Back in China 2009

We just got back from our second China tour. This time our blog wasn’t accessible, nor facebook or youtube. We had to wait until we got back to get it all posted. Nevertheless, it was another big adventure and we

all had the feeling we got to know a few more pieces of the big China puzzle. The trip went smooth, we caught a beautiful sunrise. Arriving at midnight for us, Shanghai was just waking up but we headed straight to Hangzhou. Nice sunset, no clouds in the air.

However, on the bus to Hangzhou we got the disappointing news that some of the concerts had been cancelled, due to the swine flu, while others were still under discussion. On the other hand, it's hard to get bored in a city that never sleeps, so we got to known Hangzhou better and visited the new build town on the other side of the Qiantang river. Amazing how fast this city changes, new blocks keep popping out of the ground at the speed of light.

By the time we got used to the local traffic, food and beverages we flew over to the south of China, to what's supposed to be the 3rd large town Guangzhou. The climate here is much warmer, up to 35° C at this time of the year. Consequently, the food's a lot hotter too! It might be true that Cantonese food is the best, we discovered a whole array of different cooking here and we enjoyed a lot and at the end of our meal we drank a delicious snake wine liquor. Unfortunately, our best Mandarin didn't help us out over here, the people speak Cantonese and it was hard to detect some common vocabulary.

Our first concert in the Mini Theatre of the Culture Museum of Guangzhou was dedicated to the Wall street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in 2002. It was on October 10, which was Daniel's birthday. We tried to explain to the people that on the same night all over the world, musicians were playing in good memory of him. Steven dedicated especially the song he wrote for his son Jaco to this event, as he was impressed by the strength of Daniel's parents to make something meaningful, beautiful and positive out of a very negative and meaningless act. Several people in the audience told us afterwards they'd had been touched by the profound extra dimension of the concert.