. Double light drum is a strange performance, the two singers sang with bamboo stick in their mouths, on top of the bamboo stick, there were two lighted candles. They sang beautifully for the entire performance without blowing off the candles...I wonder how they did it...I liked the cross talk, unfortunately, Roger couldn't understand any of it. I couldn't really translate anything without losing all the comical meaning — I felt powerless...I guess that is what you call "lost in translation"...
LaoShe tea house is a good place for foreign friends.
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