Maiya - Beijing 2008

The train attendants came knocking on doors around 6:00 a.m. to warn us that we would be at the Shanghai station in an hour. Upon arrival we boarded the buses. We stopped for a typical Chinese breakfast which consisted of rice, bread, yakisoba (noodles w/ vegetables), various meats, something resembling french toast sticks, and stuffed buns. Afterward, we took our luggage to the Rainbow Hotel and had until 2:00ish to shower, sleep and find lunch. We were with the same roommates as in Beijing. I liked both of my roommates and we had a lot of fun. We were left to our own devices for lunch. I ended up walking down the street with some friends to a Starbucks for sandwiches. Sorry for the lack of originality here, but there really wasn’t a lot of actual Chinese food within walking distance. There were restaurants inside the hotel itself, but they were ridiculously expensive.

In the afternoon, we took the buses into “Old Town.” First we toured the Yuyuan Gardens. This was one of my favorite places on the trip and definitely my favorite garden. It was far smaller than the gardens at the Olympic Village hotel or the Summer Palace, but I would of been happy spending hours there. As it was, I kept getting yelled at for lagging behind and taking pictures. I also count it as a plus that we were there while it was pouring rain. I think the gardens were more beautiful than they would of been in the sun.

It was still pouring when we were let loose to wander the Old Town. It’s mostly a collection of shops selling various souvenirs and clothing. The buildings are all traditional and there is a pond near the entrance to the garden that’s filled with more koi than anyone could count.

As the rain let up, we made our way to the waterfront of the Huangpu (Yellow) River. There were a series of large, rectangular holes that showed waterways leading to the river. Inside these were groups of turtles. It seemed a little crowded, but it was neat seeing the little babies swimming around. We walked down to a lower level where a museum is in the works. On the walls outside the museum, there are several carvings which presumably tell a story of Chinese history. This will be better explained in my pictures than in words. There was also a tea house by the riverfront. They were serving a seemingly unlimited supply of tea samples, all of which were very good. This was my first taste of lychee tea and I found it very delicious. I didn’t end up buying anything there, but I was glad later that I had waited.

That night we took a river cruise for about an hour. Shanghai has the coolest skyline and architecture. The cruise boats themselves are also a part of the light show.

Finally, we were back at the hotel. It was a long, but extremely fun day…and I had a full memory card to prove it.

The Japanese band started playing in the courtyard of the hotel as we were checking out. They were the youngest group (junior high) in the Olympic Orchestra, but probably had many of the best musicians. They sounded amazing! I have a video of them that will be posted soon. Unfortunately, the audio quality isn’t the best.

We crammed our suitcases onto the buses and were off into Beijing for our last day. We spent the afternoon at an “indoor street market” referred to as Silk/Pearl Street. From the outside, the building didn’t look big enough to hold everything that we saw. There were four or five stories, plus a basement. Each floor had a general theme (i.e. clothing, arts/crafts, jewelry, electronics, purses, etc.), and was filled to bursting with individual merchant stalls.

I spent most of my time around arts/crafts or jewelry looking for souvenirs. I did have the experience of trying to buy a “name-brand” purse as one of my friends was trying to get one for his mom. That was… interesting? The purse dealers seem to be several times more persistent than everyone else, including the rip-off designer clothing people. Despite the difficulties that come with buying fake purses, this was a very fun day! I find haggling entertaining and it’s neat to just look at stuff. You can’t look too closely though — They’ll try and sell it to you immediately!

Eventually it was time to go to the station where we boarded an overnight-sleeper train. It was similar to the airport, except smaller. The train ride was fun! It was about 12 hours long. There were four people per cabin. They served boxed dinners on the train. They were alright, better than airplane food. We were also given a pitcher of hot water…without anything else. No cups, no tea, no anything…I’m not sure what was it’s purpose. We used it the next morning (it was still hot) to wash our faces. The corridors were narrow, so we hung out in each other’s cabins until we fell asleep.

Time for more touring — First, we went to the Summer Palace. This was the private retreat for the royal families. It has an area of over 6 square miles, though most of that is taken up by the lake in the middle. It is an amazing place! I would love to spend DAYS there, as well as at the Great Wall, and have the chance to thoroughly explore.

In the afternoon we went to a pearl factory. They had a lot of exquisite jewelry and they used fresh water (rather than salt water) oysters. Some of the pearls mounted on rings were so big that I’m not sure how you could ever actually wear the ring. We had lunch at a restaurant on the second floor of the pearl factory.

