The China Project

By Geoffrey Gevalt
Young Writers Project Editor
Welcome to the blog of the Vermont Youth Orchestra’s trip to China in the summer of 2007. If you are new to the site, you will find below a remarkable collection of writing, photos and sound from the musicians’ trip that began in Beijing and ended in Hong Kong. It was an historic trip.

The China Project continues to find new audiences. In August, the Sunday Times Argus/Rutland Herald ran a condensed version of the blog in written form — with photos. On Oct. 1 and 2, Vermont Public Radio ran a two-part series; click here to listen to the series AND to hear some of the musicians’ feedback about the Young Writers Project and the experience of doing this multi-media blog.

In addition, Vermont Public Television may also run a video produced by the Young Writers Project; in any event the video will soon be available by contacting the Vermont Youth Orchestra. And on Dec. 31, at First Night/Burlington, students will present their writing and impressions of China at Flynn Space at two showings. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW POST 7.23.07

These photos are from Steven Tatum and were taken in the last days of the trip in Hong Kong. I am putting them out of order to make sure people see them. I’ll move them into order later — gg

By Wylie Brown

I won’t lie, I’ve been avoiding this blog. Not because I didn’t enjoy my trip or because I’m not interested in learning how different everyone experienced our adventures in China, because I want to learn all this. The simple reason I haven’t been able to spend more than 5 minutes on this blog since getting home is because I’m sick of China.

The 13-hour flight from Hong Kong to Chicago was one of the fastest 13-hour flights I’ve ever been on. This was because I was flying home. You know the old saying, “you never know what you have until you don’t have it,” or something along those lines. Well that’s what I experienced in China. I never really knew just how great and magnificent and blue our skies were until going to China. I never realized just how amazing toilet seats were either. I also never realized just how fantastic the air smells here and how great it is to poor yourself a glass of tap water and guzzle it down without fear of what may be it’s “end results”. Read the rest of this entry »

By Steven Tatum

Sitting safely, comfortably at my quiet home in the woods after two weeks of running around some of the largest cities in the world has given me ample time to reflect on my experiences. The thing that struck me most when I was in China was the sheer size of everything we saw. Tiananmen square could hold the population of Vermont, The Great Wall extended for three thousand miles, there are 19 million people in Shanghai, the list goes on.

But now that I’m home, all I can think is how similar the important things, the people, were to people everywhere else. Sure, those kids on the street outside the Beijing concert hall didn’t speak the same language as kids in other places, sure they looked a little different from kids you might see anywhere else in the world, but they were just kids. During the trip, we touched all kinds of people, from those who attended our concerts, to the young Chinese musicians, to the street vendors from whom we bought souvenirs. My immediate reaction was that these were foreign people, more different from me that anything else. That view has changed since I arrived home. People cannot be foreign. We are all people, each as individual as the next, whether Chinese or American. Differences of race or language should not overshadow our individuality or our similarities as humans on Earth.

It took me a trip half-way across the world to realize that it is easy to talk of differences but hard to recognize truly important similarities.

By Kelly Hermann

When I was younger, my Dad travelled to China for business twice a year. When he came home, he always suffered from the same, mysterious illness. “He’s just a little tired from jetlag,” my mom would say. In my four-year-old mind, this sounded like “jetleg.” I always assumed it meant that there was something wrong with my father’s legs because he sat on the plane for too long. Twelve years later, I am now fully aware of the effects of “jetleg,” having woken up at 2 a.m. for the third morning in a row.

Jetlag aside, China was an awesome experience. It’s hard to sit down and describe everything that happened, or even specific moments on the trip, as it all sort of blends together in my mind. The concert in Beijing feels like a year ago, while it seems I was in Hong Kong just last night. My two weeks in China flew by, but it seems like so long ago that we were sitting in the Burlington airport waiting for our flight to Chicago. The scary and exciting experiences I had in China made it feel like I was there for much longer than I actually was.

I feel older now, more wise. I am now experienced in the ways of world travel, bargaining and peeing in holes in the ground. I have tried new and exotic foods (yes, I did try the squid, it wasn’t bad), been yelled at in Chinese and sat on a plane for 13 hours. Twice. I can now set straight the stereotypes my friends and relatives have come to accept about China. China is not a third-world country. Real Chinese food is nothing at all like American Chinese food. They don’t eat dog at every meal.

As my trip to China fades into the past, there will be memories that I will never forget. And things I can watch over and over again on YouTube.

