Digging a Little Deeper May 8, 2010

Now that we have been in China for more than a week, and acclimated ourselves a little to the demands of our performances, our hosts have apparently decided we are ready to explore a few places that are decidedly not typical for tourists in China. On Tuesday we started the day by visiting an “Elder Service Facility” in a neighborhood near the hotel. They were ready for us, enthusiastically singing in their own chorus as we walked into the lobby. After greetings were exchanged all around and the neighborhood labor representative made a little speech, some of our singers spontaneously broke into Mo Li Hua and pretty soon the whole combined crowd was busy singing again.

Here I am with my dumpling-making professor, who also sings in the chorus at the Ruixin rest care facility.

We were actually scheduled to perform a set, so we had to tear ourselves away to change into our costumes. When we came back, the place was really mobbed and it was one of those performances where you couldn’t get people to stop clapping their hands (rhythmically, during the songs, except during Shenandoah, of course). We rose to the challenge pretty well, and it turned out to be a good thing we did.

Here’s why: pretty much all the time there is a camera crew following us around taking stills and high-end video of just about everything we do. (One day by chance in an outdoor location I was standing in front of the camera crew while I was also watching a video screen mounted on the side of a building, which was playing the Lady Gaga music video of Paparazzi. I tried to position myself so that they would shoot me with this in the background, but I don’t think they got either the picture or the joke).

Anyway, the video guys were trying (I think) to capture footage that the PR office of China Telecom could place as a publicity feature story on a national Chinese news broadcast. Apparently the visit to the Elder Care Facility did the trick, because there was a two minute segment on the national news the next day (May 5) which you can actually see if you click on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jilyyaW5hhU

Watch out especially for that handsome devil who makes a little speech towards the end of the segment. You will see that as he is talking he is attempting to learn the process of making the dumplings that you find in dumpling soup. They had trooped us into the cafeteria and paired each singer with a Chinese elder, who in my case showed infinite patience in perfecting my technique. As we produced the trays dumplings, someone spirited them away, and ten minutes later returned with the soup itself, so then we could sit down and eat together. After lunch there was the usual exchange of speeches and pleasantries and a very amusing talk by a little girl who was there visiting with her Granny and who spoke English with no discernible flaws in pronunciation.

Here is my friend Jacqueline Charles of Trinidad, with her new friend, the little girl who spoke to us in perfect English.

As the singers drifted away from the table to go change back into their street clothes, suddenly a new amusement formed itself in the common room. Three Latin musicians from our group had commandeered the piano and added a violin and bandoneon (Argentine accordion) to begin an impromptu tango concert. They were quickly joined by an Argentine singer and several dancers who were slicing this way and that with wild abandon. A dignified, white-haired Chinese lady claimed the singer for herself and they began to dance in a way that indicated she had tangoed many a time before; it even appeared that the tango disease would spread through the entire population; but then Mickey intervened and reminded us that we had to leave for our afternoon meeting.

This was a cultural exchange festival with students at Donghua University, south of Shanghai. The students there performed both traditional and modern (pop) Chinese music, mingling acoustic instruments and voice performances with canned music that came out of speakers in the ceiling. The part I liked best was a chorus of about ten girls dressed in identical incredibly bright yellow dresses with yellow scarves tied round their necks, which you can hear at this link:

http://www.garageband.com/song?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaShY1e-YGA

The Girl Choir at Donghua University sang with power and conviction.

And if you think our hosts were trying to cram a lot of stuff in before we leave, you are right. After we left the college, we stopped for a little while at the home belonging to Mickey’s mom, which was nearby, had a snack, visited a neighbor’s house, heard a little girl play her koto, got back on the bus, and drove to the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai to have dinner at a revolving restaurant a thousand feet above the city. God in heaven!