China Trip Notes, Chapter 7: Free Day in Suzhou (5.25.2008)

The next day, Sunday, was a free day (meaning no concerts.) Suzhou was humming: it was Olympic Torch Day. Out on the street, there was a large amount of public mayhem going on; there were about a bazillion scooters, bikes, and pedestrians all headed in the same direction, and the crowds were thickening.

Coyotebanjo and I began the day with breakfast in the restaurant next to the hotel, which was some kind of separate but clearly connected business establishment. They had set it up for the westerners: a small plate of scrambled eggs, a plate of rather stale bread on the carousel, and instant coffee. Then, we went for a walk to find an ATM and decide what to do. We walked through a small market that seemed to be doing land-office business as a result of all the festivities. It was oppressively hot and humid – no wonder they have beautiful gardens here; too bad humans don’t run on photosynthesis. You start sweating the minute you walk outside.

We pondered our options. Coop had left early; he ended up hiking about 12 miles and having a great time. A certain contingent of the band students ended up taking a train into Shanghai, an expedition that had been spearheaded by one of the faculty we were traveling with. We preferred to stay in Suzhou and look around, since there seemed to be lots of stuff to do. We decided to get a cab and go to the Old City, hopefully before they blocked off all the roads, since most of the things we wanted to see were there. Once in the old part of Suzhou, we went on a frustrating goose chase trying to find the Museum of Opera and Theater. The map in our guidebook was inadequate, and we walked up and down the sweltering streets while the Chinese merchants yelled “Halloo” at us and tried to get our attention. There was a particular street we were trying to find, and we weren’t having any luck, although I think Coyotebanjo was definitely headed in the correct direction. A couple of people tried to help us, seeing that we were obviously lost, and there was some peering at guidebooks and pointing, but to no avail. This was frustrating, especially to Coyotebanjo, who really hates being lost (not that I like it much either.) When they invent a GPS chip that can be installed right in the brain, I’ll be first in line to buy him one, because it will make his life much less stressful.


As we were trying to think, we were repeatedly accosted by the Boatie guys. Now, to be fair, the idea of taking a boat ride through the beautiful canals of Suzhou is wonderful; if we had more time, I would have done it. However, of all the market hustlers in China, the most persevering ones have got to be the characters in the Old City of Suzhou who hawk boat rides on the canal – their persistence is maddening. They chase you down the road yelling “Boatie Boatie!” until you finally have to be rude, and I hate being pushed to that point. The Chinese word for no -- bushi, pronounced kind of like Boo Shr – is very helpful here, although even that doesn’t always work (possibly because it literally means “not yes,” which is far too polite.) Then, 5 minutes later you pass by them again, and the whole thing starts all over again. Same guy: “Halloo! Boatie Boatie! Boatie! (Boo Shr!) Boatie Boatie!” Good Lord! Do you expect me to believe that you don't remember a white lady in an orange jacket and a six-foot-five inch Viking? Come on!

Having given up on the Theater museum and sick of the Boatie Boaties, we ducked into the Folklore Museum. Lovely, but too hard to figure out a museum without any guide when you can’t read the characters on any of the displays. Coyotebanjo suggested that we try to find some lunch, but that wasn’t really working either, mostly because of me, I’m afraid – I wasn’t in the mood for more challenging food, and we were having some trouble finding a place where we could point to some pictures on the menu.

We ended up passing by the entrance to the Lion Grove Garden, and decided to go there, which was a good decision.

The Lion Grove Garden (Shizi Lin) is an excellent example of the art of “rockeries” – ornamental rock arrangements made from the strangely-shaped, heavily-eroded limestone rocks pulled from Taihu Lake in Wuxi City. These rocks figure in many of the ancient classical-style Chinese gardens we saw. The rocks would be piled up into various shapes, some quite huge; and in fact the Lion’s Grove Garden takes its name from the fact that a few of the rock-shapes resemble lions. The idea was to “create” mountains and forests with the various rocks and plantings.

The garden was built originally in 1342 by a Zen monk named Tianru and a group of his disciples, in memory of their Zen master Zhongfeng. It became a popular place for both Zen disciples and poets. Over the centuries, the garden changed hands many times, alternating periods of cultivation and disrepair. Interestingly enough, it was purchased in 1917 by the Pei family (as in architect I.M. Pei), but after 1949 it became state property (one website says it was donated to the PRC). Since then it has been treated as a national historic site and maintained.

Though too exhausted and overheated to truly appreciate this incredible sight, I am very glad to have seen it and walked through it, especially since it did have a wonderfully calming effect despite the hoards of sightseers out that day. The rock labyrinth is mind-boggling (how did they build these things? The sheer weight of them must have been staggering.) The whole garden is beautifully laid out, and very evocative of every book on Ancient China one may have read; there is indeed something about the particular combination of water, rock, tree, and that particular architecture that instantly promotes serenity and contemplation – it’s no wonder they called the classical Chinese gardens “Scholar’s Gardens” (at least one variety, anyhow.) After, we cooled off in the “tearoom” - actually just a place to sit, with our bottled waters and an ice cream bar (what we would have called an Eskimo Pie when I was a kid.)

The next event, however – an attempt to get a cab back – was far from serene. We just couldn’t seem to find the right place to stand. We saw a few cabs come in and drop people off, but in every case other people pounced on them. It’s mostly a pedestrian area, so there aren’t a whole lot of cabs, either. One guy finally came up to us and gestured in a particular direction. We thought perhaps he was trying to tell us that it would be easier to catch a cab if we walked a few blocks. However, he kept pestering us, and we couldn’t understand what he was saying, so after many XieXies (thank you) and smiles and nods we crossed the street. Still no luck. After a few minutes, the guy came back over and gestured over at his friend, who had been sitting in a parked cab-like vehicle for a few minutes, but clearly was not picking anyone up or going anywhere. He appeared to be some sort of independent driver. After a bunch of sign language and pointing at the Chinese characters for our hotel, it was agreed that he would take us there.

On the ride, he kept saying “Suzhou Lookie Lookie?” We took this to mean, “Have you been sightseeing in Suzhou?” In hindsight, I figured out that it means “Would you like me to take you on a tour of Suzhou for which you will pay me to be your guide?” I think in reality the guy was an independent tourist guide – they are abundant in these tourist areas. Each time he would ask, we would smile and say “Hotel” and point to our hotel name. Eventually he pulled up in front of a different hotel, which was very confusing. We got out, figuring we would just hail a different cab from there, and he gestured that he would wait for us (in fact I think he actually said “I wait.”) Huh? We were then greeted by two women who were bringing people inside to attend some sort of silk market. Fortunately, one of them spoke English, and we explained to her that we were attempting to get back to our hotel. Aaaaah so. OK. Suddenly there was comprehension. She then had a conversation in Chinese with the driver, who seemed a little disappointed, but loaded us back in. He then proceeded to drive us to the wrong GreenTree hotel – there were two of them – and a lot of additional sign language and card-pointing ensued, after which he did find the right hotel. What a saga.

Too exhausted to explore, we ate lunch at the restaurant outside the hotel. There was no English menu; just pictures. I did get the waitress to understand “Doufu” (Chinese version of Tofu.) I ended up getting some sort of tofu dish, possibly in black bean sauce, possibly with some pork in there, God knows – and Coyotebanjo got some sort of Drumstick of Flying Beast. That and some weak Chinese beer, and we did calm down a bit.

We ran into Coop at that point, and we got to hear the great story of his 12-mile walk. He had gone through the whole area where the Torch procession was being held. He had lots of great stories about meeting people; apparently, with his fair skin and white hair, he attracts as much attention as a live Stegosaurus, so he makes a lot of friends. One of the places he’d been on his walk was a relatively western-style restaurant; I think it was called something like New Island Coffee. He had shown the wait-staff his photos from the concert the night before and explained that he was the flute player, so they had all been very interested in that. He said the coffee was really good, and we were all about ready for some western-style food at that point, so we decided we would go there for dinner after resting for awhile.

We had a good time at the restaurant. I think we were quite a diversion for the waitstaff- there were about three of them that took turns waiting on us. Coyotebanjo got a Japanese noodle dish; Coop got some kind of Thai-style soup and something that they called a salad, and I ordered chicken curry in light of the complete absence of vegetarian options. I had an iced coffee, and they ordered (many) beers – Heinekens I think or something like that. We stayed for a very long time, just having a good visit and talking about lots of stuff – the trip, the things we were experiencing, and telling stories. I believe we got into a religious discussion at some point; don’t remember how that got started. Anyhow, it was relaxing and a good time. We walked home then, which was quite pleasant since it cools off considerably after dark.

When we arrived back at the hotel, we found out that there had been some sort of train schedule snafu and the Shanghai contingent had gotten back a couple hours later than expected. The students had all had a good time, as far as we knew, and arrived back perfectly safe; however, Prof M had quite an experience. He had lost his wallet in a cab in Shanghai – it fell out of his pocket. (This is one of those nightmare things you hope never happens – the thought of wandering around in Shanghai with no identification, no money, and no train tickets is not appealing.) The police were called. When Prof M arrived at the train station in Shanghai, the police were waiting for him, and took him aside to another room to “ask him some questions.” The police plied him with questions: Who are you? What’s the nature of your trip? How long will you be here? Where are you staying? Where were you when you got out of the cab? What kind of cab was it? What color was it? What time did it happen? After answering all their questions, they brought Prof M to a video monitor, where they produced a video of him getting out of the cab. “Is that you?”