By Zoe Senecal

China’s not done with me. I still feel sick sometimes, (I blame the pizza in Hong Kong) and the whole jet lag thing makes me want to sleep all the time. It’s like a massive, China hangover. I bet I’m not alone when I say that I feel gross and depressed, like I’ll never be happy with my Burlington routine again. I tried to skate today for the first time in three weeks, and my legs were like jelly. I felt this uncharacteristic desire to give up, and crawl back into bed where I could be nostalgic about China. Even seeing some of my friends here is dissapointing. I had missed them so much, and yet, everything they talk about seems…. hmmm, sounds awful, but, it seems so petty compared with making music in China. I feel like a hobbit who has come home to the Shire after visiting far away lands, having near death experiences ( I came close with some of those bikers in Shanghai), and soul struggles. I feel like Burlington is so removed and separate and peaceful, cutting me off from the real struggles that two thirds of the world’s population face in the cities. I guess it’s natural. I always feel like this to some degree after a final concert, or stage performance. I keep returning to the blog hoping that someone will have posted something saying that it was just a joke and we’re going back to China to stay and live backstage at the Bejing concert hall and we’ll adopt the puddle kids from outside and eat rice and imported peanut butter and happily live out our lives playing tchaick and Bruch every three or four nights. No, that might not work out so well either. I’ll have to find a happy medium. Right now though… must… sleep.

*Collapses, exhausted.

By Rebekah Gordon

I understand that I have just recently written an entry on this web site, oh, about a day ago. The problem is, after reading all of you share more of your insights and amazing opinions of China, I always have more to say. Whenever I listen to an audio clip from China, I begin to do a small dry crying inside, out of happiness and out of sadness that we are not in on the trip anymore. It is silly to say that the trip is over and that soon it will all be forgotten, for that is quite the extreme opposite. The China trip will, forever, be in our souls and hearts as a treasure chest that will have no special key, it will always be propped open and will mingle and connect to everything else that we do.

I don’t know why I keep writing when I cannot express what I feel in my heart. Maybe by continuing to write, my thoughts will become more focused. But after further consideration, I do not want my thoughts to become focused. Rather, I want myself to think about China as A HUGE ADVENTURE that no one can tame, granted I’ll be able to tell stories about this big adventure.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Sydney Chandler

I just woke up from a solid nap in the big red chair in our living room. I had a dream I was back in China. I was telling someone else in the orchestra that I was really tired because I had woken up at 5 in the morning. I can tell I’m tired when I have a dream about being tired.

The part about waking up at 5 a.m. today was true. I woke up and decided to try to go back to sleep, but, of course, that plan failed miserably. So I got out of bed at 6 and got dressed. All my clothes were still in the wash, so I put on weird clothes that usually sit in the bottom of my dresser drawer. I used the bathroom - which I don’t have to squat to use! I brushed my teeth and had a sudden jolt of adrenalin when I, out of habit, used the tap water but then panicked because we hadn’t been able to drink it for 2 weeks. Once I realized that, yes, I can drink the tap water in my home, I drank a big glass of it. Read the rest of this entry »

By Anna Houston

Yes!

I’m home, I’ve slept in my own, soft, bed twice, and I’m about ready to crawl back into it again, even though it’s only 7:30. It’s nice to be back. The only thing missing now is my luggage, which is somewhere in the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Without it, I don’t feel complete. Yes, I have my pictures and my slippers from the Panda Hotel in Hong Kong, but I don’t have my ticket stubs from the overnight train ride, or the special Emperor tea that will probably be confiscated at customs. The small, seemingly insignificant artifacts that chronicle my trip in a very unique way.

These scrapbook materials are my quick and easy access to China, the two-week adventure that is already beginning to blur together in my mind. Which garden were we at in this picture? Was that pagoda in Hangzhou or Suzhou? Where did we eat our best meal? Our worst meal? What did the Beijing Concert Hall look like? (This was a question I grappled with on our plane ride back as I could not, for the life of me, remember what it looked like. Thanks to digital technology however, the camera captured what I couldn’t due to jet lag) I am finding ways to remember these things soon, in fear that they will be lost entirely.

I tell random stories to my family whenever something happens here that reminds me of an experience in China. I miss chopsticks at dinner (ha, I never thought I would say that), and the chicken curry I ate tonight brought back the memories of the one Thai meal we ate during our stay. I remember feeling so happy to eat Thai food, because it broke the monotony. I notice how Vermont humidity is of a different stickiness than Shanghai humidity, and I notice how strange it is to be talking to my friends, when it feels like I know my VYO ones much better. If anything, I have brought back from China a keener sense of observation.

Finally, to those of you who put so much work into this blog, into the VYO, and into this incredible adventure, thank you. And to the VYO, thank you for being wonderful musicians, teachers, and friends, it has been a privilege to play with you in China. But for now, my fellow world travelers, it is time to sleep.

