Kaifeng

The Foreign Affairs Office at MapleBear organized a trip for all foreign teachers to go to the neighboring city of Kaifeng.  It was an ancient capital city during several dynasties, so it is a very old place with a lot of cool history.  The main purpose of our trip was to see the chrysanthemum festival that happens every year in the fall.  We went to Dragon Pavilion Park, an indoor market for lunch, and Millennium City Park.

The Dragon Pavilion Park was so beautiful with so many flowers.  I can't even imagine how much work it must take to create and then maintain everything.  It was a bit of a drizzly and gross day but that didn't stop the swarms of people from coming to see the flower festival.

Certain places don't get a lot of foreigners and Kaifeng is one of those places.  We were constantly being stopped to take pictures with people, which is funny at first but at a certain point you just want to look at the flowers.  We tried to take a foreigner group shot at one point and a crowd formed around us.  People were shoving children and friends into the shot with us.  I eventually started a countdown and we made a run for it.

The foreign teachers on the trip.

A special shot for my old man.

I was mobbed after this photo with people wanting to pose with me.

One of the floating gardens.

Flower dancers.

The Emperor's Dragon Throne.

After the Dragon Pavilion Park we went to a huge indoor market with hundreds of food and merchandise stalls.  There was some really weird food, even for Chinese standards here.  

It may have been rainy outside but there were blue skies inside the market.

Some sort of bean and rice mixture in a bamboo cup.

I'm pretty sure most of these would be illegal in the States.

Seahorses, beetles, and other things I would never want to eat.

Giant centipedes and tarantulas...

You choose a skewer and they dip it in hot oil.

I don't even know.

The Millennium City Park was a little more touristy with model buildings, reenactments, and shows, plus more flowers.  It was a lot of fun though.  We saw a Chinese acrobatic circus thing, a traditional wedding reenactment, a fire breather, and a reenactment of some attack that happened on the Kaifeng city walls way back when.

The girls.

A flower dragon!

Posing with some giant vegetables because why not?

The poor guy looked like he drank kerosene for a living.

The bad guys preparing to attack the walls.

There were little stalls throughout the park where you could dress up and of course we had to do it.  The women working the stall were loving it but also stressed out because they wanted it to be perfect.  The stress was also multiplied by the crowds of people that surrounded us to take pictures of the foreigners dressing up.

The crew all dressed up.

Some of the paparazzi. 

Vegas show girl headdress?

Stray thoughts:

• I had to share this picture of my little Gucci man.  He actually lives in my same apartment complex as me and his grandma looooves it.  She gets so excited whenever she sees me.

• I hope I didn't freak anyone out about the air quality here.  Some days can be like this day when it was similar to air back in the States!  This past week it was all in the good air range.  So while some days you feel like you can cut through the haze, other days it's completely fine.  I live in a strange place.