Turned out that the cab driver had found the wallet and instantly reported it to the authorities; they were apparently checking Prof M’s story against the cabbie’s. Having done all that, they took the address of the hotel where we would be staying in Beijing, and told Prof M that when they got the wallet from the cabbie they would express mail it to the hotel. (And they did.)

A handy thing to remember if you ever go to China: surveillance is everywhere. There are plenty of cameras that you can see, and plenty that you can’t see. (And guess where they apparently buy most of their surveillance technology? From the good ol’ USA.)

I was telling someone this story a couple of days ago, and we were musing over the fact that even though surveillance cameras are everywhere, it's hard to believe that they would be able to watch every nook and cranny of every possible place a cab could drop someone off. It occurred to us, then, that it might very well be the case that cabbies are trained to drop off foreigners in certain pre-designated spots. When pondering this, I remembered that there had, indeed, been several occasions in which cabbies had dropped us off in illogical places, or at a curious distance from the actual destination we had requested. Hmmmm.

Be it ever so dusty...

I know some of you are waiting for the rest of the China notes – I’ll get back to them. I'm briefly on hiatus from Big Flat University, visiting Big Swamp University, collecting data for upcoming exams, being RadioWoman, and musing on the similarity between the Yangtze and Ohio River Valley’s soggy air, abundant vegetation, chiggers, and mosquitos. Yeah, it shur' is purty here, but I don’t think there’s a single animal, vegetable, mineral or abstract concept in this town that doesn’t bite.

Never thought I would miss dust and hail, or get mildly annoyed because I couldn't see the incredible sunrise because of all those pesky trees. Hasta luego...

China Trip Notes, Chapter 6: Back to Suzhou (05.24.2008)

On Saturday morning, after our walk, we got on the bus and headed back to Suzhou. Tonight would be our second concert, followed by a free day on Sunday in Suzhou. Little did we know that a massive snafu awaited us at the hotel where we had stayed previously in Maple Bridge.

It would seem that the Olympic Torch Relay had originally been scheduled to go through Suzhou before we got to China. However, because of the Three Days of National Mourning, it had been delayed, and was now scheduled to be going through Suzhou the next day. So, while we were all in Changzhou doing the run-out concert, twenty-two of the thirty-some rooms that had been reserved for us back in Suzhou had been given away to the Olympic Torch runners and their whole retinue. The people at the hotel indicated, if I understood correctly, that there had been some pressure by local officials to honor the "original reservations" for the Olympic Torch people, and to move some of the Americans to a different location. (They had, however, made no arrangements with any other hotel.)

So there we were: in a hotel lobby with 60+ American students, a concert that night, and no hotel. Most of the students had figured out, from observing the consternation of their elders, that something was really wrong. The hotel staff, while having given away their rooms, actually had made lunch for them, but we didn’t know quite what to do, so we all stood around awkwardly. Finally the tour director told them to go in and eat lunch while he attempted to solve the problem.

After a few different ideas were floated, talk turned to finding another hotel. The Band Director was told by the tour organization that it would be hard to get another 4 star hotel, and we might have to settle for a 2 or 3. The Band Director, to his credit, explained politely but firmly that he wasn’t allowed to lodge the group in two different locations because of liability issues, and that we simply were not going to settle for a lesser hotel; the fact that our reservations had been cancelled to accommodate another group was insulting enough without settling for lesser lodgings. Many phone calls ensued, and eventually it was solved: our whole group was going to an entirely different hotel in Suzhou, which worked out fine (it wasn’t as new, but it was in many ways a better hotel for the group, since it was much further into the city itself, instead of being off at the edge of town.) So, it had a happy ending, but I can’t say it wasn’t stressful.

The concert in Suzhou took place at a venue that was translated for us as the Suzhou Arts Center. It was a beautiful hall, with comfortable facilities backstage, decent AC, and a well-organized event. You could feel the relief coming from everyone involved. The venue also had a beautiful lobby, and we came up with the idea of the Johnny Faa trio playing trad tunes out in the lobby for a half-hour before the concert; everyone agreed it was a good idea.

We three had some time to kill, then, while the Wind Ensemble prepared, and we were hungry / thirsty, so we thought we’d grab something quickly. Outside the venue, there were bazillions of security people and police, since the venue was right where the Olympic Torch run was going to happen the next morning. They were also preparing for the big road-block that would occur the next day. We purposely greeted a couple of them by the door so that they would recognize us when we came back a half hour later (as if there was any chance of them not recognizing a blond 6’5” giant and a white guy with snow-white hair – we all were stared at everywhere we went.)

Right next door to the venue there was a Teahouse, so we thought we’d go in and have a cuppa. Guess what – Teahouses in China ain’t Starbucks; you don’t go in and chug a cup and leave. They’re a whole experience that normally takes a couple of hours. We didn’t know that. We sat down and the waitresses brought 3 teas and an assortment of lovely dried fruits, nuts, and other little snacks. The waitresses were also accompanied by a tall Australian guy and his Chinese female friend, both of whom appeared to be regulars at the place. The Aussie greeted us and asked us if we knew “how the place worked” and we said “No, please help us out here!” Turns out, you pick a menu item depending on what kinds of teas you want, and the price includes the buffet. We explained that we only had about 25 minutes because we were playing a concert next door. He and his friend explained this to the waitstaff. They were momentarily flustered, but then the staff decided it was OK. The Aussie then had some sort of conversation with them, and it turned out that he had arranged for them to bring us tea and let us go “one time through buffet” for a reduced price, since we only had a very short time. We thanked him profusely. The tea was wonderful and so was the food; it would have been very easy to shoot about two hours there nibbling at the stuff, drinking tea, and yakking. I like the Teahouse concept – very civilized. I wish there was one in The Big Flat Place. (Sure, that’ll happen.)

After our Tea experience we went back to the venue (yes, they recognized us – duh) and played in the lobby for half an hour. Many, many people stopped to listen to us, and they were very enthusiastic, especially the kids. A couple of the kids in particular were very taken with it, including one little boy (maybe 9 or 10?) with glasses, a studious-looking little guy, who practically had to be dragged away to go get his seat with his family. People were also terribly curious about the instruments, and those who spoke English would ask us questions and then translate quickly for the crowd. Coop’s wooden flutes in particular were the object of much curiosity, I would guess partly because they have wooden flutes in their own folk music and can relate to it.

The concert went very well. The concert repertoire was a little different each night, but drawn from the same group of pieces. They always began with The Olympic Fanfare and Theme, which the audiences loved. Other pieces included Gould’s American Salute; at least one movement of David Gillingham’s “When Speaks the Signal Trumpet Tone,” which featured a beautiful performance by the university's trumpet professor; selections from Bernstein’s “Candide” Suite; Shostakovitch’s “October,” a piece called “Blue Shades” by Frank Ticheli; excerpts from “Rhythm of the Americas,” by Bob Mintzer, which featured a burnin’ saxophone quartet of faculty members form the university we were touring with; an arrangement of a Chinese folk song, “Song of Jasmine,” excerpts from the Star Wars soundtrack; and the second movement of Dan Welcher’s “Minstrel of the Kells,” which was the piece we were involved in. There were always two encores: “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and the “Song of the People’s Liberation Army,” a patriotic Chinese march that always got a very strong audience response. I mean, how many of them ever dreamed that an American band would be playing the PLA march for them? Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would live to see that.

During the Welcher, I was watching the aforementioned little guy with the glasses, who was in the front row as it turned out. There’s a moment in the Welcher when the band comes to the end of a tune, the drums roll, and then the orchestra drops out entirely and the Irish band (us) lights into a very energetic version of the reel called “Bunker Hill.” At the exact moment when we hit the first chord, the kid threw his arms out to the sides, looked up heavenward, opened his mouth in an “aah,” and closed his eyes. It was a completely transcendent moment which, unfortunately, my companions didn’t see (they were concentrating too hard on the bouzouki and flute; only the rhythm guitarist has the luxury of watching the audience.) After we left the stage, during the encores, I told the guys about it, and Coop decided that he would go out into the house after the last encore, try to catch the family before they left, and give the kid one of his extra whistles. Coyotebanjo and I found this to be a very moving gesture – Coyotebanjo, when we were back in Lubbock after the trip, told me that this was maybe his favorite moment of the tour. The kid and his family were quite tickled – the kid seemed a little stunned – and of course they all wanted “photos.” (Many of the Chinese know the words “Hallo,” “OK,” and “Photos.”) So we posed for quite a few, as did other musicians on the tour, and of course the band director.

After the concert, we were brought to a restaurant where another Chinese banquet was served to us – and again, I winced at the situation in which our kind and generous hosts offered huge portions of challenging food to a roomful of Americans who were going to waste half of it. We did better than the previous Suzhou meal, though – they’re getting a bit braver and the food was a little more attuned to western palates than the first time. I was a little concerned about the students at this point – they were mostly in need of about 60 Mickey D Happy Meals.

Next up: Free day in Suzhou; Boaties; and a colleague’s Excellent Surveillance Adventure.