By Rebekah Gordon

Well, there are no words to describe this trip. That sounds like everyone else, but really. Sincerely and truly, I cannot understand what life would be like had I not been to China. Seeing all of your faces everyday was an enormous privilege to me and an honor. Laughing with you, joking, eating, playing, eating, rehearsing, eating (okay, you get it, there was a lot of food) and just being with you all made me realize how fortunate I am to be in the circumstances that I am today. I realize, now more than ever, that in order to truly be a human being, you must be courageous, open and willing to reap knowledge and experience from others. We must all always remain who we were on this trip and that means, we must remain curious, excited, energized and always willing to do our best, just like we did at each and every concert. Read the rest of this entry »

By Zoe Senecal

I realize that I am home. I’ve snapped out of my plane coma. But it still feels like I should be running off to a rehearsal right now. If I write about coming home last night, will that make it real? I feel like this post will really end the trip. It will be done. I guess I’ll have to do the manly thing… as my dad would say.

Checking in at the Hong Kong airport was a final amusing reminder of what its like traveling with musicians. As we stood in line, a rumor began circulating that they would make violas and violins check their instruments. Ha, over Kate Noble’s dead body. We all held our instruments a little tighter, as if to make it clear without using verbal communication, that if they wanted to put our babies on conveyor belts under a plane, they would have to pry them from our cold dead hands. The lady checking me in looked tired. She said my viola was pretty big to be carried on. I raised an eyebrow, and she raised a heavily penciled one in return. Mini show down. I think she saw the rest of the orchestra behind me, and predicted a losing battle. “If you insist” she said, and handed me an orange tag for my case. That reminds me of the trip over, when I was carrying Dan’s cello bow in my case. In Chicago, he asked me how it was doing, like I was babysitting his kid or something. Read the rest of this entry »

By Sydney Chandler

6/25/07
The first night in Beijing we got checked into our hotel. Ariel and I went up to our room and threw our stuff on the floor because we were really tired, and I plopped down on the bed. That was a big mistake because the beds were rock solid. We thought maybe the mattress was missing off the bed or there was some protective board on the actual mattress. We pulled the sheets back to see but found that it was just a really hard mattress. Bummer. Read the rest of this entry »

VYO faces in China

 

 Suzanne Calhoun, Jillian Griffin on pre- Hong Kong concert and sadness of being seniors: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Jillian Griffin

As our time in China draws to a close, I’ve begun to realize just how much I’m going to miss orchestra next year. All year long, Mr. Peters has told us that the orchestra is a family, but I’d never really felt as if that was true until now. Over the course of these past two weeks, the orchestra has truly become a family. I’ve talked to so many new people that I’ve known all year, but never communicated with. In a way, I’m glad that all this communication has taken place so far away from home. The fact that we’re all on the opposite hemisphere has allowed everyone to get away from any molds they fit into in Vermont, which makes it easier for everyone to talk to each other. We’re not quite as split up into groups by school, or by age, or by popularity. There is, of course, still some clique-ishness – there is in every group of adolescent people - but it is much lessened since it feels like we are the only people who aren’t fluent in Chinese.
I am looking forward to returning home – it’ll be really nice to not eat anything fried for a long, long time. But at the same time, once I go home, VYO will be done forever. College will be fun, and I will definitely be involved in an orchestra there, but since VYO has become such a tight-knit family, it will be a hard gap to replace.

The concert Friday night was amazing! The Hong Kong Youth Symphony played the first half of the concert and filled the wooden hall and bright red seats with energy. Then the VYO took the stage and played their hearts out. At the end, the two groups merged for their final song. There was much clapping and bowing. Troy received a silver platter and gave out a Green Mountain Coffee bag in return.

Afterward the musicians from the two orchestras shared email addresses and Facebook usernames before we zoomed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We woke up early Saturday to shop all day and tonight we watched a laser light show up over the harbor.

We’re coming home soon!

A little later he wrote:
More audio coming. I’m in an Internet gaming cafe. There is the sound of extremely loud gunfire all around me. It’s awesome. We played Counterstike, a terrorist shoot ‘em up game with some of the boys; Troy and Caroline played too! I love Hong Kong!

Good night from China!

UPDATED 7.10.07

 

 The Hong Kong Youth Symphony in concert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Hong Kong Youth Symphony part two: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The concert felt like any other VYO concert, a bit rushed in the rehearsal (we had been “behind” in everything we had done that day, from our lunch to our hotel check-in), but calm, in that we belonged, to each other and to the music.

