Shanghai'd

Culture.

I know, wenming, wenhua... I am certainly becoming cultured and civilized. :) Anyway, the last week has been been filled with wenhua for me.

Starting Saturday night, we headed off to our local MOMA (2 blocks from our house, that should have been the first clue to what we had in store). There was an art exhibition planned featuring live contemporary jazz. As we just had a massive storm, the weather was perfect for what I had in mind - dim lighting, sipping red wine, chatting and meeting new likewise cultured folk to some relaxing music. However, the evening consisted of luke warm Tsingtao, high school-esque abstract art exhibit and music that was a bit too contemporary for our taste. Picture one guy wailing on the drums with a saxophonist doing his best to keep up by taking huge breaths and blowing through the instrument while hitting random notes - for 30 minutes (before we left with splitting headaches). Probably the most entertaining bit of the evening was a Chinese girl dancing that made us feel like we were in a David Lynch movie.

Sunday night was the close of the 10th annual international film festival. We caught the last picture - To Return "Volver" with Penelope Cruz. Love that dishwashing scene camera angle. Great movie. We moved back to "normal" on the culture scale.

Finally last night I completely rounded out all the culture I will need for a while - I saw Christina Aguilera in concert! First of all Christina has a great voice and is obviously very passionate about her music. More impressive was the choreographed dance and costume change! Very entertaining and fun. What a good time. No opening band, no drawn out en chore. If you have never been to a pop concert before, I highly recommend it.