China Trip Notes, Chapter 5: Changzhou (05.23.2008)

I realized as I was posting this that I never have actually explained why we were in China. We were invited by the director of Another University's symphonic wind ensemble to join them on their trip to China. Our mission was to provide the "Irish Pub Band" interlude in a piece written by composer Dan Welcher on Irish traditional music themes -- a piece that we had premiered with the same director some years before at Our University.


Our China trip was supposed to begin with two concerts in the city of Hangzhou. As it turned out, both of those concerts were cancelled because of the National Period of Mourning for the victims of the Szechuan province earthquake. So, the first concert actually happened 3 days after the group arrived, and took place in the city of Changzhou, about an hour’s bus ride away from Suzhou. The plan was to ride out from Suzhou, do the Changzhou concert, stay overnight, and go back to the same hotel in Suzhou, where we would do the second concert.

Changzhou is another city along the Grand Canal, bordering on the large metropolis of Nanjing. Originally the site of an ancient walled town (221 BC), it became a canal port in the 7th century. According to Wikipedia, the main industries are textiles (esp. cotton), food processing, engineering, and high tech. There are also several universities there, and an international school. Since the 1990’s, the city has also had an area called “Changzhou High-Tech Zone,” and according to Wikipedia, over 7600 Chinese and overseas companies have headquarters here. Changzhou is also the location of Tianning Temple, one of the largest Chan (Zen) Buddhist temples and monasteries in China, and its pagoda, which after its recent reconstruction is now the tallest Buddhist pagoda in the world. There are also a number of parks, including an amusement park and a dinosaur park. Our hotel in Changzhou (Changzhou Jinglin Mingdu) was extremely nice – a modern high-rise with nice beds and showers, a lot of services, and a full restaurant. The students were obviously quite pleased with it, and with the excellent catered Chinese lunch that was given to us in one of the function rooms.

After getting settled into our rooms we three did some exploring. The hotel was right downtown, with inevitable wild traffic, and the weather was still extremely tropical – smoggy, and not really conducive to a stroll, but we went anyhow. The stores ranged from large department stores to teeny little tobacconists to small sex-shops selling everything from videos to toys, none of which left anything to the imagination. Then, of course, there were all the street food vendors – very tempting for the guys, who restrained themselves in the light of the many warnings we’ve had (or more likely because they’d just had lunch).

One interesting thing we noticed in the department stores: it’s extremely popular here in China to wear T-shirts with English words printed on them. It’s also obvious that no one has a clue what they say. I am quite sure that we probably do the same thing in America, when we wear fabric that has Chinese lettering on it; see if I ever wear something like that again. Heaven forbid I should be walking around with the word “juicy” across my chest, like one young lady I saw today. It’s actually rather hilarious, because many of the shirts are vaguely suggestive but make no sense (“Men Fun Summer Park.”)

We passed an alcohol vendor, and Coyotebanjo and Coop took the guidebook and found a reference to a liquor that is “favored for toasts and banquets.” The salesperson showed it to them – forget it; price too high; obviously this is what one buys to show off one’s prosperity. There was the inevitable Erguotou (see previous blogpost); no point in buying that, since we had no plans to remove the corrosive residue from old car batteries that afternoon. So, onto a convenience store, and some browsing. Gosh, this looks just like the convenience stores at home, except for the Chinese letters on the packages. Hmmm…yogurt…ice cream (dairy!?) …fruit drinks…power drinks…peanuts…cashews…crispy chicken feet…OK I take back the part about home. The guys settled on a milk-white bottle of mystery hootch; some kind of white baijiu. (A mere few minutes later, at the hotel, my companions deemed this to be almost, but not quite, as hideous as the stuff they bought in Suzhou.)

While everyone else was napping, I decided to write in my journal, and for some reason, I developed an irresistible desire for a cup of coffee. I knew that most of the staff had been speaking basic English to us, so I thought I’d take a chance on the hotel restaurant and see if they could do some take-out for me. The following dialogue ensued.

Dharmo: Pardon me please, is it possible to get some coffee to bring up to my room?

Waitress: (excellent English) Yes, certainly. (Disappears.)

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Maybe she forgot or misunderstood.

D: (to hostess) Pardon me please, is it possible to get some coffee to bring up to my room?

Hostess: Yes, of course.

Wait. Hostess does nothing either. I wait. Waitress comes back with a menu that has literally 40 different kinds of coffee, mostly in the 4 to 5 dollar range (twice as much as Coop just paid for a duffel bag in a small market out on the street.) Oh well, I want it, so what the hell? I go for the “house coffee.”

D: Can I charge this to my room?

Waitress: Yes, of course. (Chinese conversation between waitress and hostess, followed by flurries of apology) Sorry, so sorry, but we are going to have to put service charge on this because it’s going to your room.

D: That’s no problem, OK. (This service charge is a few yuan, the equivalent of about a quarter. I am smiling and nodding, trying to be as positive and friendly as possible.)

Wait. Silence. They are staring at me. Hmmm. What have I forgotten? Awkward silence.

D: So…I’ll just get it and…take it up to my room then. Do I use the cups that are over there?
Waitress and hostess: (Silence, nervous giggling, worried expressions.)

They are clearly starting to worry that perhaps I might be one of those Psychos and Drunkards the taxi signs in Shanghai were referencing. I'm screwing up here, and I don't know why...think...

Aha! I finally get it: I think I have been ordering take out, and they think I have been ordering Room Service. The concept of the honorable patron taking coffee up to his or her own room is unknown. This explains the service charge. It’s time to give it up and take the Room Service. Xiexie, xiexie, thank you…

I smile and walk away. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the waitress whispering to the hostess, while the hostess rubs her back sympathetically. All I wanted was a cup of coffee, and I have obviously totally stressed out these poor young women. I feel like a Gorgon.

(The coffee arrived at my room within 5 minutes; it was excellent.)

The first concert took place at a local civic center. Evidence suggested that there had already been an event here that afternoon; crews were still doing clean up, and they were hanging some huge Chinese characters up against the backdrop. At one point in the rehearsal, from up on a staging, one of the building crew dropped a small pipe-like object, which beaned the UK timpani player, much to the consternation of everyone (especially the percussion section.) He was OK, but would have a black eye to show for it.

I also observed that there was some stress building over the fact that at least half of them had to go to the bathroom, and a lot of them were severely freaked-out to discover that the venue had only the Asian-style squat toilets. For those who are not familiar with the concept of Asian toilets, here’s the deal: you don’t sit on them. They are built right into the floor, and you put one foot on each side and squat down to do your business. There are different styles of squat toilets, but all of them initially freak out many Americans. Ironically, it’s anatomically better for the human body to squat while eliminating (ask any mammal except a human), but we’re just not used to it. You definitely need good calves and quadriceps…so, now you know why that half-squat position used in martial arts is easier for the Asian guys.

Well, despite toilet angst, falling bits of pipe, the rather tropical temperature in the hall, and the general level of exhaustion and jet-lag, the performance was excellent. The students played beautifully. The programming of the concert was extremely well-done; the idea of doing the Stars and Stripes and the PLA March as a double-encore turned out to be a real crowd-pleaser in every concert. As for our bit – the Irish pub band interlude in Dan Welcher’s “Minstrel of the Kells” composition – it was very well-received by the crowds.

A very bright note for me this evening was the appearance of one of my music history students from the university where I teach. Her family lives hear Hangzhou, and since she was home for the summer, she had really been looking forward to coming to one of the concerts, even though I warned her that we only played for about 3 minutes in the actual concert itself (we didn't start doing the pre-concert lobby performances until the next night.) When the Hangzhou concerts were cancelled, I thought she might not be able to make any of them; we exchanged a bunch of e-mails and phone calls, and for some reason I thought that if she were able to, she might come to the Saturday concert in Suzhou. But in fact, she and her father drove (for 3 hours!) to Changzhou. She came laden with a huge abundance of presents – a silk shirt, silk scarves, a box of Chinese goodies and snacks, and 4 containers of Chinese cookies. I barely knew what to say, except to thank her profusely – it was so generous, and so kind of them to drive all that way. It was wonderful to see her, and I can’t get over the fact that I traveled 6000 miles and still managed to meet up with someone I know.

After the concert, we were treated to a huge buffet in the hotel; excellent food, a trend that continued the next morning with the substantial breakfast. After the breakfast, Coyote and I decided to go for a walk before it got too hot. We found a tree-lined street that ran along a shaded stone path; this looked like a good option, so we followed it, only to discover that it led to a beautiful park. I am fairly sure, from viewing the pictures and looking at the guidebook, that this was Hongmei Park, especially because on the other edge of the park was a giant pagoda. I wish we’d had a little more time to spend here – the park was beautiful, with lots of water, bridges, gardens (and piped-in New-Agey jazz, which was a little weird). It was also fun to watch the people; it was clearly a location where people brought their families for Saturday recreation. However, we were up against the deadline for getting back to the bus, so we couldn’t really visit the pagoda. I didn’t know at the time that this was the tallest pagoda in China, or that it was connected with the largest Zen Buddhist monastery in China. It’s probably just as well, because it would have been frustrating to know and not have the time to check it out. It does, however, interest me that we kept happening upon major Buddhist sites here without even really knowing what the heck we were doing or where we were going. Karma!

Next: back to Suzhou, and an encounter with Olympic fever.

