It has been so long since I have written! We´ve been in a number of different places, but I´ve really had pretty limited internet access so I haven´t been able to update. After we left Shijiazhuang for the second time, we traveled to Dalian, a coastal city near the Korean penninsula. Dalian was a nice city; it reminded me of a combination of Bilbao, a city in Spain we stayed in for a week last tour, and other normal Chinese cities. Dalian was filled with parks and apparently is a tourist town for travelers within China, though they don´t get many international tourists. The big attraction was an aquarium, which was ridiculously overpriced. We went anyways, and it was pretty fun. We got to see a dolphin show, in which the dolphins did math. There were some fun animals there, including walruses, so I was happy. We later went to a park, where a friend and I played cards with a whole bunch of old Chinese people. In Dalian we had three concerts. The audience was very appreciative and seemed to know more about classical music than most of the others that we have played for. It was so hot there that I almost passed out during one of the concerts, but I left stage and I was ok.
After Dalian, we flew to Luoyang, a small city further west in China. The main attraction there were the Longman Grottoes but I didn´t get a chance to visit because we had to work all day (on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day)! The Spanish apparently celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day, so the orchestra threw us a big party that night after our concert. I finally figured out how to call phones on Skype, so I was also finally able to speak to my family members, who were visiting Rachelle in Germany. On Christmas Day, we had our own celebration, which involved singing American Christmas carols. I did think of Justin Stanley´s Christmas wishes (thanks, Justin!), but it was the first time in my life that I can really remember being homesick.
As a Christmas gift, the orchestra decided to give us two free days in Shanghai, even though we weren´t playing a concert there due to visa issues. Because I was in the group with the later of the two flights, I really only got one free day, but it still was a whirlwind adventure! Leaving the hotel early in the morning, first we visited the Shanghai Museum. There were a lot of beautiful ancient works of art there, including some amazing calligraphy. In the pottery room, I found a ceramic basket that reminded me of a project I made in elementary school. One member of our group had done some research in advance, so for lunch we went to the restaurant with the best western food in all of Shanghai. It was wonderful after 2 1/2 weeks of only Chinese food. In the afternoon, the eight people in our group took two taxis and planned to meet at a garden in the heart of Shanghai. We lost the people in the other taxi, so for the rest of the day it was only the four of us. The garden was beautiful, but while we were there, it began to snow. It really felt like Christmas, finally! After the garden, we wandered through some shops on the street for a little while, making our way towards the Bund. The Bund is the name of the riverside park where you can walk and view the famous Shanghai skyline. The actual park was closed for construction in anticipation of the Shanghai World Expo 2010, but we still could walk along part of it. Afterwards, we decided to go out to the end of the subway line, where you can take the Maglev (magnetic levitation) train to the airport, which travels at speeds of up to 431 kph. We were trying to buy tickets for the train, but no one at the station spoke English. We stopped a random passerby who was white to ask for help. It turned out he was a 30-something Canadian teaching English at an international school in Shanghai, and he took us under his wing for the night, showing us the part of the city in which he lived, taking us to dinner at a nice restaurant, and then to an Irish pub. It was really exciting to see Shanghai from the perspective of someone who lives there, and also to talk to someone outside the orchestra for the first time in the 5 week tour.
The next morning, we boarded a bus to Huzhou. We played only once concert there, but finally we got some new repertoire. Up to that point, we had been playing the same program for pretty much every concert, with the only change being that sometimes we would play a piano concerto, and sometimes we would play Night on Bald Mountain. I was getting so bored with the music. I´m sure that by the end of this tour I will have all fo the music memorized. I already have most of it memorized. But anyways, now we have a singer on tour with us in addition to the pianist. There wasn´t really much to do in Huzhou. It´s apparently a new city which was being constructed as we were there. It looked like they were converting it into some kind of nice waterfront resort. So we didn´t do any sightseeing while we were there.
Yesterday morning, we left Huzhou and flew from Shanghai to Guangzhou. Guangzhou is the third-largest city in China, and I like it here because all the people are shorter than in other parts of China. It seems like a nice city so far, and I love how warm it is here! So far in our tour, I have never gone outside without my heavy winter coat, and usually I wore it indoors too, because the common areas of the hotels aren´t usually heated. Here, however, I walked around all morning with just a sweatshirt! Our hotel is right on the the edge of the river that runs through the city, and it looks beautiful at night. The air seems cleaner in general than in other parts of China. This morning, some friends and I went to the Temple of Six Banyan Trees, a Buddhist temple. I burned some incense there, and watched part of some kind of a Buddhist ceremony. We were the only white people there. It was a moving experience. Later, we walked to a park in the center of Guangzhou, where we saw a monument to Sun Yat-Sen and a wall built during the Ming dynasty. Tonight we have a New Year´s Countdown concert in Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, and some kind of special dinner and celebration afterwards. We stay in this city at least through Saturday (they only give us the schedule for a few days at a time because things change so frequently) and have a lot of free time here. I think later I´ll do some shopping - apparently this city is home to the second-largest mall in the world, which is slightly terrifying, but maybe I´ll be able to find some good stuff.
I´ll try post some pictures of the past few days soon, but in the meantime, check out the orchestra´s video blog at www.josepvicentmedia.com.
P.S. Mr. Mackey pointed out that I never posted what assignments I got in the orchestra. We didn´t have auditions because everyone knew what parts they wanted to play. As for me, I told them I love playing second, so I´m second on almost everything. I did request to play first on Romeo and Juliet, though, and I got to do that. And because of the rotation and stuff, I´m playing third on Shostakovich´s Festive Overture.
OK, well I´ll try to put up some pictures later, and until then, Happy 2010!
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