Guangzhou

This is a warning not to litter at a local park, rather than a radical change in global policy!

Guangzhou

We spent yesterday travelling here from Beijing.
I'm always struck by how effortlessly the orchestra seem to switch
locations. 120+ musicians and support staff plus hundreds of tons of
cargo can leave a city one day and almost miraculously be set up and
ready to perform the next.
Guangzhou is nothing like the briskly modern Beijing. It's a little
shabby, a little "old China". It's 2am and I can't sleep so I'm
taking a walk around the town. There are still people out-and-about;
sitting in restaurants or strolling by the river.
The atmosphere evokes in me memories of certain Greek cities in the
mid-eighties or perhaps Yugoslavia shortly after the wall came down.
We're about two hours north of Hong Kong and the hope here is that
this proximately will play big part in this city's future
developement. There's little evidence of this yet, at least from what
I've seen, but sitting here in a local retsurant, enjoying my noodles,
I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of 20th century China. Of a place
that will perhaps soon cease to exist.

Pictures from an excursion

This is as close as you can get to "The Bird's Nest"
Ditto, the National Swimming Center (The "Watercube")

Older, more established structures are far more welcoming!

The Great Wall

Badaling, China
I'm Standing on the wall and it is fantastic!.
You hear about it all your life; the myths, (only man made object
visible from space) and the legends (it took centuries and the lives
of thousands to complete). All the photos I've ever seen really don't
do its scale justice. From where I stand it seems to go on forever
and when you think you've seen as much as you can see, there in the
distance is another tower peaking (sic) above the mountain tops. It's really quite
wonderful to finally stand here..

The Bird's Nest

Beijing
Just spent some time around the Olympic stadium.
It's less than two months to the opening ceremony and my sense is
that the Chinese are following the 2004 Greek Olympic hosting schedule
(still plastering and painting as the torch arrives!) rather than the
(2000) Aussie timeline (everything done six months ahead).
There's really a phenomenal anount of fevered construction taking
place here. You know it'll all get done, 'cause if it doesn't...!
Anyway I'll post some pictures later as I'm wrting this on my phone
and it doesn't sent photos or video.
Next stop the Great Wall

Beijing

The Orchestra played its first concert in Beijing at the same venue as in 1973; The Palace of Nationalities. This is a careworn 1000-seater that, at least backstage, has not had much updating since the orchestra was last here.

The military issue grey walls and dim lighting backstage give it an eerie almost ghost-like dimension.

The Orchestra arrived mid-morning, rehearsed for two and a half ours from noon, ate luch and then played. The concert was attended mostly by dignateries with the only people not arriving by limo were the musicians!

The concert went well; Overture to Egmont, Yellow River Concerto; Lang Lang, Beethoven 6th and an Berstein's Overture to Candide as an encore.

The Orchestra arrives in China

Beijing.

Sunday afternoon I went out to the airport to meet the musicians off their plane from Seoul. In the evening there was a press conference, organised by the Beijing Music Festival, where Christoph Escenbach and Lang Lang spoke. Here's some video:

Xousalarm

Beijing

 

Took a taxi to Tiananmen Square (which I now know how to spell correctly). The ceremonial flag rasing was quite a... ceremony!

Several thousand people gathered behind barricades near the center of the square.  I stood in a group of about a hundred people about fifty yards away, outside the gates of the Forbidden City.  At 4.50 a platoon of Chinese soldiers, followed by a seventy-piece military band, goose-steeped out of the palace complex, crossed the square and ran the flag up its staff with the band playing, what I presume was, the Chinese national anthem.   It was all very solemn; no singing along, no clapping or cheering at the end.

I was (to use the vernacular of the deluded tourist) one of the very few westerners present.

On the way back, the taxi driver had the radio tuned to a station playing Chinese pop music. It sounded very like the synth-based music popular in the west in the 80s and 90s (maybe it was an oldies station?).  Obviously I couldn't understand the lyrics, or what the DJ was saying, but I'm happy to report that the Mandarin for 'FM' is 'FM'. 

A very long nap!

Dateline: Beijing 

I managed to stay awake until 8.30pm (8.30 am in the US).  Go to sleep on local time has always been my strategy for dealing with jet-lag.  Unfortunately I woke up at 3am and am now in my (very lovely) hotel room waiting for the city to wake up.

Now where's that room service menu?...

I just caught the end of a documentary on CNN about the New York Philharmonic's visit to N Korea earlier this year (imitation, flattery etc).   I don't remember the Philadelphia Orchestra's visit here in 1973 (I was eight) which this tour celebrates.  I'd love to hear from anyone who can recall how it was seen in the US and around the world.  Leave a comment by clicking the blog button or email me ( jim@wrti.org) and I'll post it.

I hear there's a ceremonial raising of the Chinese flag in Tiannemen Square at dawn each day.  It's now 4.12 am so that's where I'm headed.

Arrived in Beijing

Almost 20 hours after leaving home, I'm in China.
Both flights left on time-the trip from the US to here made all the
more pleasant by the company of Hugh Burnett and his wife Sherry from
South Carolina.
I'm now in a taxi in central Beijing.
First impressions; modern, smoggy, busy :Asia.
It's the small hours of the morning in Philly and despite sleeping for
a few hours on the plane, I'm feeling pretty.groggy.
I think I'll take a nap and write some more later.

24,000ft Above Delaware

Said goodbye to Philly. Susan L, who was on the orchestra's 2005 Asia

and 06 Europe tours really wanted to go on this one. We considered
stowing her in my suitcase but rejected the idea as impractical- and
probably illegal. (She's a lawyer y'know)

Philadelphia Airport

Woke up at 3.30 am having dreamt that I still hadn't got around to

packing-aaaaagh!
(I had)
The trouble with packing lists is that they give you a false sense of
security. I mean what if you've left something off the list?
Anyway that's what I did. I lay awake until it was time to get up and
then added all the things to my packing list that I had remembered in
the wee small...

That reminds me;
Heard the one about the insomiac, dyslexic, agnostic who lay awake at
night wondering if there was a dog? (Boom, boom!)

Susan Lewis, who is one of the kindest people I know, took me to the
airport at seven and, well, here I am.

Jim Cotter in Kuala Lumpur in 2005

Affectionately known as "WRTI's Asia Bureau" (Kuala Lumpur) -- here's Jim poised and ready at the mike to deliver his latest edition of Notes from the Road during the 2005 Philadelphia Orchestra Asia Tour.