Dinner at the hotel featured Peking style duck. It was delicious! For the first and only time at the hotel, food was served at the table rather than buffet style. They had a screen set up at one end of the dining hall. First they played a video with clips of our performances and rehearsals. When that was done, it was nearly time for Opening Ceremony to begin.

Let me clear something up here…We never played for Opening Ceremony. Long story short, it was because the Europeans were invited, then backed out. Therefore we were 300 short of the required 2,008 members.

As some of you probably know, the Opening Ceremony was mind-blowing. If you didn’t see it, go and watch it now. The performances are astounding and it is certainly worth the time. At some point I went back to my room where me and my roommates finished watching the ceremony while packing. We were checking out of the hotel the next morning, touring Beijing for one more day, then taking an overnight train to Shanghai. There was a lot to do!

Performances were now over and it was time to explore the country and be tourists. Our first site was the Forbidden City. It was closed to all but the royal family and their servants for centuries. It is almost 200 acres and everything is built on what seems to be too large of a scale. It is a very…business-like place. There is a small section of garden, but the rest of the palace is devoid of trees and other plants. This was apparently done out of fear of assassins lurking in the bushes. Our tour guide Sam, who had met us at the airport, showed us around.

Afterward, we took a tram part way into downtown Beijing and then walked the rest of the way. We spent the afternoon wandering around a western style mall and some other stores nearby. I would of preferred something more…Chinese, but it was nice to relax for a few hours. When we got back to the hotel we started packing since we were checking out in a couple of days and Opening Ceremony was the next night.

Sorry about the break in posts, but marching band camp started yesterday so things have gotten busy again. I’ll try and keep up, but some of it might have to wait until next week.

The rehearsal this morning (Aug. 6th) was actually a lot of fun. We finally got to see the other hubs perform from outside the formation. The Chinese had set up a mini field show that they planned to use for their next performance. After everyone finished performing, we loaded the buses and drove to the soccer stadium in Tianjin which is a few hours from Beijing.

This performance was also covered by the media, but I think we were televised only in China. We played the same program as in Tiananmen Square. We went back to the buses for dinner where we got our first sample of Chinese McDonald’s. We had a few minutes to change out of our uniforms, and then we were off to the Games.

Security was SUPER tight! Everyone went through a metal-detector, had one of those wands waved over them and all bags were put through scanners. Most bags were even searched by hand. This was at women’s preliminary soccer game. I wonder how bad it is getting into the stadiums now. The match was China vs. Sweden. China won the game 2-1. The game itself was fun to watch, though I don’t know enough about soccer to give a good description. A couple of our people bought Chinese flags and circled the stadium with a parade of other people carrying flags. We started our own little Swedish cheering section in the midst of the Chinese. The people in front of us told us how to cheer for Sweden in Chinese, which was cool. It was more out of fun than seriousness. I certainly didn’t mind the Chinese winning. The stadium went insane!

It was an amazing day. As I said in the first post…we did the wave at the Olympics =D

As said, we spent a LOT of time rehearsing. Trying to work out formations was a nightmare. Eventually they called it off. The Chinese wanted to rehearse and it was ridiculously hot. During the breaks, I spent more time wandering around the hotel and hung out with friends.

That night we ate dinner and then went into a hall above the dining room. We saw performances by several acrobatic groups (including a Kung Fu demonstration) and a magician. That was followed by the World Projects representative giving a speech. He gave plaques to all the directors as well as pins for them to hand out to their students. We discovered later that the pins were considered rather valuable because they were only made for the orchestra. Once the formalities were over there was a dance. I didn’t stay for long and went to hang out in the hotel instead.

This was the day we went to the Great Wall.

The buses parked in a parking lot near a circle lined with shops. Then we hauled our stuff up to the tiered area on the Wall. For this performance, we played in separate groups. The Chinese hub didn’t come, so it was only us and the Australians/Japanese. It was a casual performance. Our uniforms were polo shirts and khaki shorts. The original plan was black slacks. Thankfully, they decided it was too hot. We played all of our music, not including the tutti medley, and then were free to climb the Wall or wander back down.

I went part-way up the Wall with some friends and then we stopped to listen to the Australian group for a while. Then we climbed up to the “checkpoint,” a little shop selling t-shirts and cold drinks. The Wall here is very steep, and the steps are so worn out they’re more round than rectangular. We were at the Jin Shan Ling section of the Wall. It is not the most visited section, but it is supposedly better preserved. The biggest difference I noticed from the last time I had visited the Great Wall was the distinct lack of peddlers. My guess is the government ordered them to stop bothering tourists during the Olympics. However, I was disappointed. You get far better deals off peddlers than hotel gift shops. After reaching the checkpoint, we decided to go back down to where we started and try and climb up the other way as the original path was WAY too crowded. When we got to the bottom though, there was an official blocking the stairs and waving us all down to where we had performed earlier. Maybe the Wall was closed for construction, maybe they opened different areas to the public daily…I have no idea.

