Today we headed to Zhoucan Great Street, commonly known as Old Street to the locals. This street is famous for several reasons.

One of the main reasons is because it has been used as a film set for many Chinese movies.

Another reason is because it was the area of the first private bank. The street is known for its sesame cakes, too.

We were supposed to tour the factory to see how these cakes were made, but unfortunately the power was out on the entire street.

Although we did not get to see sesame cakes being made, we saw other interesting things.

There was one area off of the street that had many different rooms. Each room had a distorted view with the furniture in different positions (on the ceiling, the wall, etc).

Further along the street was an exhibit showing how people dyed silk in the old days.

At the private bank, there was a courtyard out back with a small house for the manager. The tour guide explained to us the bank used to hide the money under the floorboards in the home, because they did not have any safes.

Not everything we saw had to do with the street’s history. While we were on the tour, we watched two magicians perform magic tricks.

The first magician was a woman who showed us different card tricks. The second magician, a man, used three golden bowls and sponge balls.

He would show us the bowls had no trick doors or extra balls in them, then shuffle around the bowls and make the balls appear in different amounts.

The old man engaged our group in his trick, challenging us by asking how many balls we thought we under each bowl.

Even though they only spoke Chinese, it was still fun to observe.

— Katie Haughey, a junior psychology major