Sunday, June 24, 2007

New York Panhandlers should come to Wuhan for training

My roommate Tim and I took the bus together to work today and we saw one of the weirdest things that we have seen so far in China. The bus pulled up to one of the stops and a Chinese woman entered through the back door with a huge speaker connected to an mp3 player and mixer. She plugged her guitar into the system and her headset/microphone and started performing. I am used to people performing on the subway in New York, but never on the bus. If you have ever taken the bus in China, you know that it is like riding in a car with hydraulics. The bus goes up and down and jerks back and forth. This woman was able to pull off her performance without missing a beat. While she was playing the bus pulled into the next stop and since she was standing in front of the back door, she lifted up her system, moved it over and continued playing. I was amazed so I recorded some of her performance with my video camera and Tim took a picture of her. After her performance, I assume she asked for money in Chinese and everyone ignored her, including myself. I guess that is another universal thing—ignoring panhandlers on public transportation.

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