We went for this Kung-fu show at the famous Red Theatre in Beijing on the 2nd night. The theatre itself was still 80's style, but it was more posh as compared to the one on the 1st night and the air-con was definitely stronger. And they had displays on the walls with narration of the story in different languages. Yep... There was a story to the performance, not like the previous night where it was a collection of performances from different people. This one, actually had a storyline to it.
The performance was also on a much larger scale. As seen in the pics below, they had more than twice the number of performers, they had better costumes and every single one of them wore make-up! In the previous night, there may be only 1 person who could break metal rods with their heads (1 of Shaolin's famous kung-fu performances), but in this one, they featured about 12 performers breaking metal rods with their heads at the same time. This show would be worth a visit if you are interested.
On a much serious note, there was some unhappiness with our tour guide with the arrangement of this 2nd show. As mentioned, the 1st show was included in our tour, so there was no discrepancies in the expectations, etc. However, from the time we finished the show, the tour guide started introducing to us this 2nd show and how famous, how good it was and how it is not to be missed... The tour guide also told that by going to the show, he would be able to earn points with the theatre, and then get a better allocation of seats in future.... Before we knew it, night fall came... and all the sudden... all 79 of us (bus A and bus B) were brought to the Red Theatre. We were then given tickets and then ushered very quickly into the theatre, told to sit only at the sides by the theatre pple and the show commenced. Nothing was suspected till the last dinner we had before we left Beijing. The tour guide suddenly announced that we all still owed him 180yuan each for the show on the 2nd night... We were shocked!!! Up till now and even after the show, there was no mention of payment and the tour guide certainly did not tell us that we had to pay extra to see the show.... And moreover, its 180yuan, the most expensive seats in the house... And we were only able to sit at the sides... which based on the seat plan, was only 100yuan!!! However, none of us made much complaints and each of us paid up...
Being logical and cool-headed, we didnt kick up any fuss on the spot. Anyway, it wouldnt make any sense and we had absolutely no grounds of winning, especially being in a foreign land. However, the next day, our group leader called back the Singapore travel office and lodged a complaint to tour manager regarding what happened in Beijing. The tour manager handled it well, by arranging an extra show for us Hangzhou and having our Hangzhou tour guide apologise to us and with this made clearly known to the tour management, we didnt have a 2nd occurance of anything similar during our remaining 6 days in China.
I dont know what happened to the Beijing tour guides, but I surely hope that they will not do it again and no one else will encounter this again. There is also another morale to the story... By not kicking a fuss on the spot and giving feedback to the correct people, we were able to resolve this issue in a more amicable manner, which was better and a more safer option for us being in a foreign land and there was no hard feelings (i hope) ... A message to people who intend to go China for in tour packages, please be aware of such possibilities and be careful, lest ending up with a hole in your pocket.
Saw wild monkeys today! They were totally used to people and didnt run away when we approached. In fact, they even walked along side us on the path. Think they are used to people already. And the Japanese do not feed them with tidbits, so they do not have the habit of "attacking" people for food.
