McDonald’s No. 9 Grilled Chicken Sandwich: The Choice of Stranded Chinese Acrobats

What do you do with 16 young Chinese acrobats who show up at your doorstep? Bill Thompson found out this week. Thompson’s the executive director of the Union Gospel Mission homeless shelter in Dallas. On Monday, a group of 13 to 20-year-old acrobats, who make up the Shanghai-based Guanhua Acrobatic team, flew into DFW with one-way tickets. They were scheduled to begin a cross-country performance tour, but a scheduling snafu with their circus promoter left them high and dry.

With nowhere to stay, a chaperone called Thompson, who took the crew to McDonald’s where, oddly, they all ordered the No. 9. The group stayed at the shelter for a few nights, but have since been relocated to a ranch near Dallas, presumably until they leave to go on tour. The team put on an impromptu show on Wednesday for reporters which included cartwheels (!), flips (!!), human pyramids (!!!), and “tossing straw hats like boomerangs” (eh). Seriously, how did we miss this??