Saturday: Cheers in Beer City

Today was unbelievable...we had to be at the Opening Ceremony at 7:45 a.m. because the Queen of the Tsingdao Beer Festival was scheduled to open the gates to Beer City at 9;00 a.m. Now, it seemed a little strange to me that anyone would be starting a major drinking fest at 9:00 in the morning but hey, what the heck, “we’re not in Kansas anymore”…let the wild rumpus begin.

We ended up making more of an “appearance” at the opening stage instead of a performance of any length…battling the rain, we did a quick warm-up and when we looked up, several male Chinese faces were intently staring at us and within minutes, there were almost a thousand. Eventually we saw a few female faces and young people scattered in the crowd.

Cameras were everywhere, especially when the young people appeared, they were holding phones up clicking photos as fast as possible. They were fascinated and many finally got the courage to approach the stage and ask for a photograph with us or they would just stand in front of us and pretend they were “with the band” as friends photographed them.

Part of our own personal entertainment, besides the fascinating, confused crowd, was the Post Punk band from Beijing that was scheduled to play right before us.

It ended up, they wanted the bands (there were 3 of us by now, also a young rock band from Qingdao) to just run out on the open parade field and dance wildly to Chinese pop music. The rain caused the staff to run out of time so none of the bands played during this part of the event but were received with great enthusiasm by the crowds. The television cameras were all over us and we ended up in many Chinese newspapers and on Chinese national television. Needless to say, we, the only Americans and rather strange ones at that, were the center of attention.

We met up with our dear friends from Columbia, Julie and Rory in the afternoon. They are currently living a couple of hours away teaching English in Weihai. They are great fun and very helpful. Julie is our beautiful tattooed rock girl and Rory is our beautiful tattooed rock boy that China is equally fascinated with and adoring of for many reasons but especially for teaching English to their Chinese children.

We were scheduled to play on the main stage Saturday evening…it was a huge professional stage but uncovered and the rains came again. They moved us inside the big arena filled will pop singers, dancers and wild, drunk (but very nice) Chinese people.

Finally on stage, they worked us into a slot for two songs. Short, but a moment in history we will never forget. Dierik has been the “rock star” of our trip with his banjo. When he walked out, the crowd went nuts. After our first song, the applause started slow and then into a big roar. We finished with Orange Blossom Special and Jake playing the fiddle behind his back…another huge roar of applause and then the stage managers walked out with huge mugs of Tsingdao beer and demanded that we chug it in front of the crowd before we leave the stage ………………… many photos and new friends later…we headed back to the hotel with Julie and Rory in tow. It was great comfort to have “homefolks” with us.

The band has been very compatable in regards to adventurous taste in what is set before us. The food is amazing and abundant but today, I found myself searching frantically for a familiar taste.

All for now, what a day…..

Jane
(Photo by Xu Xiaotian)