China Trip Notes, Chapter 4: A Traditional Suzhou Banquet; or, “Dude, this is so not Pei Wei.” (05.22.2008)

One very striking thing one observes in China: I saw almost no fat people. OK, there are a few people who have maybe an extra 10 or 15 pounds on them, but that’s it, and they’re mostly grandmas. Most people look very fit, and the young ones are pretty much bamboo shoots. This is true despite the fact that there is enough oil in their food to cause cardiac arrest. So what’s different? I counted five big differences:

1) Very few sweets, and mostly they are in tiny quantities, or found in locations where western tourists eat. Dessert here is fruit.
2) Almost a complete absence of dairy (except for the Chinese versions of Klondike bars, most of which were in tourist areas.) I hardly saw one piece of cheese, except in hotels that catered to westerners; and the only milk is the stuff they pour in the Nescafe for the Americans.
3) Exercise - Walking, biking, moving, and manual labor.
4) A huge number of them smoke like chimneys.
5) They don’t eat enough for the entire People’s Liberation Army every time they sit down to eat.

And folks, that’s the bottom line. If you’d like to feel embarrassed, watch the faces of the Asians as they observe the Americans who go back to the buffet table three times and fill their large plates every single time. Forget all the analyses of the American diet – we’re not just fat because we eat too many sweets, too much dairy, and too much meat; you can say the same for half of Northern Europe. People, Americans are fat because we eat like hogs.

Americans also like Chinese food. In fact, for many of us, “Chinese take out” was our first experience of any ethnic cuisine. When I was a little girl, my parents used to take me and my sister to a restaurant in Springfield, MA, called The Canton. This was always a special occasion. I have no idea how the place would seem to me today, but as a little child who already had an overactive imagination, it was like a visit to another land. I can remember the dim lighting, the lanterns with the red hanging tassels, and the jade green and white tiles, many of which had pictures that were slightly raised in 3D relief. (My little sister really liked the bathroom there; more green tiles, porcelain, and lanterns. It was pretty, and I had to escort her there several times during each visit.) There was also a bowl of sugar cubes on the table, wrapped delicately in little pieces of paper. While waiting for our order (probably 10 minutes, but interminable for a child), those sugar cubes looked completely irresistible. Fearing (correctly) that Mom would cast a dim eye on the tooth-corroding practice of sucking on sugar cubes, we would attempt to get Dad to slip a few cubes to us, mostly by staring at the bowl of cubes and then looking up at Dad while attempting to be as adorable as possible, a tactic that worked 100 per cent of the time.

My parents always ordered the same thing: chicken chow mein (Mom), shrimp chow mein (Dad – or was it the other way around?), pork fried rice, tea, wonton soup, and egg rolls. I don’t remember what my little sister used to order; I only remember that she used to end up eating a respectable portion of the shrimp chow mein. The chow mein looked very scary to me; I was one of those little kids who isolated each different kind of food into separate piles, and heaven forbid any of them should touch (no sign yet of the future vegetarian). So, they would order me a cup of egg drop soup, an egg roll, a little plate of lean pork “strips,” and ginger ale. I was a happy camper.

This childhood experience led in turn to many happy hours chowing on chicken with cashew nuts and hot and sour soup, and after going vegetarian, mu shu vegetables, spring rolls, Buddha's Delight, and multiple variations on Bean Curd (tofu). But folks, I have now discovered an important thing. The food that I and three hundred million other Americans have come to love is Chinese-American food. This is not the same as real Chinese food. I thought I was a fairly adventuresome diner -- not as adventurous as Coyotebanjo and Coop, but not a total wimp either. I am embarrassed to say this, but the Chinese food in China kicked my butt.

The problem is, my #1 nemesis has always been certain kinds of animal-based food, especially organ meats and critters that come out of the water, and my #2 nemesis is slimy or “gushy” textures. (My Dad had to cram a steamed clam into 3 inches worth of Italian bread before I would even deign to try it, and even then I almost perished.) I simply can’t seem to choke down something that was once someone else’s innards, and I have a difficult time with crustaceans. A plate of eels – fuggedaboudit. And it was mighty tough to be a vegetarian in China. To be fair, there were always at least one or two dishes that are mainly tofu or egg or a vegetable; but in almost every case, those dishes also involved some traces of piggy, broth, or lard – a strict vegetarian would be up the creek. There are also a lot of challenging textures (even the tofu is the slippery silken tofu variety).

All this is leading up to the story of the Traditional Suzhou Banquet that was prepared for the group at the end of our afternoon of sight-seeing in Suzhou. The entire group congregated at the meeting point, and our tour director led us to a very old and venerable restaurant in Suzhou, where a feast of “traditional Suzhou food” had been prepared for us.

Dear readers, I believe that a multi-course meal of traditional Suzhou delicacies and a large group of American kids from Kentucky probably qualifies for the descriptive phrase “cultural train wreck.” This is no one's fault; it's simply two different worlds colliding. If you consult Wikipedia’s entry on Suzhou, you will find a list of the following famous dishes from Suzhou: Whitebait Soup; Squirrel-shaped Mandarin Fish; Cracking Eel Paste; Soft-shelled Turtle with Cream Sauce; Cabbage Heart in Chicken Fat; Green Bean Cake; and something called Taicang Wine-pickled Oil & Dried Meat Floss.

I’m not sure which of these were on the table, because no one identified anything for us. So, we just all sat there and visited cheerfully with each other while dish after dish of beautifully presented but terrifying stuff appeared. I felt really bad for the cooks – these were extremely kind people who spent hours preparing things that are precious recipes to them, and I am quite sure that it was beautifully prepared and delicious for the right palate; but I was embarrassed to witness the casting of these culinary pearls before us poor American swine. A shameful amount of it was wasted (although not by Coyotebanjo and Coop, who seemed to be putting it away happily, and not by our Korean-American flute section leader, who enthusiastically offered to eat the duck head). The students were brave – they tasted almost everything, and were relentlessly good-natured about it, as band kids tend to be – but they didn’t eat very much, and the amount of wasted food was just a shame.

As for me, it was (by far) the most challenging food experience I had while in China, and possibly the most challenging food experience I’ve had since the 7-course meal I had 30 years ago in Boston’s Chinatown after playing for the wedding of two Chinese-Americans, when someone had to explain bird’s nest soup to me. After Suzhou, most of the other food in China seemed pretty approachable, if you just avoided the street vendors and the scorpion-on-a-stick.

Now, where were those Klondike Bars?

China Trip Notes, Chapter 3: Afternoon in Suzhou (05.22.2008)

Hanshan Temple is a difficult act to follow. How do you come down after a beautiful experience like that? Well, one possibility is to sit down and have a nice drink with your comrades. A nice green tea would suffice, but if you’re two guys in an Irish band, something else is more customary.

So, on the way back, Coop and Coyote stopped into the tiny little market that was wedged between some of the dilapidated housing near the hotel, and, having poked through the guidebook for some drinking suggestions, bought a little bottle of clear stuff, which our guidebook described as “the people’s drink.” The people’s solvent, more likely – it smelled as though it could remove about three layers of manicure, and judging from the reactions of my colleagues, tasted about the same. Turns out it’s called “Erguotou,” which I think in Chinese means “Do not drink this shite under any circumstances.”


After lunch at the hotel, it transpired that a tour had been arranged for the whole group up to Tiger Hill.


Tiger Hill (Huqiu Liu) is in the northwest part of Suzhou. it’s the burial site of the city’s founder, King Helu, and according to our tour guide, it’s named “Tiger Hill” because of a white tiger that appeared three days after the king’s death and refused to leave. The park is full of relics of He Lu; a huge split boulder called the “sword-testing rock,” supposedly split by He Lu’s incredibly sharp sword; and a small pond under which there are supposedly 3000 buried swords, another tribute to He Lu, who is buried somewhere in the same vicinity.

This is a beautiful park that we had to leave much too quickly. It is lush and green, with colorful flowers and incredibly interesting rock formations; stone bridges; springs; temples; and the seven-storey Yunyan pagoda, which leans precipitously to one side. I could have stayed there another 2 hours, even in the humid heat.

The next stop on the tour was a silk factory, where we were taken through the steps in silk production. It’s probably good to be reminded that the production of silk actually involves picking off a huge number of sentient beings; nevertheless, it’s an amazing process, and you have to wonder who thought of it first. At the factory you see the whole sequence, from silkworms munching to the cocoons that have been spun, the steaming of the cocoons and the extraction of the silk fibers, and then the huge looms. When it’s all over, you can exercise unbridled consumerism in the store, which of course we all did – the prices were not cheap, but they were a lot less than the same goods would have costs in the States, and the bedding and clothing sold there was very beautiful.

The next leg of the trip took place in the Old City. We were scheduled to go to the Suzhou Museum, but it was closed, so we were given a free hour. Some signs indicated that the thing I had wanted most to see in Suzhou, the Humble Administrator’s Garden, was very close by. The three of us managed to get into the garden just in time, before they stopped letting people in.


This, for me, was one of the high points of the trip. I could have easily spent an entire day there. It is Suzhou’s largest formal garden, and was built in the 16th century by, according to the DK Guide, a “retired magistrate.” It is 50-some acres of pavilions, ponds, rockeries, stone bridges, trees, and abundant flowers.