When we finished the Tchaikovsky, I lost it. It was the combination of exhaustion mixed with the realization that this was The Last Concert I would ever play with Sydney and Ted and Paul and Salka and Dan and Kate. It wasn’t the personal connection so much as the physical presence (and occasionally, amusing antics) of these individuals that I will miss. OK, so maybe it was the friendship as well, but whatever it was caused me to start sobbing, some might argue hysterically, as we took our final bow. I cried harder than I have in a while, the kind of tears that make one breathless and hiccupy, and in my case, full of a bittersweet happiness. You see, I was laughing and crying in such a manner that I don’t think anybody really knew what to do with me. I blamed it on the intensity of Tchaikovsky.

When we went back on stage for our joint performance with the Hong Kong Youth Orchestra, I struggled to make it through Spring Festival Overture, borrowing tissues from my faithful horn-mates. The poor girl next to me, Samantha, spoke perfect English, and when I explained my blubbering, she was wonderfully understanding.

The exchange with the Hong Kong orchestra, if you could call it that, was a bit disappointing; we never got to eat dinner with the Chinese musicians, as promised, and the only true interaction was after the concert in a flurry of exchanges of email and Facebook addresses along with lots and lots of picture taking. I am sure that my face, in every picture, while beet-red and splotchy with tears, was positively beaming.

The first item is from Josh Exler describing a “sketchy” adventure in the Shanghai shopping district. All ended well.

The second is Estlin Usher on The Great Wall and other things.

The third is the Franklin County Debate which, actually, cannot be properly described.

 

 A sketchy exchange, that ends well.: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Estlin Usher on the Great Wall and other things: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Great Franklin County Debate: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Troy Peters on not feeling well: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is from Daniel Houghton the YWP mentor accompanying the orchestra to help the students capture their experience in writing, audio, stills and video. He filed this at 8 a.m. Friday CHINA time, so they’re on day 13.

The fan club flew into Shenzhen yesterday (Thursday) and enjoyed a Mongolian dinner while the orchestra waited back at the Hangzhou airport for their plane. They waited six hours, arriving very late. Meanwhile the fan club drove by a miniature Eiffel Tower, the High Tech District (Shenzhen is trying to be the high tech industrial hub of China), an animated sign which read “Las Vegas!” next to a picture of the statue of Liberty, and endless highrise apartment buildings. Sometimes 5 mirror copies of the same 30 story building stretched out like the folds of an accordian. There is no old city here in Shenzhen. In 1980 the city began to grow out of a small farming village of 50,000 to its present day girth of 12 million, one of China’s “small” cities.

Today we board the ferry to Hong Kong. Our money will change. The orchestra will play its last concert, this time side by side with the Hong Kong Youth Symphony. Then we will sneak in one final day of touring and shopping before coming home.

UPDATED 7.10 These photos come from all over China. Enjoy.

By Anna Houston

It’s around 6:30 Thursday evening and I have been in this airport for four hours thus far. Our flight to Schenzen has been delayed not once, but twice, and we are currently expected to depart around 9:10 pm, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that aircraft technicalities may once more hinder our journey (Mom, you were so right). Our gate is nice, in a freezing cold, cavernous way – we’ve got the entire space to ourselves. What’s more, this is a prime opportunity to get to know each other even more than we have in the past week and a half. A handful of people have caught a nasty little stomach bug, all of us are dead tired, and we have all gotten to the point in our relationships where we don’t need to fill in the silences in fear of awkward ones. A sampling of the activities occurring right now include: wandering around the less-than exciting airport (think BTV size), a game of soccer, an intense session of bridge, an impromptu drumming session, and plenty of reading and napping.

It’s also a good time to reflect. Everything has begun to blur together, something that, to me, signifies both a loss of the past week and a half and an anticipation of the three days to come. I fill my notebook with indecipherable notes during every empty moment, trying to recollect the best moments of our time together, writing down words and phrases that will help me remember them years from now. It’s been one of those trips where you want to stop time or, better yet, get rid of it entirely, but it keeps moving. Days become weeks without distinguishable characteristics. I remember the simpler aspects of Chinese culture; the ever-present watermelon and rice at every meal, the sock-type nylons that all the women seem wear, the Chinese Buicks (of every make), and the overpowering, dare I say, stench, of Beijing and Shanghai. There are also the squat toilets, the humidity-induced wetness, and the magical moment of compromise between a vendor and a buyer.

This is the best airport wait of my life, because it’s given me a chance to contemplate my personal journey and to enjoy the company of the people I have gotten to know so well, some of whom I will never play with or see again. Therefore I will savor every moment and tolerate this cold tile floor for the sake of wonderful memories.

By Zoe Senecal

Two in the afternoon. Thursday. Chinese airport. Flight to Shenzhen delayed.

