Wednesday, May 11th. Encore!!!!!!!

After about 6 solid deep-sleep hours, I had another wonderful breakfast of dim sum and rice.Then we headed to West Lake for our river cruise. All one hundred of us boarded an awesome boat and took a 40-minute cruise around the West Lake. There are five numbers associated with the lake. There is one big lake, two pagodas, three causeways, four islands, five sections/smaller lakes that are divided by the causeways. Compared to Tuesday, the weather was wonderful. It was a little rainy and quite humid, but there was a cool steady breeze that made the rest of the climate bearable. Before getting on the boat for our cruise we had to wait a few minutes. During this time, six big smiling guys came up to me pointing at me and their cameras. They didn’t know a bit of English but it was clear they wanted a picture with me. Of course I said yes and we all got in one big happy group while someone took a picture. The people in my group were surprised and for a moment some of them were a little worried. Prof. Dorsey was speechless and just stood staring, not sure what to do, and making sure everything was alright. Once he found out what was happening, he just started laughing. When the photo was done I said “Thank you” in Chinese and that just made their day. They kept nodding their heads, waving, and saying “Shei Shei” back until they walked off. I remember a few years ago when my parents and I came to China many people asked to take their picture with me. I was shy and very uncomfortable.Now I think it’s great and was glad I could make their day.

Later in the morning we went to the tea museum and had a tea tasting and shopped in the super market. We tasted black tea, Green tea, Jasmine tea, and Oolong tea. The Chinese use the Black tea to help wake up in the morning because it is high in caffeine. They use the Jasmine and Oolong tea in the afternoon as a soothing tea to help you relax. The Green tea is good for digestion and is drunk about an hour after dinner before going to bed. I enjoyed all the tea but the Oolong was my favorite. It left an interesting aftertaste in your mouth that lasted quite a while.

We then headed to lunch. Today lunch was quite interesting and I did experiment a bit with the authentic dishes. We had Aloe Vera Jello and Jelly Fish. The Aloe was quite amazing. Had the normal Jello texture and tasted a bit like grape, or other such fruits. The Jelly fish is something I will probably never eat again. It looked weird, tasted ok, but the texture was awful. It wasn’t crispy, but like crunchy cartilage. I ate it and swallowed it and tasted it in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the day. But most of the rest of the dishes were pretty normal and quite good.

The morning was a little hectic and we were late finishing lunch. So we only had a few minutes to visit one of the pagodas. There is a tall skinny pagoda that is supposed to resemble a tall beautiful woman goddess. And there is a short fat pagoda that also resembles a god or goddess, but I’m not sure which one. We visited the tall skinny pagoda. There was a long line for the elevator to the top, so many of us took the stairs. We raced up 5 steep flights of stairs and were quite winded from the excursion. Since we only had a few minutes, we just took some pictures and headed back down. There were some wonderful views of foggy mountains from the top of the pagoda as well as a calm soothing breeze that felt amazing.

We then headed for the hotel and had just enough time to freshen up and grab our stuff before heading to the University to prepare for our concert. We arrived a little after 4:00PM, had a sound check with our soloist at 5:15, enjoyed a quite dinner at the cafeteria, then rested back stage and dressed for the concert. It began at 7:30 with a welcome and speech from the University and continued with the University orchestra playing a Dvorak and the theme fromJaws. I was tired and had trouble staying awake, but did manage to focus and was impressed by their performance. They were very professional and sounded great in the hall. We had a 10 minute set change on the stage while we thanked the University and gave some speeches. We started our program at 8:10 and didn’t finish until 10:00. It was very long and quite exhausting.We prepared 4 encores but planned to only play 3. Of course, our soloist (a well-known violinist) was asked/demanded an encore. Then after we played Starwars, the audience erupted and immediately demanded an encore. After playing Rolling Thunder, they again demanded an encore. After Stars and Stripes, we thought they would storm the stage if we didn’t give them another encore. So we played our final prepared encore. Prof. Haithcock waited offstage a minute before walking back on while the audience would not stop clapping and yelling for another encore. He asked us if we could play another, we were speechless from the enthusiasm and didn’t have the heart to refuse. We were all sweating and exhausted but agreed to play one more. Prof. Haithcock introduced the piece as “The Final Dance.” Upon finishing, the crowd of 1400 again erupted and cheered, but did not ask for another encore. One thing I learned from this unexpected encore addition was to never walk on stage without all my music. Neither Carla nor I had our music for “The Last Dance.” We only had the music we had prepared to play, but the only important part of the piece was the beginning and we managed to remember the pedals and first notes. This was definitely a new experience for both of us that we will never forget.

Even though we finished the concert at 10:00, there were a couple more speeches and a few pictures, and then we had to strike the stage and pack all our gear up. Emily, Rachel, the GSI’s and a few instructors stayed behind to load the instruments in the truck, but all the students and Prof. Haithcock were taken back to the hotel to pack for checkout and go to bed. We didn’t get to the hotel until after 11:00 and I didn’t get to bed until after 1:00, but at least I fell right to sleep.