With our bellies filled, we walk back towards the stage, where the Zatsugi, the Chinese acrobatics, show is about to start. Flowing, uplifting music carried by flute melodies, floats from the loudspeakers and gets more and more animated, interspersed with dramatic intervals of gongs and cymbals clanging and banging to the bottom of our ears. Then, a large dragon held by two people, with a huge red and golden head and a wild red mane dances out onto the stage, followed by a smaller one-person dragon, and the two start dancing and playing to the music. A beautiful girl with a cream-coloured muscly back wearing a yellow suit comes out and, with elegantly twisting hands and stretching arms holds out and throws an ornate ball for the two dragons which makes them shake their heads and manes and twist their bodies in happy playfulness.
A giant ball, one and a half people in diameter, is rolled onto the stage, and in an impressive final, the big two-person-dragon jumps on top of the ball and walks it around the stage.
The dragons exit. The crowds are disappointingly silent, and, unable to whistle, I scream and holler, and clap as loudly and appreciatively as I can.
Next, a juggler demonstrates his marvellous tricks to us, including a six-badminton bat juggle, in which two bats are always in the air, spinning around synchronously before they land back in his hands, and the next pair goes up, giving an impression like a flying vehicle with a complicated mechanism of wheels turning in opposite directions.
Mouth agape, we then watch, as the beautiful girl in the yellow suit we have seen before performs a whole arsenal of breath-taking contortions that make it appear like she has no bones and is made of nothing but flexible muscle and shark collagen. Looking around the crowd, I notice a large number of salivitating men, who stand staring, transfixed at the startling possibilities opening up in their minds as they watch. And while this bendy, yellow beam of sunshine stands on her hands and curves her feet into scorpion tails above her back to place them in front of her shoulders, she smiles at us!
When she finishes her impressive performance, finally, the last act enters the stage. This is another beautiful girl, slightly bigger around the waist than the first one, which makes her act even more impressive to watch (see picture): she is riding a three people tall monocycle, on which she parades round the stage. Then, the young juggler comes in and throws up a silver bowl to her. She balances it on her foot, continuing to ride the monocycle moving the pedal back and forth with the other foot. Then, she kicks up the bowl and catches it on top of her head. This continues. More bowls are thrown up, and stacked on top of her head. After the sixth bowl, finally, there is a silver jug which lands inside the bowls, and, last, to top it off, a silver spoon that is balanced on her foot, and then flies through the air to land in the middle of the jug. The crowds should be cheering and hollering, but it seems like everybody has been stunned into silence, unable to offer any audible appreciation except for some faint clapping. The acrobats assemble on stage, and the presenter thanks us nonetheless, and invites us all to have another look around the beautiful stalls and shops here in Nanking-machi, and to watch their group perform again in the future. In this spirit, Happy New Year, everyone! Happy New Year!
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