This trip is already slipping away from me like water in cupped hands. I’ve been sleep walking through it as if it were a dream, and it has been lovely and dream like and warm. Like so many stages we play on. This quality makes it unforgettable, but at the same time, puts the mind in a state to forget. There are some things I must not forget. They include:

• The sound of the wind through the trees in the garden after hearing nothing but traffic and vendors for a week. It sounds like being rocked to sleep outside by some sort of universal maternal force. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW Posted 7.07.07

By Callie Flickinger

Thursday seemed like a day in space that didn’t really happen. We began our day visiting an old pagoda, Six Harmony Pagoda, that dates back to 970 AD and was rebuilt 800 years ago. A Buddhist monk collected donations to build this pagoda. There are 13 stories on the outside, but 7 actually on the inside. It’s fun to climb up it. Many of us did and it was awfully hot, but there were beautiful views from the top. It was pretty hazy, but you were still able to see the double decker bridge and the hillsides. Everyone was extremely hot but really liked the short steep climb, not as difficult as the staircase to the Statue of Liberty’s crown. Some of the adults did serious bargaining with one of the vendors buying four handbags for 80 Yuan! The street vendor had a very prosperous morning with our group. Ice cream was a big seller as well!

Lunch was something different – Thai Food with curry!

We all went directly to Hangzhou airport for a 3:00 p.m. flight. Here’s where the day seemed to be an eternity. One of the flights with the alums and the fan club left on time and arrived in Shenzhen at 5:00 p.m. Unfortunately, our flight left at 9:30 p.m. and arrived at our hotel at 12:30 a.m. What an awesome group of kids – so resilient and flexible. There was time to sleep, play Hearts and Bridge, read books, write in journals, and eat KFC.

Shenzhen is an unusual city only developed 27 years ago. It is very close to Hong Kong and provides less expensive housing and commercial development than Hong Kong. Originally, it was a fishing village. Shenzhen began with 50,000 people and now has 12 million inhabitants. They hope that this will become a new “Silicon Valley.” Lots of businesses are here such as IBM, Sony, Panasonic, and Microsoft. This certainly is an industrious city and much different from any other part of China we have visited before. It lacks history and character as of yet. It’s quite modern.

Updated 7.10.07

 

 Daniel Ramsey reflects on observations of people in Chinese cities: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Zoe Senecal

The whole time I was in China, the thing I had the most difficulty absorbing was the sheer number of people living there. For the whole two weeks, I struggled to stay conscious at night long enough to think of some way to start tackling this topic on the blog, but it wasn’t until I’d spent a whole day comatose and jet lagged before the computer, reading the pages of blogs and listening to the audios that I could come up with anything. For this blog, I will humbly piggy back on Dan Ramsey’s audio clip about looking into people’s faces.

Writer’s note: Actually, looking back over the finished product, it seems that I have written this blog as a direct response to that audio clip, so it may be beneficial for the reader to first listen to Mr. Ramsey’s audio; click the “play now” above.

Dan speaks of a collective despair among the people. How can they measure any sort of success when their reality is waking up in a hole in the wall twenty floors up, and spending the rest of the day struggling against crowds, gasping for hot polluted air as they make their way to XYZ through the pussing and stenching streets of Beijing? How can they measure happiness when they are up against 20 million others? To even survive would seem a feat. Read the rest of this entry »

By Zina Ward

During the last week, several of us spent quite a bit of time taking pictures of amusing signs. Poorly translated, edited, or spell-checked, they are entertaining and often indiscernible. Here is The VYO Top Ten List of Funny Signs. Enjoy. (And imagine what they’re saying about our Chinese!). Read the rest of this entry »

NEW: Posted July 7.

By Salka Thali

It feels as if our group goes through a small change each time we ride to our dress rehearsals. For the past few days I’m sure few of us have spent much time thinking about music or orchestra since we’ve visited so many wonderful and unique (if quite hot and humid) towns and attractions. But as we all gathered our instruments and tried to get some of the wrinkles out our dress pants (not an easy task after they have been crumbled up in a suitcase for several days) this afternoon there was once again more focus and a common energy. The bus was buzzing with chatter and occasional bursts of humming of orchestra music, while I checked my reeds to see how they had been faring in the humidity.
I was excited to finally play again, if a bit nervous, since our concert in Shanghai went so well. From past experiences I know that a good performance is difficult to follow since as an ensemble we tend to get a little too relaxed.
As Mr. Peters talked to us during the final minutes of the dress rehearsal he mentioned that it was the Fourth of July and that we should play “American Salute’ keeping this in mind (“Think about the people back home, of the holiday they’re celebrating today, not about the fact that you’re hungry and want pizza”). This was also the last concert at which we played “Jasmine” and our other Chinese pieces.
It helped me to think about these reasons as the performance went on: As I watched my fellow musicians during “Jasmine” I thought of the fact that I have been traveling with such a great group of people (many of whom I had really spoken to before this trip) and how soon this whole experience will be over. I thought about my family watching the fireworks at the Burlington Waterfront, and how I was missing it for the first time in many years.

