Day 4…again…

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.