A sweet goodbye to China

Tuesday:
We are now in flight somewhere over the Pacific ocean headed home to Columbia. I will recall the last two days in Laiyang.

We spent Sunday having lunch and dinner with the Directors and waiting to be called to our sound check. While waiting, we ventured onto the streets with the usual stares and waves from the curious folks. We left Linda behind, napping. With a bit of prideful, ignorant confidence, we wandered without her. We stumbled upon some line dancers dancing to pop music in a parking lot. We were quickly escorted into a small tent and told to sit down as they began showing us photo albums of beautiful brides. We then realized it was all a promotion for a wedding photography company. We politely declined and continued our walk.

We happened upon a small music store owned by a local young musician. We were looking for Epiphone guitars since Gibson now has a factory in Shandong Province and were curious about the prices. I had hoped to buy one for my son Anthony and for Jonas, my guitar student, but the store didn’t carry them. I couldn’t find them anywhere in our travels. I suspect the company is just building them and shipping directly to the U.S.

We had a great visit with the music store folks. We gave them our business card written in Chinese so they could see we were a band. I then ask to see his computer and pulled up our website. They were really excited. The owner couldn’t speak English but he had one of his young students with him and he knew enough phrases to get us through a decent conversation. We asked the store owner to play us some music. He sang a pop song he had written and then gave us one of his demo CD’s. We told them we had a concert that night and we would call him back with the details when we returned to our translator. The owner and his student said they would be there for sure. We took some photos and returned to our hotel just in time for sound check.

The concert was to be held in a parking lot in the downtown district on a large stage they had erected for us. There were already lots of folks gathering at the sound check.

The concert was awesome. The parking lot was packed. The sound and stage techs worked really hard to place every mike exactly the way we wanted them and the lights were angled with perfection. I have been really impressed with the efforts of our techs on this trip. They know little about our instruments but are eager to learn and work very hard with the little knowledge they have about us.

When we kicked off Foggy Mountain breakdown, we encountered the same looks of confusion, delight and desire to respond in some sort of way. They just have trouble sorting through their emotions as they experience personal, unrecognizable responses to a new music. As in our other performances, they quickly figure out that this is a music to move to, to clap to and to smile at. They are unsure if they should just want to listen to the music or stare at the four strange aliens on the stage. They figure they will just do both.

The children love the music, they immediately started dancing just like in Columbia but the directors quickly moved them back into the audience area. We were really disappointed but didn’t want to question their routine and start a Chinese kid riot.

This particular night, we had an opera star from Beijing on the concert bill with us and performed during our break. I think this has been of our most entertaining aspects of the trip, watching to see who will be on the bill with us. Remember, so far, we have had a post-punk band, karaoke pop-stars, break dancers and a pop-rock band … why not an opera star?

The evening finished with amazing applause, lots of photos and autographs. The television station televised the whole gig and will send a copy to us.

We spent our last day in this beautiful country on a tour planned by the Tourism Director. The band, Linda, one of the Directors and his son, and our lovely tour guide took off for a destination that should have been only one hour away. To put it gently, our driver was quite a colorful character and we ended up taking a four hour route that wasn’t exactly planned and finally arrived after driving down a bumpy, dirt, goat path with lots of horn honking. More on this later.

We visited temples at the coastal city of Penglai. We were once again delighted to be seeing so much of this great Province. The sea was a setting for the legend of eight friends that had become so intoxicated they decided to go out to sea and when they returned they were immortal.

We then traveled to Qixia. It is now apple harvest time throughout the countryside making it quite the festive route. We passed through farmlands and small towns bustling with markets and miles of baskets and boxes anticipating the harvest of the day. This backwoods route turned out to be one our favorite excursions. Watching the people work amidst the livestock and the endless rows of fruit trees, gardens and vineyards gave us a rich piece of Chinese life we had hoped to taste. This country is a photographer’s heaven.

We ended our tour by visiting an ancient manor belonging to the family of Mou. After reading The Good Earth, all of the pieces of this great novel came alive. The manor was a small, self-contained village with various living quarters for the rich land owner, his many concubines and workers. It was complete with gardens and courtyards, a mill, a winemaking room, a root cellar, a medical pharmacy, a carved wooden performance stage and an office for the accountants.

We returned in time to take a quick shower, eat and head to the stage for our last night and last performance in China.

Many of the same people returned from the previous night. Rows of children were with their parents. The Directors had to rope off the first several feet to keep the stage area clear.

Our last concert was a warm reminder of why the Columbia Friends of China had sent us on this mission. We taught a culture about a music they had never heard before. We taught a culture about this great roots Bluegrass music of Midwestern America. We made many friends. We pleased Directors. We extended ourselves to China in hopes of exchanging many cultural ideas in the days to come. We ourselves, have been richly blessed.

I awakened this morning to find a note on my computer that simply said, “Mommy, come home”. I knew it was time to come home…