Ocean World

I must share an adventure William and I had yesterday. We went to Ocean World with a friend and her little boy. When we pulled in, we both questioned if it was even open. The parking lot was barren and little activity appeared to be going on from the outside. After a boisterous exchange (the Chinese are surprisingly very loud) between my driver and the security guard, we figured out which building we should go in. We approached with little confidence, but discovered upon entering that it was indeed open.

We paid our entrance fee and entered the maritime exhibit. They had tanks of dolphins, seals and, in typical random Chinese fashion, Arctic foxes. You can tell the quality of my Chinese when I sincerely thought an announcement over the loudspeaker was the dolphin "talking" to us through the glass.

We looked at the dolphins for only a matter of minutes when a small group of Chinese came in and soon we became the attraction rather than the marine wildlife. William is getting less patient with the "Hello Boy!," the pictures snapped in his face, and frequent touching. However, when a women approached with freshly popped popcorn, he was all smiles and willing to say "xie xie," which is thank you in Chinese.

We then went to the stadium prepared to hold over a thousand bodies and watched the Chinese version of a scaled down Sea World show, with a handful of Chinese. When we sat down William was worried he would get splashed (we went to Sea World this summer and he obviously remembered the SPLASH ZONE). I assured him he wouldn't get wet, but he still moved away from me. The show was entertaining, one of my favorite parts was the choreographed moves and the music choices: the theme from the Titanic as a Chinese trainer and seal slow danced and the Star Wars theme as the dolphins swam around the pool. I was laughing out loud. William loved it! His favorite was watching the dolphins jump, "HIGH!" - said with arms moving quickly up in the air and with much enthusiasm.

We then went to another larger building and enjoyed the other delights of Ocean World. We saw many sea creatures; I wasn't familiar with most of them. We saw real live underwater twirling, spinning, dancing mermaids, all done to the theme of Titanic. At one point Spiderman joined the fun. I am not sure what Spiderman has to do with Mermaids and the Titanic, clearly a Chinese connection we Americans don't understand.

My personal favorite was feeding the turtles. I felt bad for them because they were truly starving. They had Styrofoam bowls of small fish heads, tails, carrots and lettuce prepared for us to buy. At first I was going to use my hands to feed them, but smartened up when I saw how the turtles snapped. So, I used the Chinese version of a pick-up gizmo that you can buy on late night T.V., it is typically advertised targeting geriatrics who can't bend over to pick up their glasses. It was amazing to feel the power of the turtles jaws when they ate the food.

We also went through a very cool sea tunnel, with fish all around us. I was surprised to see a sunken Statue of Liberty, with a shark swimming around it, with "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music playing in the background. (I think this is representative of Chinese foreign policy towards America: let us be calm listening to harmless "Edelweiss," all the while sinking us to the bottom of the ocean to be devoured by sharks!) My creative brain couldn't even make-up something this, well, Chinese.