So, a while back, Max (the owner of our school) invited us to a tea festival he was hosting. Max owns a few tea houses around town (as well as other business) and he threw together a tea festival to promote them. It was basically a night of (mostly) traditional Chinese entertainment, and entertaining it was…


Joanne getting all excited before the performance.

John, who doesn’t smoke, carries cigarettes around in order to… what’s the polite way to say this… “charm” various people. Here he is working his magic.

The MC! Keen eye’d viewers will recognise him as the MC from Rob and Cheer’s Wedding.

Dragons!

Some kung fu!

More.

These guys were from the Shaolin temple (where I visited last year) and did various displays of strengths that you see Shaolin Kung Fu monks do. Here the guy is bending a metal pole (the type used in reinforced concrete) using his neck.

Ouch!

  
More of a display of physics than strength. 20×20 nails = 400 nails, the guy on the very bottom has about 1 and a half guys on him. 1.5*70kg = 105kg. So, about 260g per nail. Not enough to pierce the skin.

 
This however, I don’t think your average guy could pull off.

Time for some singing.

  
Left: Of course, throughout the night there was tea a-plenty. Right: Some traditional Chinese opera.

Then, we somehow got roped into going on stage and saying how good the tea houses are. ^_^ everyone likes a foreign endorsement.

No tea festival is complete without a Michael Jackson impersonator, and no Michael Jackson impersonation is complete without bubbles. (Bubbles — get it?)

Shadow puppets.

Watching in awe.

Behind the scenes.

  
More traditional singing.

A rather funny play about the tea houses.

This isn’t black and white to be arty, the colours were just messed up. The lighting had to be changed at the last minute when they realised that if they plugged in everything, there wasn’t enough power to juice it all — oops. So, excuse the quality of the photos.

All 167 photos, here!

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