I went to a kids dance class and a fight broke out!

 A friend of mine recommended a dance class for Babes.  The class is pretty cute, there are 10 or so little girls, all dressed up in their tutus, following the teacher.  It's not an intense ballet class or anything, there's 45 minutes of pretty intense stretching, then a break and thirty or so minutes of dancing.  All of the girls look to be somewhere between 3 and 5.  Oh they are so cute!  Anyway, yesterday there was some sort of extra class to make up for a class that they missed so we parents brought our kids up to the studio in the day instead of at night.  I missed what started the fight, but all of a sudden there were two middle aged Chinese ladies screaming at each other at the top of their lungs.  After maybe a minute or two there were five more Chinese ladies, and another minute later and all the moms (and grandmoms) waiting for their little girls were screaming at the tops of their respective lungs!  People were coming from down the hall, around the corner, all of a sudden there were grown men in on the screaming.  I don't know if they switched to Sichuan dialect or if they were screaming obscenities at each other but I didn't understand a single word of it.  I only know that there was a little pushing, a lot of finger waving, and I expected the slapping to start at any minute (it didn't). 
But this brings me back to the whole China is a powder keg....  Any little thing, and I mean little, can start people off on the yelling and screaming (often fighting too).  I'm out a little more than I used to be, but I used to see fights on the streets all the time.  Over train seats, over prices, I'm fairly sure the dance class fight was over a bump (someone bumped into a chair) or some other such nonsense.  Even here in laid back Sichuan people are ready to fight. 

To market, to market to buy a ......

For today's adventure I went off to the great big lotus market (called hehuachi in Chinese). I've been to this market once before about two months ago. It is huge and sprawling and a bit overwhelming. Last time I went I had to take a taxi, which took me 45 minutes. However between then and now the new subway line has opened up and getting on the subway and heading north took maybe half that time. Unfortunately as we were on the subway heading north there was a HUGE fight on the train not half a car away from us. From what we could tell, it was between a man and a woman who didn't know each other, and it might have started over a seat. But they were angry. They were pushing, shoving, kicking, yelling, screaming... I'm talking high drama. I was impressed with the security though, by the time we got to the next station there were security waiting to take them off the train. I swear, the pent up anger in people here.
Ah, but the market. This market is crazy. They have just about everything there. For example, today the people in my group bought Christmas decorations, wrapping paper, stationary, wind chimes, ribbon, painted pictures, seat cushions, fabric, metal snaps, buttons, wall stickers, and toys. We could have also bought rugs, plastic flowers, purses, cross stitch kits, costumes, aprons, blow driers, irons, and furry pants. Plus hundreds of other things that it would take me all day to name.
I think it would take you at least a year to go through every single stall there. Every where you look someone is selling something or other and for cheap. I didn't even bargain at most places because the price was so low to begin with that I couldn't see how the people would make money. For instance a bought about 30 buttons for a dollar. How are you going to make that cheaper, and is it even worth it. Sure I could have gotten it for 75 cents, but why?