July 15 2016
Today wasn’t incredibly exciting, so I’ll skip to China.
Okay, so the adventure in China! Just a little into, I went as a chaperone for my brother’s orchestra. They are a bunch of high school students between the ages of 14 and 17 playing beautiful music. they played Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, Weber’s Turandot overture, selections from George Bizet’s L’arlesienne suite 1 and 2, and more. They gave quite impressive concerts each time!
First day, not too exciting, we land at roughly 8, get into the hotel later, yeah. As we’re getting to the hotel, we’re told that the curfew for the students is 11. My group kind of looks at each other with the same expression, “that’s not happening”. They all agree that staying up at this point is not going to be possible, I was happy because it meant that I didn’t have to stay up and make sure they were in. It’s late enough when we got to the hotel that going to bed directly was fine. When we landed in China, there was a certain something in the air. I was pretending that it was just fog. hehe. No. The first day wasn’t really a day, it was really a few hours.
Second day, we get the trip going with the first concert. We begin by driving around looking at stuff in Beijing. That was fun. Before heading to the conservatory, we were given some time to look around. While we were there, we got the first taste of fake watches. Honestly, if it weren’t for trademark rules, it was almost worth buying the watches. With enough wheeling and dealing, people were getting the fake rolexes for less than $2 USD. Some people were able to get them down under a dollar. At that price, even Wal-Mart can’t compete. We spent a lot of the day at the music conservatory. At least the orchestra did. While there, they had master classes, where select students gave a brief performance to a professor at the university, and then were given recommendations on how to play it better. I went to my brother’s, he played the Dvorak cello concerto. he does that well, he and the professor joked about his cello and bow. The cello is rented, and the bow costed $10, so he couldn’t possibly play as well as he normally does. His normal bow costs ~$4500, so no way is he bringing that on the plane. Then they go to rehearse for the concert that evening. My mom, another chaperone, and I decide to go explore while they rehearse.
I’ve got a map and decide the best course of action is to go to the big lake in the middle of Beijing. Well, turns out that there is a massive wall around said lake, and you can’t see it. Continued slightly further and ended up at Tiananmen square.
I’ve somehow managed to make one of the most crowded cities in the world look nearly empty, don’t ask me how, that isn’t intended, there will be people again soon.
Anyway, we ran around. While we were out, a thunderstorm came through. My goodness. The lightning was really close to the ground, but not really visible through the smog. You’d really hear the crack though. Normally it kind of rumbles, but this, I could hear the distortion in my ears from how loud some of those were. The locals didn’t seem phased by it. My mom got really jumpy and was saying to duck for cover with each clap of thunder, I reminded her that if we were going to be hit, we would get hit before we heard it.
We made our way back to the conservatory. The blocks in this area are huge. They are absolutely massive. So are the roads. They are like US freeways, but wider. They gave us “dinner” at the conservatory. It was terrible. It consisted of a “sandwich” and “french fries”. No. It was not edible. Given more water, maybe, but no. The sandwich was, a piece of white bread, a thin strip of dry battered fish, a piece of white bread, a thin coat of butter, a piece of white bread, a thin strip of dry battered fish, finished off with a piece of white bread. The fries were cold and tasted like cardboard. Luckily, that was really the only disappointing meal on the trip.
Third day, the orchestra played up on the Great Wall. It was really cool, until the bugs showed up.
I helped bring a whole bunch of equipment in, including a base. Basically functioned as a pickup truck. You can probably see, my camera has a piece of dust inside the lense. Unfortunately, it is a sealed lense, so I really can’t do anything about it. In the right light, that piece of dust really makes itself known.
After they played, we were given time to run up the mountain. I did. It was fun. The hostess was saying that you become a hero by making it to the top. I made it to the top. It was 37°C, but I made it to the top fairly quickly, then regretted it shortly afterward. After the great wall, we went to a nearby jade factory for lunch and shopping. Let me say this now, I have never missed plain water so much. It was kind of funny how with each meal, was a sprite-like soda and a cola-like soda. Both of which were super-highly carbonated. It was kind of refreshing, but also sometimes a bit too much bubbly. Tea was generally a good option though. Water itself was very hard to come by.
