I’ve heard China described as an “emerging” country, but as I’ve just experienced, emerging from Communism takes time. The following is an edited summary of the good, the bad, and some of the ugly from my second trip to China with an excellent Chicago-area community ensemble called the South Shore Orchestra.
The flights from D.C. to Chicago to Shanghai took about 15 hours. After retrieving luggage and meeting the other musicians, we took buses to old town Shanghai. There was apparently no good place to drop us off, but after going down the same road three times, they finally stopped and we got our long-awaited dumplings! Then it was back on the buses for about three more hours on the road. At the hotel, those who requested single rooms got them worked out, thus securing the same “single” status for the rest of the trip. By the way, what’s the deal with glass bathroom walls in Asia? Why would anyone want to see into a bathroom? I’m sure my American mind just isn’t catching some cultural clue here.
One of our early gigs was a reminder of how much effort China puts into the outside of many of their concert halls. An animated light show on the physical buildings is a regular thing there – very impressive and cool to watch. Hotel lobbies are also given the royal treatment. Too bad many of the rooms aren’t; unresponsive thermostats and stinky rooms unfortunately made multiple appearances during the trip. Dressing rooms in the concert venues were fine, if slightly crowded, but that’s because we had so many musicians in the group.
One evening we were unable to rehearse because, unbeknownst to us (or maybe just me?), our director was slated to run through a few tunes with a local high school orchestra. They took priority, which was fine, but getting to the venue late and expecting to rehearse two large groups was just not possible. Many of us hung backstage and bonded by taking silly pictures.
Each day during the first week basically consisted of a bus ride with lunch and rest stops, hotel check-in, concert performance, and then dinner – usually in that order, but not always. At least once we had to change and perform before getting our rooms. But at the end of most days, I managed to spend some down time with my new friends, sometimes with a little nightcap, sometimes not.
During one of our long bus rides, we had to stop from 8:30-12:00 for a road closure because of fog. Yes, fog. More silliness ensued, including chatting, dancing, Tai Chi, and walking from the busses down to the toll booths about ½ mile away, and of course, taking pictures.
One of the little games we would play at the rest stops was guessing what snack food we were buying based on the Chinese lettering, pictures, and brightly colored packaging. Sometimes these items had English words, sometimes they didn’t. Partly because of this, one of our catchphrases for the trip was “Whatever.”
One of the highlights of the trip was the amazing response we usually got from our audiences. At the end of many of our concerts, the audience inundated us with programs and pens, so they (mostly kids of all ages) could get autographs. This constant barrage created a kind of quasi-rock concert atmosphere, but when pens ran out of ink, or we ran out of time, the fans understood with a nice smile and a wave. No frustration, no anger, just a love of meeting some foreign musicians. Touches my heart.
Sometimes being a professional means working in less-than-stellar circumstances, and I give major kudos to our cellos, string basses, and percussionists. They were frequently forced to use, um…let’s call it “sub-standard” equipment. Old equipment plus cold temps made things quite interesting when dealing with snare heads, timpani pedals, and cello/bass strings. The term “exploding cellos” made it onto our list of things that went wrong. And no, there were no cello-related injuries, but lots of last-minute rebuilding.
We had a long day in Zhengzhou on the first day of 2018. Up early to be on the road to our next gig in a convention center that held 3,000, with background animation on a huge screen, theatrical lighting from above, and a boom camera. We gave our best performance yet, but my hotel room sucked. There was no toilet paper, a cold thermostat that wouldn’t go above 17 Celsius, and stupid holes in the window panes, allowing the outdoor air to get in. (I later learned that the likely reason for these holes was so smoke could escape to the outside when the guest was a smoker. Great.) Anyway, thick bed covers helped me get some sleep, but I believed I had caught a cold. At that point we had a week left in this trip, and I just wanted to go home.
Luckily, there was little road time the next day and I felt better. During the day, more than halfway through this journey, we were finally able see some mountainside stone carvings at a place called Longmen Grottoes. We traversed many steps along the bottom of what seemed to be a mountain chain, gawking at hundreds of statues of Buddhist carving art, depicting warriors and gods of various sizes. We gave a good concert that night.
We were rushed to the train station and crammed into the small waiting area, only to wait for a late train, and eat KFC standing in place. Urgh. This “hurry up and wait” scenario played out in various forms many times during the trip. I ended up eating more fast food in these two weeks than I have in the previous two years. And yes, KFC is big over there. Finally the train came, and it was my first time in a communal sleeper car – each car was an open space with a narrow corridor down one side that opened to a series of alcoves, with six bunks to an alcove. I was on one of the top bunks. No problem, I’m still limber. I got surprisingly good sleep for five hours. Then another bus, dumplings in the airport restaurant, and a flight to Inner Mongolia.
We encountered more snazzy lighted buildings and our hotel looked like a palace – amazingly beautiful. The temperature in my room was about 25 Celsius, and I was only too happy to be able to turn it down. At that point our concerts were quite good, but still increasing in quality. The inspiration for this particular gig was that we were the very first ensemble to perform the inaugural concert for this brand new venue. I think many of us felt a quiet pride that comes with such an opportunity.
The next day we caught a plane to Beijing to catch bullet train to Xi’an, but many trains were cancelled because of snow/ice on the tracks. After waiting for a few hours in approximately 20 degrees Fahrenheit, we ended up taking another overnight train, this one with four bunks per enclosed compartment instead of six. Why did no one know about this ahead of time? “Because China.” Another trip catchphrase. I blew off steam with friends until about 2:30.
We spent the last few days in Xi’an (pronounced “Shee-Ahn”), which is a beautiful city with lighted temples, the Muslim Quarter, and yes, more snow. We ate Mickey D’s for breakfast on the busses, then we saw the famed Terra Cotta warriors. It was a cold day, but the lightly falling snow made the campus quite beautiful, if slippery. We had an extremely short dumpling dinner, which was supposed to be a nice banquet, but in an effort to made amends for not having the bullet train experience, our host booked tickets for everyone to a Chinese stage show. We were therefore rushed to the show (only missed the first two acts, out of five total) after dinner – excellent costumes, decorations, singing, and acrobatics. It was a solid show, but I was disappointed we didn’t get to try all the dozens of different dumplings the restaurant was famous for.
The next day, a small group of us took the city bus (for one Yuan, which is about 30 cents) down to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, where we hiked up seven stories to see some amazing views. It was another cold, snowy day and we didn’t have time for much else. I went back to the hotel (a high-end place called Sofitel – recommended) to catch the van with a few others to our 6:00 massage appointment. Asian massage style is different. I enjoyed some of it, but mostly it felt like body torture; the pounding and slapping and deep pressing was too…violent. I prefer Swedish modes. Surviving that, I ate at a Chinese Pizza Hut with a couple good friends. We tried Peking Duck and New Orleans pizzas, plus shrimp balls and buffalo wings. Everything was very tasty!
Due to more miscommunication from our hosts, people had to book their own travel plans for an extra day. I said goodbye to some folks in the hotel bar the night before, and to those I came across in the airport. It would’ve been nice to have a proper goodbye with more of the group, but our scattered departures made that nearly impossible.
All in all, I’d say China has lots to offer, but be ready for last-minute changes everywhere you go. Be flexible. Also, if you’re going to spend time in any of the big cities, bring a mask. Pollution is rampant.