Here is how the horns heard most of the concert in Hangzhou at the Zhejiang Concert Hall. The recorder was situated in the horns section during the VYO concert on July 4 in China.

 

 Carmen Fifield an hour before the concert -- post pizza: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Hangzhou Concert from the perspective of the horn section: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Anna Houston reflects on concert during intermission: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 A final clip from the concert from the perspective of the horn section: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Max Bruch piece, Philip Ying solo, in concert at Hangzhou: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Two young musicians talk about getting ready for a concert and their friends’ tastes in music.

 

 Ted Calcagni on preparing for a concert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Wylie Brown on getting ready and on the world of young musicians: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Chris Vignio talks about the upcoming concert, the harp, tuning it and other things. Other VYO musicians talk about preparing for the July 4 concert in Hangzhou.

 

 Chris Vignio on the harp, etc.: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Tuning the harp: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Kirsten Muckstadt and her thoughts before the concert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Mary, Caitlyn, Cassy & Sasha before the concert: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A variety of observations from a variety of VYO musicians…

 

 Talking with two older Chinese men: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Arielle Marcy on playing cards: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

NEW Posted 7.7.07

By Kelsey Calhoun

I realized yesterday that we only have about four days left in China. This was flabbergasting news because I had been living without time going by, with no notion of what day it was, how many days we had been in China or how many days we had left. I was just absorbing everything, not worried about the inevitable time when touring China with my orchestra would just be memories.

One of the cool things about doing this trip with orchestra is meeting everyone in the orchestra. I know everybody in the orchestra’s name, pretty much and I know who they hang out with, but at rehearsal and at Reveille (our summer music camp), it’s so easy to be cliquey. Everyone has their group that they hang out with, and there’s no impetus to talk to other people. Here, though, when you see something amazing and you have to share it, you don’t wait till you see the people you normally hang out with. You turn to your immediate neighbor and point excitedly. Most people are really nice and then there are some really cool people who you’ve never gotten to talk to before. And there are some duds who surprise you with their close-mindedness, but there are those in every group. It’s worth dealing with the bad apples when you discover about the golden ones at the same time.

Updated 7.9.07

We have discovered the author of this wonderful piece and can now identify her — Carmen. -gg

By Carmen Fifield

Yesterday we visited China’s other “ most beautiful city in the China” Suzhou.

Suzhou is a canal city and a garden city. Yesterday we visited the gardens. Chinese gardens don’t have raised beds or bright flowers; rather they go for cool and green which is understandable considering China is the hottest and most humid place that I have ever visited. The large -scale gardens, places like The Summer Palace in Beijing, were meant for royalty as a summer retreat from the heat of the city. Not surprisingly city merchants liked the oasis idea and built their own smaller, yet equally impressive versions as a place to escape the heat.

The garden we visited yesterday had huge gates with benches inside for the servants to sit on while their masters enjoyed the garden. Our guide explained that this place was only for the upper class and that the lower was forbidden entrance and forced to wait not even in chairs, but on rough bench. The paths we walked on were stone and some were slippery with moss and moisture. Going up a set of stone steps I discovered snails about as big as a quarter and covered in a hard shell. I enjoy things like this so I picked a couple up to look at. They had little antennae that they wiggled expressively and a little round foot to propel themselves with. The ones in my hand retreated into their shells, but the ones on the ground soldiered along leaving behind them a trail of slime. No Chinese garden is complete without goldfish. Every little pond has a fleet of them gliding along beneath the surface, their huge mouths gulping.

In the afternoon we visited a garden with the “ smallest arched bridge in China” The bridge wasn’t very big, but the goldfish under it were enormous. The two footers shared the pond with the regular sized goldfish and also a strange gray fish that was more their size. I sat on a rock at the edge and watched them swirl around the lily pads occasionally nipping at each other. In the gardens we visited were rooms (little buildings with lots of mahogany furniture that smell like varnish.) Each room was a place to relax in the afternoon; a studying spot, library, a music room, a tea room. I didn’ t spend long in these rooms, but I did enjoy the paths with the trees and the green and the cool air.

For someone who is used to greenery as far as the eye can see, urban China is a shocker. In modern times, these gardens are still cool and green and protected but just outside the gate is a different world; a sea of roads and people and buildings. For me these places were not oases from the heat, but a little chunk of something that I haven’t seen in a week: green.

 

 Chris Vignio on candy: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I can’t believe that I discovered Chinese goodies so late in the game. After a week of only eating what was provided for me, I braved the store and came out with about $1.50 worth of strange foods whose ingredients and charms were unknown to me.

