Tuesday May 24th: Final China Concert:
Tuesday morning was a pretty relaxed morning, but not quite as much as Monday. We had a great breakfast in the hotel and then headed out. This hotel in Beijing has pretty much won the prize for best hotel. The lobby area isn’t as fancy and pleasing to the eye as that of Xi’an, but the rooms are a lot better and the breakfast makes up for the lack of free internet. There are about 6 different kinds of dimsum, plus lots of fruit choices, veggies, meats, rice, and even French toast, waffles, and pancakes, but they can’t hold a candle to mine.
We headed to the Hanban museum and Confucius institute/headquarter meeting place. This institute is the whole reason we are in China. The University of Michigan paired with a group in China to create the Confucius institute and help build music groups and schools throughout the world. When Prof. Haithcock started the process of the China Tour 4 years ago the Confucius institute offered to fund our entire trip once we arrived in China. They set up and paid for all the hotels, sightseeing, food, and worked with someone from our group to set up our performance venues. We looked through the museum and sat through an hour lecture/speech thing. Students from our group played a couple songs and the staff at the museum sang a song. Then some of their leaders and our leaders gave some speeches about the tour and relations with China in the past, present, and future.
This meeting was a little boring, but afterwards we headed to a nice restaurant and had Peking Duck! When we were in Hangzhou we had Hangzhou Peking Duck, but this was real Peking Duck and was absolutely amazing! We were told that they needed 100 ducks to feed all of us, and we got to watch them carve every single one! There was other good food at lunch to, but the duck was by far the best.
After lunch we went to the Renmin University and had some warm up time before a short performance lecture. Then we had a rehearsal, and another good dinner. This was in part of the school cafeteria and was a buffet style. So far in Beijing we haven’t had many odd dishes. They have all been the normal chicken, beef, pork, fish, and tofu. It’s nice to actually know what you’re eating, and most of the group prefers this, but I miss experimenting with the different traditional Chinese dishes.
The concert was great, there weren’t a lot of people there, but they clapped loudly and cheered after every piece. They loved the Bolcom Saxophone quartet and Xiang Gao’s concerto solo, but we only did 4 encores. They asked for another, but it was late, we had a long pack up to do, and a long day tomorrow, so Prof. Haithcock didn’t have us do another. Packing up didn’t take as long as we thought. Striking the stage only took 45 minutes. Then we had to make sure everything was packed correctly in the trunks because they will be shipped strait to Michigan. We will be renting instruments for our concert in LA.
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