Apparently, this garden began its existence as a scholar’s garden, a type of formal Chinese garden that is intended to evoke serene contemplation. To that end, certain kinds of plants, objects, and architectural elements are combined in symbolic ways. Later, it became the monastery garden of the Dahong Temple; and then in 1513, the above-mentioned administrator, Wang Xianchen, converted the temple to his own private villa. He hired Ming Dynasty artist Wen Zhenming to help him extend and increase the garden, digging lakes and piling earth into “islands.” Wang sold it after a few years, and it passed through many hands and underwent many changes over the ages. That info is from Wikipedia, which also says the following:

Todays’ garden…closely resembles its late Qing appearance, with numerous pavilions and bridges set among a maze of connected pools and islands. It consists of three major parts set about a large lake: the central part (Zhuozeng Yuan), the eastern part (once called Guitianyuanjiu, Dwelling Upon Return to the Countryside), and a western part (The Supplementary Garden.) In total, the garden contains 48 different buildings with 101 tablets, 40 stelae, 21 precious old trees, and over 700 Suzhou-style penzai (bonsai.)

The effect as you enter the garden is instant and dramatic: from the frenetic chattering, honking and clanging of the market district and the persistent lunatics trying to sell you boat rides (Hellooo! Boatie! Boatie!) you walk through the circular door, and you are completely enveloped by sudden silence – or at least we were, since we came late in the day. Since it was almost 5 pm, it was also cooling off (the sun goes down at around 6:30 here even at this time of year, since all of China is on the same time zone.)

I frankly find it hard to describe. There are many pictures of it on the Internet, and lots of info about it – but there’s nothing that could possibly come close to standing in it.

China Trip Notes, Chapter 2: Cold Mountain (05.22.2008)

Children, I implore you
Get out of the burning house now.
Three carts await outside
to save you from a homeless life.
Relax in the village square
before the sky, everything’s empty.
No direction is better or worse
East is just as good as West.
Those who know the meaning of this
are free to go where they want.

--Hanshan, 7th century, from Poem 253, translated by Red Pine

It is Thursday morning in the 2500-year old city of Suzhou (pronounced Sue-Joe.) Wikipedia tells us that Suzhou is located on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Lake Taihu in the province of Jiangsu, China. One of the oldest towns in the Yangtze River basin, with a current population of around 6 million, it was originally called “The Great City of He Lu,” after the king who founded it in 514 BC (!). Suzhou is especially noted for its stone bridges, pagodas, and incredible gardens (more on those later.) It’s a main center for the silk industry, and one of the cities located on the thousand-plus-mile Grand Canal, the longest canal in the world, completed in the 6th century AD and stretching all the way north to Beijing. This location, on an important ancient trade route, is one reason why Suzhou is the fifth most prosperous city in China (with a few bad moments, having been sacked in 1130 by the Jin and again in 1275 by the Mongols, and severely damaged in the 1860 Taiping Rebellion and the 1937 Japanese invasion.) Since the 1980’s the city has been the site of a lot of restoration, and some of its classical gardens are on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, (including the Humble Administrator’s Garden, which is on the Top Ten.) Suzhou has a very strong cultural heritage, with its own dialect and regional cuisine as well.

Our first hotel in Suzhou (Suzhou Pinghe Hotel) was on the outskirts of the city, in an area called Maple Bridge.You can see the canal, and the very picturesque marine vehicles traversing it, from the hotel. The hotel appears to be brand new; but oddly, it is situated up against a military base on one side and a series of hovels in a very poor neighborhood on the other. The hotel was still under construction (as we found out the next morning, when they started banging bricks around and cutting pipe at 6:30 in the morning.) The rooms were modern and well-equipped, but had some curious features; the bathrooms within the rooms had glass walls, so there was absolutely no privacy between roommates; the shower heads were not above the tub, but next to the tub faucets, and they were pull-out deals like the ones we have in kitchen sinks -- so you had to sit in the tub in order to shower (unless you wanted to spray water all over the bathroom.) The group meals were taken in an area off the lobby; various stir fries, rice, steamed breads and dumplings of various sorts; and in the morning, fried eggs and instant coffee for the westerners.

Coyotebanjo and I had awakened early, and went for a walk. We passed the hovels, all of which had little carefully tended vegetable gardens in front of them and in the patch of land across the drive. I paused to observe the beautifully tied bamboo trellises. The occasional small child stared at us; a yellow cat snoozed on a rickety chair. Since this part of the town is fairly modern, we were actually on a quest for a coffee place, which we did not find; however, we did see boats on the canal; an old woman sweeping the street with her Chinese-style straw-broom; and an old man doing Tai Chi in his back yard. The streets were just getting busy (it was not yet 8 AM). We saw various parks, and observed a sign indicating that “Hanshan Si” (a temple) was within walking distance. Hanshan, as in Cold Mountain, as in Zen poetry – down the street, two kilometers? We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Since this morning was “free time,” we resolved to go there after breakfast, and headed back to the hotel, where we ate; in my case, fried rice with egg and veggies in it, some steamed-bread-buns like the Tibetan monks in Bloomington make, a fried egg, and some instant coffee; and then Coyotebanjo, Coop and I set off for Hanshan Si.

The three of us decided that we would walk, and set out from the hotel, onto the main road, and over the bridge. It was tropically hot, and I would describe the air as being something between soggy and waterlogged. We got to the general area, sweating buckets of course, and paused first to have some fun poking around in the shops. These little markets sell everything from silks to teapots to embroidery to musical instruments, most of it aimed directly at the tourist trade.

I greatly appreciate traveling with Coyotebanjo and Coop. They are the original “No Whining” travelers. They inspire me to get past being half-dead from heat prostration, and to see the humor in being passed a dish of Eel Paste. They have no shyness about talking to vendors, meeting people, or buying bottles of stuff to drink that only have Chinese lettering on them. If it looks good, they’ll chance it, and if it tastes like lukewarm tonic water or tea with 4 packets of Splenda, they’ll just chug it down anyhow.

Having refreshed ourselves with some of these mystery beverages, we left the market, and entered the gates of Hanshan Si: Cold Mountain Temple.


Most people know of the Hanshan Temple because of an extremely famous poem written by 8th century poet Zhang Ji (“The Boat Anchored at Maple Bridge at Night,” or “The Night Mooring at Maple Bridge.”) In Zhang Ji’s poem, which appears regularly in Asian poetry anthologies and the textbooks of Asian school kids, the sound of the Hanshan temple bell figures prominently:

月落烏啼霜滿天，
江楓漁火對愁眠。
姑蘇城外寒山寺，
夜半鐘聲到客船。

Yuè luò wū tí shuāng mǎn tiān,
Jiāng fēng yú huǒ duì chóu mián.
Gūsū chéngwài Hánshán Sì,
Yèbàn zhōngshēng dào kèchuán.

As the moon sets,
a crow caws from the frosty sky;
the river maple and the fish boat torch
answer the sleeping sadness.
Outside Suzhou city,
the sound of the Han Shan Temple’s midnight bell
reaches the ferry boat.

(translation from Wikipedia)

However, to Zen practitioners, Hanshan Temple is more famous because of Hanshan himself, a 7th century Bodhisattva poet-monk whose name means “Cold Mountain.” Jack Kerouac dedicated his book “The Dharma Bums” to Hanshan, and poet Gary Snyder translated a number of Hanshan’s poems (although the first complete English translation of all the poems was published in 2000 by Red Pine, titled The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain.) The temple here in Suzhou, in which we were (incredibly) standing, was the residence of Hanshan and his disciples Shide and Fenggan.

The temple was very beautiful, quite a moving experience. There is a two-story pagoda; golden Buddha statues; a fantastic building with a huge Kuan Yin statue and “500 Arhats” room; various temple buildings (mostly white with black, brown, gold trim, and the stunning, characteristically Chinese curved and tiled roof architecture). There is another building with large statues of Hanshan and Shide. The grounds were very crowded. Monks in orange-brown robes, obviously affiliated with the temple, moved around and about the various buildings, which are built in such a way that they catch the breezes, despite the heat. As with all the temples and gardens I saw, water and stone are important parts of the landscaping; in this case, there is a pond with a bridge and various goldfish and carp swimming below.

Did Hanshan really exist? There is apparently some debate about that. I have no idea if he really existed (or if I do, for that matter.) Whether Hanshan existed or not, he exists here in this temple, as do the poems he wrote on the rocks and trees of Suzhou.

And the temple bell still rings (not the original one, but one presented to the temple by the Japanese a hundred years ago.) People file in and out of all the altar-buildings, bowing three times and praying. I’m not talking about tourists, here, or new age trekkers; I’m talking about the Chinese people. Hundreds of them. People who just lost 80,000 friends, relatives, and fellow citizens in one of the worst quakes in living memory.

Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed?
Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,
to dwell and gaze in freedom.
No one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds.
Soft grass serves as a mattress,
my quilt is the dark blue sky.
A boulder makes a fine pillow;
Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

--Hanshan, 7th century, Poem 26, translated by Red Pine

China Trip Notes, Chapter 1: Shanghai (05.20-21.2008)

Shanghai. The very word conjures up hopelessly exotic associations in the western mind: sailors press-ganged onto trading ships; Jackie Chan movies; James Bond-esque high speed car chases; neon lights; hot sweaty markets. The Shanghai we saw was an exotic juxtaposition of modern architecture next to age-old market streets and creaky domiciles, high-tech business buildings next to funky looking foot-massage parlors and street-side food vendors of debatable hygiene selling Mysterious Things That Mostly Smelled Good. The heat is stifling, the pollution asphyxiating, the traffic an insane circus of cars, bikes, giant tricycles, scooters, and pedestrians. Twenty-three million souls live here, the 4th most populous city on the globe.

