Ni Hao

Ni Hao!

 

It is Wednesday night here in Taiyuan, China! We finished up our touring in Beijing and traveled to this city by train on Thursday. Our good friend Darryl Hanes met us at the train station--Darryl has helped us greatly on both our previous China tours, in 2007 and 2010. He is from South Carolina and has lived in Taiyuan for fourteen years, so he knows the city and the language very well. Currently he's living in Wu Han, China with his wife and daughter and working at an international school there, but he traveled to Taiyuan to help us with our tour! He has definitely been a HUGE help to us!

 

We kicked off our concert tour Friday morning with a performance at a local park in Taiyuan. It was a big hit! It was great to see the people enjoying our music and getting excited about it with us. Later that day, we performed at a seventh grade school. I had a little panic moment there when right before the concert, one of my cello strings broke! Thankfully, Darryl was with us and was able to get a driver to take me to a local music store which was very close to the school. I bought three extra strings for only 20 yuan (about three dollars) and was able to get my cello ready in time for the performance. The concert went well and afterwards they took us out for a great meal!

 

We have hired a bus and driver for the entirety of the tour. Our bus driver is VERY skillful! He's been able to get our incredibly large bus in and out of many tight spaces! The traffic here is pretty crazy, but the drivers know how to handle it. On Saturday, we drove three hours to the city of Chang Zhi to play for Number Two Middle School, which is really a high school--that's what they call them here. At the middle school we played for about 3,000 kids! They were all very excited to see us and the school director gave us a great welcome. We were served lunch and then set up on a raised platform as the highschoolers all filed onto the soccer field in neat rows. It was a lot of fun to play for them! The crowd loved our music, especially the movie music; Transformers, My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mission Impossible, and Captain America. Afterwards the kids crowded around us for pictures and to get our e-mail addresses. They also had several students from the student council interview us and give us extra student ID cards as gifts! We all had a great time with the Number Two Middle School in Chang Zhi.

 

Sunday we played at a church that we've gone to for the past two tours. It is the biggest church in the city of Taiyuan, as well as the biggest church in the whole province! We love the people there and have a great relationship with the church band. In the evening, we performed a concert for them and they also played and sang for us! It was great to hear their music, and they did such a great job!

 

Monday we had a concert at a foreign language school, and Tuesday we traveled to the city of Pingyao, the oldest functioning city in China. We had a little time to tour the city before performing at Number One Middle School for 6,000 people, our largest audience!

 

Today we performed for another middle school that we have visited on both previous tours. It was a fun concert, and afterwards we went to the Taiyuan University of Technology where we shared some music with the band there and then listened as they performed a few songs for us! Tomorrow we will head to the city of Yangci where we'll play a concert in the city center and then another one at a high school there.

 

 

Thanks for reading everyone! We're having a great tour so far--tonight we have one concert and tomorrow we travel to Pinyao, the oldest functioning city in China, to do some touring before we have a concert there. Keep us in your thoughts, and we'll see you all soon!

 

 

Zai Jian!

 

 

 

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