Beijing Basics

We departed Hong Kong on Friday morning, traveling on China Air. For YOSA’s tour we will actually complete our trip in Hong Kong, but we will be traveling between Hangzhou and Hong Kong via an internal flight. As before (on our Dragon Air flight) the plane was very comfortable. While it is generally recognized that airline food is not too good, China Air took this to a new level. What was supposed to be chicken noodle was more like chicken fat and noodles. Probably a good idea for the students to bring a couple of granola bars which they can resort to as standby meals should they encounter food they don’t like too much.

We are staying in the Holiday Inn Express Temple of Heaven. It is a nice three star hotel, almost identical to the one in Shanghai. The breakfast food has been quite good. There is a mixture of Western and Chinese foods available buffet style. I have been taking advantage of the delicious watermelon which has been served each morning as a way to get a fruit serving for the day. They also serve Seattle coffee, which they market heavily on the coffee cups and on posters adorning the walls as you enter the dining area, although I have never heard of the make.

This morning we went to visit the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) located right next to Tian’inmen Square. YOSA will perform at the NCPA in June — it will be our first concert on this tour. And I have to say that the group is in for a very special treat. This venue is quite simply stunning! The building was completed in 2007 and is shaped like a large dome. It is surrounded by a moat of water and costs 3.2 billion Yuan to build (over $460 million – which is about twice the cost of building Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA). You can check out some photos and information at http://www.chncpa.org/n457779/n2065112/index.html. To enter the building you descend a flight of steps below street level to enter into the lobby. You then proceed past the box office to a hallway under the water of the moat. The ceiling is all glass so you can see the rippling water above you. The effect on the light coming into the hallway is quite unique. You then enter the main dome area with its tall ceiling. In front of you are three halls, the concert hall (where YOSA will perform), the opera house and the theater. All three halls share the same lobby space which also has an array of restaurants and CD shops. The concert hall seats 1,800 people and has a full pipe organ adorned across the back of the hall. We met with a representative of the NCPA and two representatives from a media and marketing company who are helping to establish the promotion for our concert. They are still working on some of the details, but it is likely that our concert will have a small ticket price but be billed as a charitable concert to benefit the victims of the recent earthquake in southern China.

Lunch was at the Laoshe Tea House. The food was excellent, as was the tea of course (I tried Pu ‘er, a fragrant black tea). The other wonderful thing was the shadow puppet show that was put on during our meal. Traditional Chinese instruments were being played whilst the story of a mischievous crane trying to eat a stubborn tortoise was acted out using the puppets. It was a lot of fun to watch and not the sort of thing you get to witness every day. They are also in discussion with some local groups who may share the concert with us.

In the afternoon we met with the leaders of Beijing’s National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts. We were led into a formal meeting room with grand wooden chairs arranged as three sides of a rectangle. We have learned that the leader sits in the central chair and then everyone else sits in the chairs that flank him either side. The nearer you sit to the leader, the higher your importance. Green tea was served to us and we proceeded to learn about each other’s organizations. With over 2,200 students, this university level institution is China’s leading training facility for Peking Opera. Although the term Beijing Opera is now more frequently used but the National Academy are trying to promote the Chinese pronunciation of Jing Ju. Behind us displayed in a glass cabinet were the elaborate costumes and masks used by the singers and actors. They are very interested in hosting us for an exchange and this will be a wonderful opportunity for YOSA’s students and traveling companions to learn about traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu and pipa.

The day was rounded off by the exciting, yet touristy, Kung Fu show. We were dazzled by macho men head butting pieces of steel in two, laying on beds of nails and of course giving lots of flying roundhouse kicks. These shows are packed full of tourists but are very well produced and do give you a good flavor of Chinese culture and history. The athleticism of the performers is quite amazing and the costumes and set design very beautiful.

We’ll be in Beijing for a few days so I will update you more soon.

Steven Payne

Me and Rick Dillard with media coordinators at NCPA

The water ceiling hallway

National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts

Gate in Tian'imen Square

Hanging Out in Hangzhou

Hangzhou is a Chinese city of about three million people (more than twice the size of San Antonio) and is on the Eastern coast. Its most famous feature is the beautiful West Lake. A lovely expanse of water surrounded by rolling hills which are ordained by the occasional pagoda and encased by a nicely landscaped foot and bike path along the water’s edge. We didn’t get much time to hang out by the lake, but we scoped out the boat cruises and the bike rentals so our group can get to experience the lake a little more next summer on the tour.
Our main purpose this morning was meeting with the folks at the Hangzhou High School. They are interested to see if there was some potential for our students to visit the school next June. We met with the school principal, Mr. Zhou, the school music teacher and the school English teacher. Mr. Zhou and the school music teacher speak very limited English so we relied heavily on our guide and the school English teacher to translate – which tends to make meetings last twice as long! We have some more details to figure out, but there is certainly an opportunity for our students to have a very meaningful interaction with some Chinese students of similar age. They will also send a good delegation of supporters to our concert in Hangzhou which will help ensure we have a good audience.

Our next stop was to see the Hangzhou’s Zhejiang Concert Hall. It has 557 seats with a nice acoustic. While it is not the most modern concert hall I have seen, it will serve us well for our performance next summer.

One of the great things about having the opportunity to do a site inspection trip is to make sure all the basic elements of the tour are good. There is nothing more frustrating than having to put up with a bad hotel and this is what we initially found in Hangzhou. We had been put up in a hotel which was looking very outdated and the lingering smell in the rooms seem to prove it. I went straight back downstairs to request an alternative room and bumped into our tour manager, Rick, doing exactly the same thing! So a quick word with our host, Daniel Xu and he had arranged for us to inspect an alternative hotel. And I am pleased to report that the Hangzhou Sunny Huansha Hotel was a vast improvement. We will stay there for one night but as the group leader, I would have been dreading the groups’ reaction to staying in the old hotel. One thing I can’t do much about though is the rather firmer beds the Chinese seem to like. We’ll request some additional duvet covers which people can sleep on if they are particularly sensitive to a firm mattress.

From the hotel we had time to spend about 20 minutes at Qinghefang, a delightful shopping street full of trinkets and other traditional Chinese goods. Unlike much of these stores in Shanghai, this street was a real delight to walk through. One of the highlights was a traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy. It was a little like walk back in time 50 years as there was a high counter with an amazing array of roots, leaves and herbs ready to be ground in the right mixture for you. There were also some interesting food vendors again, but here there were hoards of Chinese people gathering around devouring the most unlikely looking foods. Crab on a stick, fried fish heads and a few other indescribable things!

We didn’t have much time for lunch so just planned to eat at Hangzhou airport before our flight into Hong Kong. That was a mistake, we paid over $50 for a super basic meal, but it was the only place to get anything to eat – note to self – avoid having to eat in the airport again. And then to top it all off we didn’t realize that Asian airline companies have not cut back like the U.S. ones have so we still had a meal served to us on our two hour flight. It is also ironic that Dragon Air, who primary customers are the Chinese people who tend to be shorter in height than Americans, actually gives you more leg room. One of life’s mysteries.

Steven Payne

Young lady enjoying crab on a stick

Don’t forget about our parent’s meeting this Sunday on the Beethoven 5K!

On our way!

Arrived at the airport early after a 4:15 AM alarm clock. Today we fly up to Chicago and then pick up our 14.5 hour flight into Shanghai. It will be a long day for sure. Will post more once we actually get on the ground in China.

And to think San Antonio has our own “El Sistema!” RT @ElaineAyala Latino conductor wows L.A. http://bit.ly/19zdry