Fuyang

After a shaky 12 hour trip on the night train with hardly no sleep, we arrive back in Hangzhou. You have to do this at least once in your life. The train is about 400 meters long and blows his hooter on every crossing. There are about 10 times 6 beds on every wagon. We met some cool people on the train, but in the morning we all felt like worn-out T-shirts in the bottom of a backpack. Pieter forgot his wallet on the train, but a few phonecalls later it has been found and will be delivered back to us in Shanghai without any losses.

In a van and a cab we take off to Fuyang. Only a small hour away from Hangzhou, we get the chance to see once more the nice mountains in the area. The club in Fuyang seems to be another trendy dance bar. The waiters are getting their instructions in pure army style. Only problem, they have only one karaoke microphone. We explain to them we cannot play without a PA, but they seem to have a different opinion. Finally we pull out an ultimatum for them and leave to visit the nice old town in a bike-cab. At 5PM we get the news that the mikes have arrived. Off to the soundcheck, but all mikes seem to be Yamaha karaoke mikes. We can't believe our eyes and ears. Our sound-engineer Pieter makes a confronting comparison between his own mike -made in Europe- and the club's mikes -made in China.

Because we are eager to play and don't want to cancel another gig, we decide to pull it off on this set. After a pumping techno dj-set, we start to play and the people seem to love it. There are moments we almost can't hear ourselves in the sheering of the young crowd. This might be how the Beatles must have felt themselves back in Hamburg. However, somehow it also feels a bit like a freakshow. Some of the people here obviously have never seen Westerners in real live before. Tomorrow is another day.