Hey y'all;
here's some pics...
There's a shot of the Tsingdao opening ceremonies stage, a shot of a typical "rock star" dinner gathering with the endless table of food, a shot of "gambei," which is a "bottom's up toast." The Chinese believe that food and drink bind friendships together, and so they do. It's not uncommon for there to be 10-20 toasts at dinner; these folks can out drink Dierik the German!
There's a shot of the stage for the TV show we were on during rehearsal, a shot of us playing on TV, a shot of me with the crowd from the show...people are this excited to see us everywhere we go, really, it's amazing.
The sound tech for our performance at the Tsingdao ceremonies runs the biggest nightclub in Jinan, "Cinderella." It's huge, and broken into theme rooms: karaoke, band stage, a disco, a "girls dancing stage"picture girls in go go boots dancing to 60's music...a "boy and girl meet room" which is a big oval table where single guys are outside, girls are on the inside...the chinese version of "speed dating. There's a pic of us on stage there. The "house band" was a great group from Beijing doing a three month stint of 7 nights a week there. Clubs sty open til at least 4am. These guys did a great repotoire of modern chinese rock, some of their own arrangments of traditional chinese poetic lyrics mixed into their own music, and even traditional chinese Beijing Opera libretto over their own modern rock compositions.
The Trike Trucks are typical heavy load transportation here; motorcycle front ends with one ton axles, and loads certainly bigger than that. 1500cc single cylinder engines that sound like a 1930's John Deere tractor with a 600 rpm redline..."pop-pop-pop," ver slow.
The lady on the tiger is Linda-Xu Hsaio Tien-our tanslator at a National Park near Langgu. The park is to commemorate a hero from 600 years ago who killed a tiger that had been killing villagers there for some time. He came to town, drank 18 bowls of "wine," went to sleep on a big flat rock..the tiger woke him, and he hit it with his walking stick, then killed it by hand. We got to try the "wine," which was made from local corn, certainly 100 proof or better-think Moonshine, not wine as we know it...
The dinner table is us with the Cultral and Tourism Board Bureau heads from Langgu, and some heads of the hotel staff, who co=operatively arranged a big show for us that night. This is typical of how we're treated here...huge dinners with important people, many courses of great food typical of each area we've visited. The shot of me and the National Park Director toasting is "gambei," or ''bottom's up toast." The Chinese that food and drink bind a friendship forever, and it's typical to have 10-20 gambei toasts at a meal...The shots of us on stage with the life size photos are from the hotel show that night...you can see the effort they went to to make the shot look and sound great. They had those same photos running on big screen tv's in the hotel lobby advertising the show, all week. Amamzing.
This is all typical of the kindness, friendlyness, and lengths that folks here have gone to to treat us so very well during our whole stay here. Columbia will have to work very hard to reach the high bar set by our hosts here when it's our turn to host the return end of this cultural exchange.
I'm very grateful to have the cahnce to represent Columbia and America; this is a great opportnity for us to help open doors between our two countries, and I think all four of us are taking this repsonsability very seriously.
On a "what a small world note," Jake and I were in the hotel bar here relaxing a bit last night, and started up conversation with the great pianist playing there...it turns out her Uncle moved to our very own Columbia Missouri, 10 years ago. I'm sure our friends of China group must know him. This is not the first time we've met someone on this trip who had ties to our hometown, or knew someone who lived there, had studied there, or planned to.
How cool is that?
alan
looks like a really fun experience !! 
