Children acrobats - China

As our Inner Mongolia tour did not meet our expectations (blog post to be written soon), I coerced/blackmailed/convinced our tour operator to reimburse us or make it up to us. She offered free tickets to a show either Beijing opera, Kung fu or Acrobatics.

It was easy to rule out Beijing opera. Neither Warren or I wanted to listen to the wailing & clanging that the opera is famous for. We had heard a part of it during a ballet show and that was the limit of our "cultural immersion" when it came to the opera. Then it was down to Kung fu vs Acrobatics. I decided to go with acrobatics. I thought it would be cool tricks, with crazy flexibility. And I was right about that, except I did not think the tricks will be performed by kids who were barely even teenagers, if that.

Warren and I got to the show late, due to bad directions. We had really good seats. And once the show started, we saw little kids on the stage. This made us uncomfortable - we wanted to enjoy the show but not support children being on stage to perform day after day. And some of the acts, just could not be safe for your body. But the show was pretty good.

I wonder how long the kids were trained for. But when you see a girl doing the following act (and see all her muscles ripple) and she doesn't even look like a teenager, you wonder if that is an indication why China wins so many gold medals in gymnastics:

And then there was this cutest kid who did some daredevil tricks. He was happy, jumping around and making everyone cringe in their seats.

But then, if you had a telephoto lens and could creep on his face, he looked just like another kid, scared to make a mistake.

 There was also a lot of standing on other people's heads, balancing things using your teeth and doing crazy splits. I just would have felt better if everyone was a little older...
And also if they did not have tacky digital backgrounds like a swan (or a blue vase)

There were also a few other acts. One in particular made both Warren and I think about the Human Centipede movie (open link at your own risk).

The show ended with 5 motorcycles in a sphere which was absolutely terrifying. I have a video, but it won't do justice.

After the show, I looked into the legal aspects of allowing kids to perform and there wasn't a whole lot written about it. I just found one article that talked about parents "renting" their kids to be street performers. But I wonder if that is also the story at big establishments in Beijing. These shows are famous, ticket prices go from 120 - 600 yuan ( 20 - 100 USD). Maybe there is a legal way of doing it or maybe no one pays a lot of attention to it, but it is difficult to believe that these kids are still going to school and living a normal life when they are performing crazy stunts on the stage day in and day out.