Sunshine, hacky sack and your Jill should meet my Jack...

No, the photo to the right was not taken a moment before I broke my crown and Jul came tumbling after.

Jackie Chan had not just kicked the Kung Pao Chicken kicked out of me, either.

Rather, our only full day in Xi'an kicked off with an upbeat visit to Xingqing Park for community exercise and activities.

I was actually playing Jianzi, a forerunner of Hacky Sack that uses a weighted shuttle cock.

Jianzi began in the Han Dynasty, 2000 years ago.

My earbud jerked out due to my contortions to keep the feathered hacky sack airborne, so I didn't notice when most of the group had moved on to the next activity, fan dancing.

When I caught up, there was Julie making her late mother proud.  Until her knees finally gave out, Edna had been an Eastern Star fan dancer.

I even had time to do a bit of fan dancing myself before moving on.

In different areas around the park, community organizers led large groups of locals in exercises and other activities, including Tai Chi, arm-and-hand exercises, partner massage and yoga.  I tried them all.

We eventually found our way to a musical area, where a brass band played what Yuan said were old political anthems for the Chinese Communist Party while the crowd sang the propaganda-filled lyrics.

It seemed like everyone was having fun, and without doubt, some elder folks yearn for the simpler olden days when they had no requirement to think for themselves, an era now perhaps idealized in their minds, even if much of the country was starving when pure Communism reigned under Mao.

Then again, these community leaders were probably Chinese Communist Party members, whether retired or active --- all must be card-carrying Communists to serve in government --- seeking to promote a positive image for the CCP.

Regardless of lyrics, people can still enjoy music from their childhood.  After all, many agnostics and atheists nonetheless enjoy Christmas music, don't they?

Senior citizens make up the majority of park participants, and they use these gatherings as social events as well as exercise.

Grandmothers bring carefully assembled portfolios of single offspring to try to make a suitable match.

The one child policy resulted in many daughters being aborted in order to have a son to carry on the family name and provide security to parents when they reach their golden years.

As a result, the competition for any bride can be keen, especially for a guy who didn't spring from the most attractive part of the gene pool.

A grandmother will skip past the glamour shots and instead show that her grandson has a solid career.  Owning his own apartment makes one a particularly good catch, and that has been the basis for many a suitable match.

When I say owning an apartment, I really mean more of a lease where the tenant has exclusive use of the property for the remainder of a 70 year land lease from the CCP.  As mentioned previously, the Chinese Communist Party owns 100% of the land in China.

Over lunch, I decided to try my hand at being a Grandmother.  Our three children enjoy significant relationships already, and granddaughter Emma turned 8 on the following week, so I pitched our nephew Brett to a young lady the same age and her mother who shared our table.  Like Brett, they happen to live near Parker, Colorado.

It seems I'm a pretty inept matchmaker, as I don't even know the pretty girl's name, and Julie said later that the mother had previously said something about the young lady phoning her boyfriend in the middle of the night.  But Brett and the young lady would have made beautiful children!

For lunch, we had the noodle dish that Marco Polo famously brought back from his travels and introduced to his homeland in Europe.

I have to say that Italy and the USA improved the recipe, but it was a nice change of pace to have what we would call spaghetti in a marinara meat sauce in China after so many days of Chinese fare.

The garlic toast was the best part of the meal, which of course had me wondering if China had actually invented that, too.  Marco Polo reported that bread was not consumed in China at the time of his journeys.  The Silk Road went both ways, after all.