The first thing I tried was a white gelatinous glob covered in sesame seeds with a faintly dark interior. On first bite I was repulsed, it was really hot and the blob was heavy and sticky. I tried it again… better. Then, later, in my air-conditioned hotel room I tried the now room temperature treat and liked it. The glob was rice gluten and the interior was dark sesame paste. Good… now I can go back and try the funny green one.

I also got these fruit tubes. They looked like un -sulfured dried fruit in paste form and came in every fruit flavor. I got a bunch. I didn’t like them. They reminded me of the gelatinous bottom of the Stonyfield Farm fruit yogurt with a strong bean flavor. The fruit was kind of an afterthought.

They sell these things that I like to call sesame pillars that have a rice interior and a sesame outside. They are hard and sweet and very sesame –y or they are like chewy rice crispies with sesame. The attraction of these is that everyone else won’t touch them and I can have them all to my self. The candies sold are either completely unidentifiable or in opaque packaging and therefore you have to go by feel.

In a rest area today I stood, blocking the line, feeling every package to check for gelatinousness and chalkiness. Some candies I tried tasted and felt and looked exactly like chalk. No good! Go for sticky or hard. I bought hard candies that taste like horehound candy with pine nuts embedded in it. Rather yummy and then the nuts dissolve while you suck the candy. We also ate a sticky sugary goo infused with sesame seeds. That was yummy, it tasted like caramel. In green and purple packages were cookie like things with a filling. I was scared and the interior tasted like BBQ sauce and beans or something completely salty and disgusting. The sesame treats and the hard candies are a repeat, but some things I just couldn’t stomach.

NEW POST 7.13.07

By Suzanne Calhoun

The Chinese must really like Santa Claus. We had just adjusted to actually being in China, when we walked into dinner on the first day and had Santa Claus staring back at us. Several other fancy restaurants we’ve been to have had similar large stickers on the windows or mirrors- a cartoon version of St. Nick along with “Merry Christmas.” Santa Claus doesn’t belong in summer, exclusively in English where everything is written in Chinese characters, or even in China at all, where people have different customs and holidays. Santa Claus has shown up in other contexts, too; I saw some in a store window last night when we were walking along a street in Suzhou. The carpet factory in Shanghai had even made little rugs with Santa Claus on them- they were half cotton and half silk- 40 dollars for a 1 ft by 1 ft carpet.

Here is another instance of the Chinese trying to be more like Westerners, for better or for worse: the pearl factory we went to had face whitening cream. This is especially entertaining (and sad) because Caucasians in the USA are always trying to get a tan- by natural or artificial methods.

However, unlike the USA, for the most part the Chinese keep their cities really clean. There are people wandering around sidewalks and government-run tourist attractions with brooms and nifty closeable aluminum dustpans that they can put over their shoulder. Vehicles with rotating brushes sweep the streets until there is no discernable dirt. The only time I saw dirt, especially in Beijing and Shanghai, was in the water pouring into the drain and flooding some parts of the street after a monsoon-like rainstorm in Beijing. Suzhou is not kept quite as clean, but Beijing and Shanghai impressed me.

The air pollution, especially in Beijing, is another story…

By Sydney Chandler

I took a class this past year in school called Holocaust and Human Behavior. One of the big, recurring themes was how survivors have dealt with their experiences. How do you move on after your entire life is turned upside down? Is talking enough? How do you share a story that even you yourself can’t fully comprehend?

We visited the Great Wall. I don’t know how to explain the experience. I can’t just write about because I’ll sound cliché, and I can’t just show a photo because they look just like the postcards we’ve all been sending home.

So how do I share with my family and friends the amazing experience we just had? The survivors from the Holocaust use different mediums to share. They speak, write books, poetry, songs, paint, play music, and whatever else they can think of.

So how can 90 teenagers share with the world the extraordinary experiences they are having thousands miles from home? What talents or interests can we use together?

Oh, wait, we’re musicians!

 

 Anna Houston on gardens in Suzhou: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yesterday we visited Suzhou, the “Venice of the East.” Although there are about 5 or 6 million people living in the city and surrounding areas, Suzhou feels much different from Beijing and Shanghai. In those large centers of political and economic power, skyscrapers tower over the homes and shops of ordinary people.

From what I saw of Suzhou, the buildings are much more traditional and understated. Our guide told us that the city government controls how high and in what style new buildings may be built. It dictates that no structure (in the areas that we visited) be more than a couple stories high, and that all new buildings constructed in the place of old ones follow Suzhou architectural tradition: white walls with black, shingled roofing to create contrast. The result of these rules is a downtown in which the busy streets are lined with short, simple buildings. Only the contents of the stores and the volume of vehicle and bike traffic give away the fact that Suzhou is a city with several million people.