Our first sight of China was Shanghai Pudong airport, a modern mega-structure of mind-boggling size. Our traveling companion Coop, being a facilities manager, was especially intrigued, since he knows far more that we two about what’s involved in running such a humongous facility. I don’t know what the others were expecting, but I certainly hadn’t pictured this shining futuristic extravaganza: Beam me up, Scotty!

Customs was surprisingly easy; after the usual formalities of having passport, visa, and entry card scrutinized, we just strolled in. We were met by the tour’s organizer and guide and the UK saxophone/jazz professor, who was already in Asia on tour and joining the UK group at that point. Since the UK group had been delayed by an entire day, it had been arranged that the four of us would stay at a hotel in Shanghai and hang out in the city until the rest of the band got there the next day. We broke into two groups to drive to the hotel, and so off we flew down the freeways through Shanghai’s insane traffic, and arrived at the hotel.

The very thought "I am standing on the street in Shanghai" was mind-boggling. I borrowed Coyotebanjo's phone, called my mother, got her answering machine, told her where we were and that we were safe, and just held the phone up to the deafening traffic.

The hotel room was tiny but perfectly serviceable, with two small twin beds. There was momentary darkness and confusion until we discovered that in Chinese hotels, the electrical power in the room is turned on by inserting your room key into a little device on the wall just inside the door. All the hotel beds on the trip had very nice pillows and comfortable quilt-type covers, but all of the beds were also incredibly hard – and the ones in Shanghai were truly rock-like. Fortunately, the shower was great and the AC blasted satisfactorily when turned up. I welcomed the chance to stand there stupefied in the shower while the water washed off the 25-hour trip: Two hours from shuttle to Dallas plane; four hours from Dallas to SF; 4 hours at the SFO airport, 14 hours from SFO to Shanghai with the initial delay, and another hour or so between plane-landing and hotel. On top of that, we had crossed the International Date Line; so we had left Dallas on Monday morning, and arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday night.

The tour organizer took us to a nearby restaurant. In China, meals are communal, and the idea of ordering your own meal or eating by yourself is considered quite odd. As a result, restaurants in China tend to have round tables with a revolving glass disc on the top. The food is placed on the glass, and then passed from one diner to another by pushing the glass disc around the table. People take food from these communal plates with their chopsticks. If you don’t know how to use chopsticks, You Learn Fast. If you are squeamish about germs from other peoples chopsticks, your only options are starve or Get Over It.

Our tour organizer clearly wanted to be a good host and offer us the local cuisine. The menu itself proved to be relatively terrifying for those of us who are iffy about organ-meat and crustaceans. To our relief, he ordered for us, whereupon I volunteered that I was a vegetarian, but hastened to add that I was not strict and tried to be flexible when traveling. He ordered great food, and included some vegetarian dishes for my benefit, which was very kind of him: a very tasty eggplant dish, a great tofu dish, and a plate of very good vegetables that tasted a bit like small, lightly stir-fried cucumbers. We also ordered beer, and chose Tsingdao, since we’d all had it in the States. Imagine our surprise to discover that Chinese Tsingdao is incredibly light - kind of like beer-flavored soda-pop. It transpired that most Chinese beer (pijiu) was like soda-pop, and most Chinese liquor (baijiu) was gut-wrenching white stuff that you could use to clean hubcaps – but more on that later.

After dinner, we went for a walk, a couple of blocks in each direction. The hotel was near a large overpass that had a walkway from one side of the street to the other. There were street vendors; lots of little stores, most still open; bars, hotels, restaurants, and still a respectable amount of traffic. On top of the walkway was a guy playing an ocarina, which incredibly could be heard over the traffic. The heat had subsided, mercifully, although the air remains tropically moist even at night. On our return back to the hotel, the guys had another drink at the hotel bar; then we went back to the lobby, checked our e-mail at the internet station (glacially slow), and went to bed. At first, I had trouble sleeping, between the adrenaline, the rocklike bed, and the chattering girls in the next room. Fortunately, they were chattering in Chinese, and since I don’t understand a word, it eventually just became background noise.

Wednesday morning in Shanghai began with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Like many of the hotel restaurants we encountered, this consisted of a buffet with mostly Chinese dishes (tripe for breakfast, yum) and a few dishes aimed at western visitors (the occasional scrambled or hard-boiled eggs, bread or toast, some sweets, and carafes of instant coffee, Nescafe being a favorite – my kingdom for a Starbucks!). The Chinese food was on the whole quite good, though a lot of it was unfamiliar and sometimes a little challenging. Also, the Chinese use lard when they cook and seem to drown everything in oil of various kinds -- even the stir-fried stuff is done with much more oil than we’re used to. Let’s just say this: it’s a damned good thing that tea supposedly lowers cholesterol.

We had several hours to play with before we had to go meet the rest of the group at the airport, so we decided to do some exploring. We thought we’d check out the riverfront promenade, or the “Bund,” which is in the Old City, and possibly the Yuyuan garden and the nearby market.

The cab at our hotel cab stand wasn’t interested in taking us, for reasons we couldn’t figure out (he kept gesturing for us to cross the street – several lanes of chaos on each side, and a harder task than you might think). We walked to the next hotel and hailed a cab there; he drove for quite awhile and then evicted us.

We soon figured out that this paragon of navigation had dumped us off at least a half-mile from our destination. After a long and sweaty walk, some of which was spent heading in the wrong direction (my fault), we found the Yuyuan market area. We were still relatively far from the promenade by the river, so we bagged that idea and spent the rest of our time cruising around in the mob of humanity at the market. We were soaked with sweat – it was probably only 88 or 89 degrees, but the humidity is oppressive; the air is soaked with moisture, and the pollution and smog so thick that the city sits in a brown haze that makes your eyes water and your nose clog. Not to be deterred, we had quite a nice time at the market, playing tourist.

All too soon we had to head back to the hotel, since we had to go out to the airport to meet the rest of the group. On the way home in the taxi, I saw my favorite sign translation of the trip, written under a bunch of Chinese characters on the back of the cabbie’s seat:


"Psychos and drunkards without guardian
not allowed to ride in taxicab."


When we arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport to meet the group, we discovered that their flight was 2 hours late – they had one hellish trip, having been delayed an entire day on one end and several more hours on the other. So we walked around a bit, looking for a place to sit down and relax and have a beer and a snack.

Miraculously, our group finally arrived. Once all 60-something people were through customs and we’d had a chance to greet everyone, we piled onto two large buses headed for the city of Suzhou...and onto chapter 2.

China Posts, Prologue: Spin

By popular demand, I’m going to start posting excerpts from my China Trip journal. I say “excerpts” because not all of the 40-plus pages of trip notes are blog material (believe me, you don’t care what I ate on the plane.) However, I thought I would pick and choose a few highlights and post them.

But first: a prologue.

Just this morning, CNN ran a story about the whole kerfuffle that happened yesterday at the last stop on the Olympic Torch journey in Lhasa. Apparently a very high-ranking Chinese official took the opportunity to offend most of the world by going off about the fact that Tibet would always be under the red 5-star flag, and then firing a few verbal shots at the Dalai Lama. Having reported that, the CNN reporter took the following shot at the Chinese people:

The torch relay has been accompanied throughout by enthusiastic, sometimes bordering on hysterical, shows of nationalist fervor. Flag-waving young Chinese mobbed international stages of the relay, often confronting pro-Tibet or human rights protesters, sometimes violently. The domestic stages have been surrounded by a sea of red and yellow national flags.

There is no doubt that the Chinese official went way overboard spouting the party line in a completely inappropriate situation, and it sounds as though he’s as big a jerk as some of our own official jackasses. I hate the Tibet situation as much as anyone (perhaps more, since my spiritual teachers have overwhelmingly been either literally Tibetan, or from that tradition.) However, I have to make a comment about the CNN reporter’s spin on the Chinese public’s reaction to the torch relay.

A good reporter can put any kind of spin on any story. Whether they should or not is another question – the important thing is to recognize when “spin” is being put on something. This reporter has “spun” the last paragraph to make it sound as if the Chinese are a bunch of screaming meemies ready to erupt into violence at any moment. (He conveniently left out the fact that a lot of the international pro-Tibet protestors were violent as well – even HH the Dalai Lama remarked about that, and expressed sadness about it.)

But as far as the Chinese people’s enthusiasm about the Olympics: “Hysterical shows of nationalistic fervor” are not what I saw. I saw “massive, excited crowds displaying a huge rush of patriotic pride.” Sounds different, doesn’t it? Well, it’s the same damned thing. And guess what, dude: I was there, standing IN several of those enthusiastic-sometimes-bordering-on-hysterical crowds.

