Ancient China

We completed our quick study of Ancient China with a trip to The Red Lantern Festival put on by the Chinese American Museum in LA.  We started our trip at the Panda Inn in Pasadena for lunch, then hopped on the MetroRail to get to LA.  It was a fun train ride and so nice to not deal with traffic and parking! 

We got to help paint a picture that will be displayed in the museum in the near future.  The theme was Asian Hip-Hop.  Hmm...

They had all sorts of Chinese crafts the kids could do and Charity wanted to do it all!  There was entertainment also.  I was a little disappointed that the entertainment was not as Chinese inspired as I had hoped, but we saw some neat Filipino dancers, a pretty good magician, and heard a Muslim rapper.  Hmm, again...

Charity made this hat and it actually made it home intact so she could wear it the next day...

In honor of studying Ancient China, my mom treated us to tickets to Shen Yun.  You know, the billboards you see all over the place and have been curious about?  Yea, that's Shen Yun.  

I wanted to go because it fits in perfectly with Ancient China, but I was too cheap to pay for our whole family.  My mom surprised us and was so nice to treat us to the show!  As far as being a great supplement to our ancient China study, it's a thumbs up!  If you are hoping to see Chinese acrobats, you will be disappointed.  It is classical Chinese dancing, and very entertaining, but no balancing on chairs that reach the roof, or balancing spinning plates on human pyramids.  The props and costumes were beautiful, and the dancing was pretty good, nothing like a top professional ballet company, but pretty good.  I believe it is overpriced, and probably wouldn't go again unless I got a sweet deal on tickets, I am talking like 75% off!  But, the political and religious points they made in the program were so interesting to me.  I went home that night and stayed up late learning about the falun dafa, the Chinese government, and the dance company.  I feel enlightened about a whole new group of people I had never heard of before.  And, I think its pretty cool that they use dance as a way to spread their message!