While adjusting a patient on a Saturday afternoon, I noticed 2 big trucks that had a big 8:20 on it. It was driving slow and then I noticed what I thought was a tiger. Yup, 3 of them in little cages.
You know the kind, where they can take two steps then have to turn around. Quite sad. Well I couldn’t get anyone’s attention fast enough for them to read the truck sign.
Next day I am having lunch (Spring Festival/New Year lasts from Jan 31-Feb 15th. Only off till the 6th) with Mr Lee and Du and others and all of a sudden I notice the trucks and a big tent. Jackpot, a circus is in town.
Now at this point it’s Sunday, I hadn’t experienced church for at least two weeks (my internet was down…got the wifi fixed but not direct plug in…which is much faster and less temperamental), and a new acquitance Hoven wanted to take me out to dinner. Well, I just hung out with him the day before, so I just told him about church…and since his sister in law is christian, he understood and dropped me off in time. Church is chinese and is a bit pointless to attend, but yjust something about being around other believers that calms and resets you. I tucked out of church early and headed to the circus.
Seeing the animals in the small cages and seeing a tiger pacing up front, I really had a PETA moment and almost decided not to attend. But, I was like, this isn’t going to stop them from doing it and it’s here and well I’m not a PETA person anyway. So I went.
After watching the bear balance on a beam and then have to twirl a big stick I felt uneasy again. You can see that the animals were all abused… from a goat climbing up a stair, walking across a thin beam, and the monkey on top of its head doing a handstand on its horn to the tiger walking on a gigantic ball and jumping through fire…
Case in point when the tiger was finished jumping through the hoops and it was not wanting to perform again, the owner would wipe the ground and the tiger would growl and snarl at him but would jump back to in an abused dog type of way. Oh did I mention that the animals have no claws and except for 2 teeth on the tiger-no teeth.
There were also acrobats in this show. My two favorites:
1) there were four strands of fabric that hung from the roof. A guy would climb them by wrapping the fabric around his wrists and then do flips, or leg twirls, arm twirls etc and then reverse and descend quite fast down. It was more impressive than my description but suffice it to say he was strong.
2) Two guys went up to fabrics in the middle of the tent, and secured themselves on to a tiny ladder. They proceeded to twirl the whole rope in big circles and used centripetal force to do some pretty cool spinning motions. One guy even tied a rope around his neck and the other guy held the rope and they started spinning like crazy and the guy was completely horizontal and only help on by his neck. How do they not get dizzy is beyond me.
Lastly, they got a tiger to lay on a box, and they put a rope/chain over his neck so that it couldn’t lift it to high and a robe right in front of its hind legs. A bunch of words were said and then most everyone left. But as you can see, the tiger was set up for a photo-op.
I debated about doing it, several times actually, and then well you can see that I went for it. I decided that to make it less inhumane I wouldn’t actually sit on the tiger’s back..I just hovered. It was pretty cool to feel its lungs expand between my legs and feel the fur. That was a random night.
Oh and I found out that circus’ are illegal in China, which is funny because I am quite certain they had to pull a permit and on the opposite side of “the square” is a cop trailer.