Please imagine something for a moment. Imagine that you have grown up in a country that was pretty much closed off politically from the rest of the world, for reasons that have nothing to do with you or most of your own generation. Then, over a 25-year period, an almost unbelievable amount of change happens. In your grandparents’ day, the average family income was the equivalent of 50 bucks a month. For your parents, though, the situation improved to around 500 bucks a month. (I was told by one young Chinese person that in her parent’s youth, the three markers of a family’s financial success were whether they owned three things: a watch, a bicycle, and a sewing machine.) In one generation, they have gone from that, to having cell phones, cars, decent educations, and a lot of other nice stuff that would have been considered unimaginable one generation ago. Yes, their Internet is censored, but at least they have it-- they can get some idea of what the rest of the world is like. The country is immeasurably more open than it was a generation ago, and they know it. You know how our politicians are always yammering about “Is your life better than it was 10 years ago?” Well, guess what: theirs IS, and they’re pretty damned happy about it. This is not to deny the human rights abuses, the oppressive governmental stuff, the Tibet issue, the dreadful environmental record, melamine in the pet food, or anything else – I’m just trying to explain why there might be such an explosion of feel-good national pride happening amongst the Chinese. Expressions like “nationalistic fervor” and “flag waving young Chinese mobbed international stages of the relay” are calculated to cast a negative light on the entire matter. If you would like to see nationalistic fervor and flag waving mobs, I invite you to any number of patriotic American events, and I doubt that an obvious foreigner at any one of those events would be treated with as much friendliness and courtesy as Coyotebanjo, Coop and I were when we were caught in the “mobs” in Suzhou and Yangzhou. Oh, and speaking of the word “mob” – have you ever been in a country of 1.3 billion people? Any interesting event becomes a “mob.” Hell, rush hour is a mob – try driving in Shanghai.

All I’m asking is that we use some discrimination. For the last 50 years our press has been describing Asia as if contained nothing but bloodthirsty commie lunatics, crowds running amok like extras in a giant Godzilla movie, a few kick-ass Kung Fu guys and the occasional Zen master. This is about as accurate as imagining all Americans as filthy rich, xenophobic, six-shootin’ Bible-thumpin’ flag-wavin’ white cowboys. Folks, we’ve got to communicate, and we can’t communicate unless we try to foster some kind of cultural understanding.

And if you don’t think that’s important, hold this sobering thought: there are way, way, WAY more of Them than Us.

Nearest to Being Free

Richard Thompson is one of my musical heroes, and one of my favorite songs of his is “Let me Ride on the Wall of Death One More Time.” (If you haven’t heard this, go directly to iTunes.)

Literally, the “Wall of Death” term has two meanings that I know of. One is a particularly violent kind of mosh-pit activity in which two groups ram violently into each other in a sort of homicidal Red Rover move. The other, which I assume Richard Thompson is referring to, is a motorcycle stunt ride that is basically like driving around the inner side walls of a giant barrel at a 90 degree angle to the gravitational pull of the earth. Thompson, with his master-craftsman songwriting, transforms the adrenaline rush of the stunt ride into a powerful Zen metaphor for…well, basically for getting up in the morning.

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

You can go with the crazy people in the Crooked House
You can fly away on the Rocket or spin in the Mouse
The Tunnel Of Love might amuse you
Noah's Ark might confuse you
But let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

On the Wall Of Death all the world is far from me
On the Wall Of Death it's the nearest to being free

Well you're going nowhere when you ride on the carousel
And maybe you're strong but what's the good of ringing a bell
The switchback will make you crazy. Beware of the bearded lady
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Oh let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death
Let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death…

In the last 33 days, I have played music in China, where I saw mind-blowing gardens, stood in the Cold Mountain Temple, walked through Tienan’men Square, and climbed the Great Wall (not to be confused with the Wall of Death, unless you ask my shaking legs). I have come back home and been sick for four days (probably the salmonella-tainted tomatoes the news media are all panicking about). I have taught and performed at the most intense and incredible Zoukfest ever, during which I met Andy Irvine, one of my other great musical heroes, and had the great good fortune to sit 20 feet away from him while he gave two performances that moved my heart to tears. I have, with our medieval group Altramar, learned, rehearsed, and recorded the most technically demanding ars subtilior medieval piece I’ve ever had to lay down on a CD. (Yes, I am going to write about all these things in this and in subsequent posts; this is the preamble.)

I have no idea how all this happened in 33 days, unless there was some sort of wrinkle in the space-time continuum – a phenomenon that seems to happen more and more frequently these days, as if everyone is trying to jam 4 lives into one incarnation. It ain’t over yet, either, as we can see from next month’s itinerary: Zoom back up to 7000 feet to see my Taos buddies. Fly to Bloomington to honor the tenth anniversary celebration of the monastery where my Tibetan teachers live. Fly to Massachusetts to visit my family. Go to New Hampshire and attempt to learn how to play the gamba by flinging myself into a group of people who can already do it and brandishing a bow with unabashed ineptitude. In between all of this I will be studying like mad to take doctoral qualifying exams in September.


You can waste your time on the other rides…

It’s been an interesting week. The full moon on Wednesday marked the high point of Saka Dawa, the Buddhist observance of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. This celebration changes a bit from year to year due to the lunar calendar, but it’s usually in the late spring-early summer; and the full moon day has the strongest energy. It is said, in Tibetan Buddhist lore, that any karma you accrue in and around this day is magnified a hundred thousand times.

What did I do on Saka Dawa? I played music, which is not surprising, since it’s what I do; but it wasn’t just like any other day. Coyotebanjo and I were joined this week by our comrades J and D from the medieval ensemble Altramar. We all founded this group together in 1991, and in those intervening 17 years we have made 8 CDs and played concerts from New England across to the Midwest, South, California, Pacific Northwest… and over to the other side, to Ireland, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. Since around 2001, when the last of us left Bloomington, it’s been a lot more difficult to do frequent projects, and our last CD was released in 2003, before the record company’s demise. And while the three of us who settled in Texas have done concerts together since then, it’s been a very long time since all four of us were in the same room, never mind recording anything together, although we’ve had a new project in the pipeline for quite awhile now.

But something unexpected came along to kick-start us into gear: an invitation by our dear friend and mentor, the brilliant and highly-respected musicologist Peter Burkholder, to record some pieces for the forthcoming new edition of the companion CDs to the Norton Anthology of Western Music.

Now, I have to explain that this is a pretty big deal, at least to a bunch of music history nerds like ourselves. (To give you an idea, when I told the good Doctor Masbrow, our friend, colleague and Paragon of Irish Pardessus de Viol, that we had received the call to do this gig, he mimed holding a telephone receiver up to his ear, saying in mock disbelief “Who is this, really?”) The CD Anthology is used by literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of university music classes around the world as a companion to a huge number of university music history courses. Young musicians and their instructors are going to be looking at the scores, studying for listening exams, and listening to YOU. So let’s be honest with our highly Unenlightened selves: this is serious ego candy. It’s also terrifying, because that sort of microscopic scrutiny requires a certain level of performance perfection, and even if you achieve that to your own satisfaction, the aforesaid musicians and instructors may decide that, as they say in text-message lingo, UR doin it wrong. And that, my friends, makes Big Ego very worried and scared (what with the threat of nonexistence and all that sort of thing.) There is only one remedy, and that is to perform music as if it is Not All About You. Considering how blatantly obvious this is, it’s shocking how difficult it can be.

Anyhow, on Wednesday night, Saka Dawa, we did the first recording session, beginning with a fun piece that all of us have been playing for years. That was a piece of cake, and Coyotebanjo and the rest of us completed recording with no problem other than wrestling a bunch of gut strung instruments into tuning submission.

The other two pieces, to be done by J, D, and myself, were quite difficult; one with a lot of subtlety and very high in my range, and the other full of early 15th century meter changes and high-velocity gnat-notes. Since we Altramartians live so far apart from each other, there’s not a whole lot of time to rehearse – we began last Sunday – and we have to rely on learning things individually ahead of time, and then applying our professional experience and skills to get us where we needed to in terms of ensemble, and get it pretty swiftly.

So, on Thursday morning, having been pleased with the results of the previous evening, my Altramar colleagues and I were riding to the recording studio in Acuff (a metropolis consisting of a mini-mart, a diner, cotton fields, several barking dogs, and one well-hidden recording studio.) We were a little apprehensive; in truth, we really needed one more day to polish both pieces…but we were scheduled, so off we went; nervous, adrenaline pumping, zooming along in our Honday CRV – which, incidentally, Coyotebanjo and I had bought from D, who had driven it down to us from Michigan to Texas.

On the way, I missed the right turn for State Road 40, banged the next right, and looped around down a short piece of dirt road. The somewhat hyperbolic name of this glorified cowpath – “Holly Avenue” -- cracked D up; I reminded him that half of Big Flat Place is named after its home-boy Buddy Holly. In a jiff, we were back on 40; the detour had probably taken about 6-10 seconds. We approached the junction where 40 crosses the ring road that encircles Big Flat Place. This spot was apparently engineered by someone who thought that a stop sign at the end of the ring road ramp would render it unnecessary for anyone cruising down 40 to be able to actually see another vehicle exiting the ring road ramp until said vehicle was virtually at the stop sign. In this case, the vehicle exiting the ramp was some Texas asshole in a two-ton gas-guzzling Suburban going approximately 65 to 70 mph off the ramp, through the stop sign, across 40, and back up onto the ramp headed in the opposite direction. We saw him do this from a slight distance; he was, by my estimation, about 6-10 seconds in front of us.

Six to ten seconds.