The shops sell trendy and fashionable clothing, many of them small boutiques with only a narrow street front but extending far back into the building. Western music plays loudly outside many of the stores and bars. As we walked around at 21:00 last night, the bicycle lanes were bustling with people running errands. The intersections were hectic: cars and busses jostled with bikes and mopeds for room, cutting each other off and driving through lanes. Several of us had near misses with bicyclists, whose loud bells and horns and screechy brakes and obnoxious alarms filled the streets with noise.

The canals, a central part of the city’s identity, appear suddenly and unexpectedly. Smelly but often picturesque, they wind parallel to busy streets and through tranquil gardens. Marco Polo, the Italian explorer whose voyage to the East earned him great fame, was so enamored of Suzhou’s waterways that he described the city as the “Venice of the East.” Although we had little time to see them, the canals in the Garden of the Master of Nets were beautiful and serene with tightly-packed, traditional houses built on the banks. In the city, they were dank and dirty, adding a strange element of history and filth to the modern, urban nightlife.

By Rebekah Gordon

In Rebekah’s mind: WHERE IN THE UNIVERSE DO I START? (Out of Rebekah’s mind) You know what? I’ve decided that I will tell you about what I am most known for on this trip. Are you ready? I am learning Chinese! Through the constant glances that I give my “Chinese made easy” book (is that really possible?), I have managed to talk to approximately 57.7 Chinese civilians. Did you know that about 53.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot? I’ll start off at a fairly easy level; of course, you know that Chinese is only for the most sophisticated of minds, that is why I have only managed to retain about 2/8 of the phrases that I have seen. Are you aware that nearly 12% of all statistics are made up on the spot? Take a whiff of these phrases:
Ni hao — Hello
Fay charng gan shie — Thank you very much
Nie chway show ying yu ma? — Do you speak English?
Wo han yo shuo de boo hao — I don’t speak much Chinese
Dwei boo chee — Excuse me
Shie-shie — Thank you
Jege je de do shao chien? — How much will this cost? (That one is still in the works)

Not only do these phrases work extraordinarily well to charm the venders into giving you a dirty t-shirt for 25 Yuen, even though that’s a rip off, they find you great friends. I have met so many salesmen and saleswomen, kids, soldiers — yes…soldiers –, street cleaners, who do an amazing job, and you know what, after our encounters I and these people will never be the same. Either from their shock, their desire to push my cheeks in order to not be afraid of my permanent smile, my excitement and their beautiful faces, China is exciting!

So many people say that music is the language of the world; this is very true. But so is courage. To have the courage to step up to someone (face to chest in this case as I am taller here than most of the people) and immerse yourself in their language leads to laughter, blushing, humbling, pleasure and lit faces. People’s eyes light up the moment they hear a syllable in their language! I take overflowing, light-bulbing, laughing, enlightening enjoyment from talking to the Chinese.

By Emily Xue

As I think nearly all of the VYO has discovered, the chief joy of shopping in China is the ability to bargain. On probably any street in any of the cities we’ve visited, we’ve been besieged by vendors selling their various and sundry wares, a diverse assortment of cheap Rolex watches (fake), cheap Gucci handbags (fake), cheap flutes made of gourds, cheap random toys that will likely last about three minutes before exploding.

The vendors are, moreover, alarmingly persistent and will follow anybody who even glances in their direction down the length of the street, shouting “Hello, lady, lady, lady – Gucci, Gucci, you buy? You buy?” while waving and occasionally even grabbing the susceptible-looking straggler on the sleeve to further display their goods. Read the rest of this entry »

By Nathan Caudill

Hello guys!
China fun,
All OK,
Great Wall great,
Hotels good,
Food is good,

Lots of things:
Street vendors,
Souvenirs,
Factories,
Museums,
Guided tours,
Long bus rides,
Busy streets, Read the rest of this entry »

By Alice Hasen

So many times on this tour, I have wished that I had a built-in camera in my head (or a photographic memory) to capture the moments that appear and are gone too quickly for me to be able to whip out a camera. I have decided to make a list of these images so that I shall never forget them:

Rickshaws and bicycles – actually, one man in a dirty white cotton shirt, riding a colorless bicycle through a narrow Shanghai side street, leaning to one side to turn and going precariously fast considering the slick, greasy streets, which, at times, are caked at the edges with bits of cloth, brick, dust, urine, old food and crumpled paper. The yellow street lights illuminate this figure from both front and behind, making his passing silhouette simply another ghost glimpsed once for a fleeting moment, fished out of the darkness of the masses of 18 million – 18 million! – inhabitants of this wide, worldly, hyper, silvery-blue city, both a modern urban paradise and