Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Zhang Yimou's Yangshou River Show

Zhang Yimou is internationally-famous for directing the $100M Opening Ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. Unsurprisingly, Beijing '08 was not his first rodeo, and one of his most famous creations is the Yangshuo River Show. 

Any trip to the fishing village-turned-tourist destination of Yangshou would be incomplete without it. The combination of precision small craft manuevering, rhythmic dancing, water buffalos, ridiculous floating scenery, high-power lights and hundreds of performers make this one awesome spectacle of a show. The pictures and video really don't do it justice. Those two are of the audience and the "stage", pre-show. 

That is like 80 guys, each standing on a tiny boat, holding up and waving enormous bolts of red fabric. 

Here's the video. What can I say? This stuff was creative, technical and amazing, but you kinda had to be there.  

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