AIDA

At the beginning of every month all the foreigners in Tianjin race for the latest issue of the "JIN Magazine" at their nearest ex-pat hot spot. Okay, not really, but every month it's available and most of us will pick one up. It is a free magazine for ex-pats living in Tianjin and it has an assortment of articles, reviews of restaurants, upcoming events, and whatever else ex-pats might want/need to know about Tianjin. I was flipping through the December issue and saw that AIDA, the musical, was going to be in town for a few days. I'd never heard of the musical but knowing my love of musicals and seeing that all the music was written by Elton John and Tim Rice, I figured it couldn't be all that bad and it was something different to do. So, I convinced a friend to go with me and off to the land of musical-bliss we went!


The story of AIDA is kind of like "Romeo and Juliet" - two families at war, set in Egypt. The music is all very African-themed and as in most musicals, the singing leaves goosebumps on your arms! I've seen a lot of musicals and out of all of them, it's surely not my favorite (how could it compare to "Wicked" !?!?) but it still provided a nice night out and the music, dance and sets turned out to be quite refreshing to me. On both sides of the stage were big screens that actually had Chinese subtitles for the entire play - impressive, although I was told after the show that the subtitles weren't all that accurate. The best part of the night was that our tickets ended up being free...it's good to know people in China! I'll be racing for the "JIN" again next time!