With that way blocked off, we just wandered back down and went souvenir shopping by the buses. We didn’t do a lot when we got “home.” We ate dinner, played cards for a while and then went to bed. We were tired after sweating through the 100+ degree day.

Here’s a video of the tutti performance at Tiananmen Square taken by someone in the audience.

Tiananmen Square Performance, Olympic Theme

And here again, is the Associated Press news clip that we found posted to YouTube. One correction I’d like to make is that Dr. Brad McDavid is the director at the University of Washington. He is NOT the director at Washington State University, UW’s archenemy. It’s not really a big deal, but he was rather irritated.

Tiananmen Square Performance, AP News Clip

Moving on…As said, the Tiananmen Square Performance was worth every minute of practice. I just wish there was a professional recording floating around somewhere that I could get my hands on, but I doubt it exists. Let me know if you saw any interesting news clips of us. It was the first time we wore our uniforms. They were an odd combination of Chinese colors, western styles, and French berets. They were individually made and there was a seamstress on site to make any alterations when we received them. They were relatively comfortable and cool compared to most of the uniforms I’ve had to wear. Afterward, they gave us some time to wander around and take pictures. As we were still in uniform, it seemed we had briefly become celebrities. Several Chinese families and groups of friends came up asking for pictures with us. They did that a few other times as well, just because we were Americans. It was an interesting experience.

Unfortunately the Chinese musicians weren’t staying at the hotel with us, so our interaction with them was minimal. I spent a little bit of time talking to the Japanese kids, but as a whole they were rather shy. I never managed to get much farther than “Where in Japan are you from?” Who knows…maybe my accent was just horrible. We spent a lot of time with the Australians since there was no language barrier between us. We laughed at each other’s accents, slang, and cultural oddities.

The original Day 3 post seems to be pretty complete. I did find a video of the dress rehearsal for Tiananmen Square that day.

Tiananmen Square Dress Rehearsal

I’ll take this opportunity to talk about Orchestra Village some more. The hotel we were staying at was called Fuan Gong Palace. The “village” itself is huge. The perimeter of the wall is 12 miles. This doesn’t include the golf course, parking lots and further gardens that are outside the walls. Across the courtyard from the hotel is the dining hall and rec center. The rec center has a swimming pool, climbing wall, bowling alley, an archery range, and various other sports facilities. A group of about 20 from my high school held a game of laser tag. We had the maximum number of people and it was a lot of fun.

There is one more hotel in the complex that was kitty-corner to ours. I don’t think it was finished yet. At the far end of the village there was a Buddhist temple and a mini-water park. The middle of the city is taken up by a lake and the gardens surrounding it. There are several fountains and statues throughout the complex.

The food was Chinese, but not particularly exotic. Breakfast was on the second floor of the hotel. There were usually hard boiled eggs, sausage, some sort of soup, fried rice, and various forms of bread. Lunch and dinner were at the dining hall. Both meals consisted of various Chinese dishes. There were a few I wish I could have gotten the recipe. Some, like sweet and sour pork were familiar. They also consistently served badly fried french fries. Watermelon was the all-purpose fruit/dessert. The Chinese are also big on Coke, or they think it’s all Americans drink. Either way they offered/served more of that than they did water. There was a water boiler in the rooms, along with tea bags.

In Grand Epoch City there were around 1200 members of the orchestra and 300 Dutch participants of the Chinese Walk Challenge. Here is a picture of them. They tended to come into the lobby singing.

That just about covers most of it. I’ll throw in more as I go along.

There’s little to add here. We rehearsed as a group, we rehearsed in sectionals, we rehearsed as a bigger group, we had lunch, and then we rehearsed some more. You get the idea. Not to say it wasn’t fun…but I doubt anyone here is interested in the various mistakes and endless repetitions we went through.

I did get a chance to talk to Dr. Gilroy, the director from Fresno State University. He arranged the majority of our music. I’ve had him as a director before at a music camp in Lake Tahoe and I’ve also played some of his compositions.

Here are some videos of our Bon Voyage concert in Washington. Annoyingly, no one seems to have gotten the whole thing in one video so its all divided into parts. Maybe I’ll get a full copy later, until then…

Bon Voyage Conert, Olympic Fan Fare (1)

Bon Voyage Concert, Olympic Fan Fare (2)

There are others by the same person…they can all be found here.

There are better performances from when we were in China…but this was the beginning.