After the jade factory, we went past the Beijing olympic park site. That was fun. As I walked along, I couldn’t help but wonder why a place that could just build anything couldn’t have clean water to drink. Then we went to a tea shop and tried a bunch of teas. Finally, we had peking duck for dinner. It was interesting how they had a picture of President Bush senior. I guess he came through.
Fourth day, Tianjin. Tianjin was kind of fun. They got to play in the concert hall.
The concert hall looked really out of place with all the high-rising skyscrapers surrounding it. Then there was some confusion about who was responsible for various instruments or something. Anyway, we almost forgot the base, but I remembered. Yep. Saved the day right there.
After the concert and all, we headed back to the hotel and had free time to look around.
This was a really interesting structure. The statue on top had a buddhist look, the structure itself looks a bit Egyptian, but then looking closely at the carving at the base, you see the nativity scene and realize that the lady on top is the virgin Mary holding Jesus in one hand, and at the right time of day, her other hand is holding the sun. It took a little bit to figure that one out, but it was pretty funny.
Day 7, we continued on the Qinhuangdao, specifically the “little” resort town of Beidaihe, just south of Qinhuangdao. Beidaihe is a resort town for the communist party to vacation in. The buildings were required to be no more than 3 stories tall, so they were much shorter than in Beijing or Tianjin and it had a smaller-ish feel. Granted, small means 3 million people instead of 22 million, but smaller. Vancouver BC is just breaking 600,000 for comparison. So yeah. That was fun. We were given time on the beach.
People went swimming for a bit. Then it was discovered that there were sharp rocks. Hehe. Apparently I was the only one really trained in any first-aid, so I got to help clean people up and make sure that their cuts wouldn’t get infected. That is when one of the cellists was brought forward with a huge bug bite on her leg. This thing was massive, size of an orange, sticking off of her ankle. We put antiseptic on it and gave her ice, but we decided it best if she go to the hospital for that. The architecture in Beidaihe was interesting though, because there was certainly a lot of the Chinese architecture, but there was a huge amount of Russian influence as well and Russian families dotted the beach. Anyway, for dinner, we had barbeque on the beach. It was funny because everything was on a stick. At first it was normal stuff on sticks, meats, etc... Then there were peppers on stick. Finally, there was toast on a stick. I just thought that was great, toast on a stick. Why? Why do you need toast on a stick? Yeah... That was fun.
Day 8. Last concert day. We begin by going to the start of the great wall, where the wall meets the sea.
Went around there for a bit. It was fun. Good stuff. Went slightly further up the wall inland for a bit. Fun stuff.
Then we went to play the concert. The concert had to be moved because the building we were going to play in, the communist party decided they needed. So instead of playing in Beidaihe like we were expecting, we ended up playing at a university in Qinhuangdao. The turnout was insane though, at the very least 1500, probably more. Since we were on a university campus, I decided to look around while they warmed up. The campus itself was lovely, just like any other university, actually. You could see the same expressions, same everything really, just another language. Once I was done and it was time to head back for the concert, there was a huge crowd in front of the concert hall and there were uniformed military guards keeping people out. I was initially denied entrance, but after enough gesticulations, I managed to explain that I was with the orchestra so they let me through. They played, ad it was lovely. Afterward, we were invited up to hear the university music students play traditional instruments. It was cool. After the concert and after dinner, there was a bit of free time. There were some issues with curfew breaking which were dealt with, but yeah.
The rest of the trip was spent touring around looking at sights. Day 9 was mostly spent driving back to Beijing. Day 10, the group went to Tiananmen square and the forbidden city. It was super crowded though because the Greek president was going through at the same time so they were pushing everyone off to the side.
The area that was fenced off made for some neat pictures though.
Yeah! As we were leaving, there were a lot of black cars as the motorcade for the Greek president.
That evening, we went for a rickshaw ride through the hutong area and had dinner with some families there.
Then on day 11, our last day, we went to a panda zoo and the temple of heaven. I think tumblr will kill me if I keep adding more pictures. The temple of heaven is pictured up top. That evening, we went back to the hutong area.
And with that, I finish my story. Good night. This is the latest I’ve stayed up since the trip. I’m shot.