Who says parents don't love and protect their children?

My family frequents the Chinese Cultural Center near the Phoenix Airport for random Taiwanese meals, dim sum, and delicious Asian supermarket treats. During one of our recent visits, we were happy to discover that the CCC would be having a celebration for "Zhong Qiu Jie," aka "Mid-Autumn Festival."

After treating ourselves to an appetizer of scallion pancakes and strawberry slushies with boba (anyone who served in Taiwan should now be salivating...), mom, Ron, and I made our way towards the performance area to meet with my brother and his family. I quickly abandoned my plan of sticking with mom and Ron after mom began pushing/elbowing her way through the dense crowd in an effort to get to the coveted/mostly occupied seats in front of the stage. Refusing to associate myself with such pushiness, I cased the perimeter of short Asian people straining their necks to see the stage in a quest to find the rest of my family members. After a joyful reunion, we joined mom and Ron who had somehow cleared almost a whole row of seats.

The ensembles of young girls doing Chinese fan/ribbon dances were cute and entertaining. (Not pictured).

Emcee "Miss Chinese Phoenix" in her formal wear was slightly mockable (and we did mock), but also entertaining.

And then she ("Lady") took the stage. (See picture, above right).

After a short introduction on how Lady missed her mother and her home country, she started her solo. And by solo, I mean a BLARING, operatic version of a self-written Chinese song that represented an ode to Lady's mother and homeland. Three of Kent's children's hands immediately went to cover their ears. [Kent's resulting look of death directed at each individual child communicated the message that the ear covering was inappropriate/rude. They then promptly dropped their hands from their ears; the looks of pain remained on their faces].

At this point, I glanced to my right and caught a glimpse of the picture to the left--the mom, sitting on the ground with her son on her lap, was gripping her son's ears as hard as she could to shield him from Lady's unconscionable decibel level. I determined that I simply needed a picture of that loving gesture... and aimed my CB over at the mom.

Unfortunately, after the first blurry picture... I drew some [embarassing] attention to the fact that I was taking a picture in the middle of Lady's performance. Lucky for both you and me, however, the mom retained her vice grip on her son's ears and despite the girl over her shoulder looking at me like I was a retard for taking the picture, and a moment of desperation where I re-angled the CB to pretend I was taking a picture of my brother sitting to my right, I caught the photo you see above.

Then the lady launched into her second... yes second... song.

Of all the songs in all the world to choose, she decided to translate 'Edelweiss' into Chinese. Uh... that song SUNG WELL is already a little... taxing. As the sound quality bordered on offensive, I glanced to my left and saw mom and Ron in the positions pictured here. I apologize for my inability to capture a non-blurry photo of the moment... but my hand was shaking as I was laughing uncontrollably [but silently].

We decided to leave the performance area to stuff ourselves on Taiwanese food after that performance. I'm thinking that decision was for the best.