Henan Week

Apparently, this week has been declared "Henan Week" in the city of SF. Through a friend, DH and I were able to attend a reception where the Mayor and some political party head of the Henan province would exchange nice speeches and welcome the American-Chinese alliance blah blah.

There was a quintet of musicians that played traditional Chinese instruments in the Rotunda. The speeches took a long time because they had to translate every sentence. The province of Henan gave the Mayor a gift of two fossilized dinosaur eggs found in the province - officially inspected and verified as real dinosaur egg and approved to be removed from the country.

During the hors d'oeuvres reception, there were performance by Chinese acrobats as well as Shaolin monks (they did some kungfu moves!). They had sushi, bread, cheese, and vegetables. They also had a large bamboo steamer full of little shumai. We stayed after the event ended to chat with a woman we met who worked in the Mayor's office. It was pretty funny because she was telling us little tidbits from the inside. We got a glimpse of Willie Brown's old girlfriend...in python print tights! While we were talking, the catering company was removing all of the remaining food (no one touched the smoked salmon and cream cheese for some strange reason) and they removed the top layer of the large bamboo steamer. Underneath the shumai was another large bamboo steamer full of small meat dumplings! So yum! Hehe, so we got in some extra food. And later on, the caterers told us to take the flowers - so got a nice bouquet of mums, freesia, and dahlias.

We ended the evening with a trip to Ghiradelli Square! :P