After screaming something abusive in the direction of the vacuum-formerly-occupied-by the speeding Suburban, I said to my comrades, “I guess it’s a good thing that we overshot Rte 40.” A moment of silence then followed, during which it sunk into our brains that the seemingly meaningless glitch of initially missing the turnoff had probably saved all three of us from dying instantly in a fiery wreck.

We rode in silence for about 10 minutes.

J said to me later that during the 10 minute silence, the thing that was going through her mind was a swift reassessment of the importance of this recording in the Grand Scheme of Things. I myself was pretty shook up, and tried to concentrate on just being calm and driving safely. Nevertheless, I found myself musing on the serendipitous “Holly Avenue,” and remembered that D, who had thought the name was such a riot, is from Clear Lake, where Buddy Holly’s plane crashed. In short, I got completely creeped out.

The session we did that day was difficult. I was hoarse and the energy wasn’t humming. The engineer, Alan Crossland, was fantastic as always – he is the soul of skill, patience, and cheerfulness – but I was feeling sorry for him because we three weren’t locking in. We did multiple takes for two pieces and mixed part of one of them, but ended up ultimately using stuff we would record during the following two days. Normally I would be upset by that, but you know what? I wasn’t – because I was with my longtime friends, finally playing together again since I don’t know how long, and we were breathing and not being extricated from the engine of my Honda CRV.

We did eventually get the thing right. The next two sessions had the results we wanted. I can’t say we went in there and breezed through them in one take (more like 7 or 8 for each piece, with a number of additional sonic band-aid takes, what with all the little details we were trying to get right). But we’re happy with the result.

And, it was wonderful and somewhat emotional to have the four of us together in the same place for a week. Coyotebanjo did the tenzo thing and spent hours cooking fabulous food for all of us. On Friday night, the other Altramartians joined me and Coyotebanjo at our regular Friday night Irish session, and to our great surprise and delight the fourth member of my other band – the Irish band, Johnny Faa – had driven up from Austin to surprise everyone. I had never been in the same room with all members of both of these performing groups that mean so much to me, and it was quite overwhelming.

It was inevitable, of course, that on the last evening we Altramartians sat around reminiscing about our teacher Tom Binkley and the Early Music Institute. Something then possessed us to dig out the VHS tape of a 1990 performance of the EMI performance of the medieval Carmina Burana (not Orff, but sections of music from the actual medieval Carmina Burana manuscript, a huge theatrical undertaking.) Only D, myself, and Coyotebanjo had been in the production, but ironically, J had been there to see it, since she was there that weekend auditioning for the program. I tell you, it’s a strange experience to watch yourself 18 years ago. Seeing the video, and so many people we hadn’t seen for years, unleashed a torrent of reminiscences, some sad, some happy, some hilarious. In the morning, we had brunch together at our favorite place here in BFP, and then J & D went back to their respective homes, he on a plane and she in her van. I miss them already – but I feel as though something has been set back into motion; something that has been stuck. The day after the full Saka Dawa moon, the planet Mercury ceased its retrograde motion and turned direct; in astrological language this means that the energy was very good for getting things “unstuck,” and I hope that’s true.

In the meantime, I keep thinking about those 6 to 10 seconds. The fact that music is not All About You somehow feels directly related to that: "You" could be gone in the blink of an eye, and then what?

On the Wall Of Death -- all the world is far from me
On the Wall Of Death -- it's the nearest to being free…


Who cares if the recording is perfect, or if someone disagrees with the way you articulated those 32nd note triplets? Music is about the energy generated by the people making it, and the energy created by whatever is happening between them, or between the makers and the listeners; and not necessarily about the makers themselves. It’s a vehicle for community and communal energy. It's far greater than the sum of its parts; and even if you’re the one driving the vehicle, even if you’re the one generating the energy, it’s not about You and it’s not Yours.If you’re a musician, that’s enough of a reason right there to do your spiritual practice: I’m convinced that the musicians who understand that it ain’t theirs are the ones who move us the most. But more about that in the upcoming Zoukfest post.

The Midlife Crisis Show

Well…it finally happened. The clerk at the checkout counter asked me if I was 55, and would I like the Senior discount? No? Oh OK – gee I hope you’re not insulted. Sometimes I say that to folks and they get insulted. You’re not? OK, cool.

Aaaauuuuggghh!

When I was young, I used to think I would be one of those people who was really “together” and would grow old gracefully, contemplating my navel happily and learning how to grow roses. Hah. Instead, I’m spittin’ and screamin’, because I AM, along with everyone else on Earth, going to Get Old and Die, and that’s one TV show we can’t turn off.

When I turned thirty, it didn’t really bother me. (Having been a little freaked-out at 29, I was over it once 30 arrived.) When I was 40, I was so damned busy working my ass off to (not) finish my doctoral degree that I didn’t even notice the number as it flew by, except to briefly say “Shit! I forgot to have kids!” I had a cool radio show, I had a great medieval ensemble, and I had no idea that my father was about to die, or that all kinds of other hell was about to break loose.

But fifty kicked my ass. And three years later, it’s still kicking. I’ve kept the lid on this so far by theorizing that it’s mostly hormonal, since 50-ish is the diabolical alter-ego of 13. But I don’t think that’s the whole story, because this 50-crap happens to men, too. Gentlemen, it may comfort you to know that 50 year-old women also suffer from vaguely defined compulsions to suddenly acquire multiple piercings, a racing-green convertible sport BMW and a tattoo. Granted, we don’t so often run off with 25 year old guys…but it ain’t because of us. Twenty-five-year-old women are sometimes attracted to and fascinated by older men, but for most 25-year-old guys, a fifty-ish woman mostly reminds them of Mom, and if any fascination or attraction does occur, it mostly makes them feel a little bit Icky.

Forget about all this “Fifty is the new Thirty” crap. That’s just another slogan dreamed up by my generation, many of whom are clearly still experiencing the effects of too much weed. Calling 50 “midlife” is a kind of deranged denial, and there IS something about 50 that is different from 19 (or 30). Maybe it hits you one day when you walk up a steep hill and you have to stop for about 30 seconds when you get to the top. Or maybe it hits you one morning after staying up until 4 AM one night yakking with some friends, and instead of getting up the next morning and feeling like your happy and horny 19-year-old self, you feel like warmed-over 53-year-old crap. Or, if you are a female, you’re sticking your head in the freezer because your internal thermostat is kaput. Whatever the scenario, the result is that your physical body finally gives you a clue to something that you have never really truly engaged with, no matter how many times your Buddhist teachers said it to you: You Are Going To Die.

Yes, You. Me. Probably not today – but probably in less than another 50 years. Maybe in half of that.

For me this physical realization was definitely triggered by hormonal changes, and might have been intensified by the fact that I neglected to spawn anyone to carry my DNA forward. But I really believe it’s part of the reason that 50 is kicking my ass: since I really, truly felt this Great Truth for the first time, I have experienced an endless cascade of emotional states that surprise me and make me wonder if all this meditation and dharma study has had one iota of effect on my blithering yet overwhelming ego at all. And while my intellect instantly censors these emotional blips as either ridiculous or having no bearing at all in reality (whatever reality is), my physical and emotional reaction to these feelings is very real. So to exorcise some of these beauties, I offer to you, for your viewing enjoyment and in this terrifyingly public forum, The Midlife Crisis Show.

Episode 1: The “Washed Up” Syndrome. This happens on especially bad days. What’s the point in starting any new career paths? You’re 53 years old, for crying out loud. What’s the use of getting any new skills? You don’t really have enough years left to acquire them. (I told you these are ridiculous.) Finish your doctorate? At 53? Are you crazy? What for? You’re just going to die anyhow.

I didn’t say this wasn’t ridiculous. The fact that I am “just going to die anyhow” was true when I was 19 as well. In fact, considering some of my behavior at 19, the risk was probably substantially higher.

I’ve tried to figure out where all this absurdity came from, especially since I come from a family of Old Yankees who in their late 90s had to be physically stopped from doing things like abandoning their walkers in order to clear the wind-fallen large branches off their lawn. Is it because I come from a small blue-collar town where a lot of people spent thirty years desperately waiting to retire, and where too many of them promptly died within 5 years of meeting that milestone? My father could not wait to retire, after 40 years of hurling cement blocks and drum kits around. But, at exactly the same age I am now, he decided to start playing the saxophone-- the instrument he wanted to play as a kid, but didn’t because his parents couldn’t afford it. He got remarkably good at it: the bebop idiom was already in his ears, and all he had to do was teach his fingers how to play what he had already heard in his mind. And yet every time I think of this, my emotions go straight to the fact that just 4 years after he finally was able to retire and spend all his time playing that sax or flying his radio-controlled airplanes, f****** cancer put an end to it. I don’t know why I can’t just say “Isn’t it wonderful that in the last decade and a half of his life he found these things he really loved to do?” Instead, I find myself thinking why the hell should I learn how to play the viola da gamba? I’m just going to die anyhow.

Episode 2: I’m Going to Do All The Stuff I Never Did and Change My Life. This is the opposite extreme, which happens on good days. I’m going to travel to this place and that place, write the following 12 books, learn to play that damned gamba, make at least a dozen more CDs, get a summer house in New England, teach workshops on Music and Spirituality, lose thirty pounds, blah blah blah. And in fact, there is absolutely NO reason why I can’t do those things – I refer you to the 98 year old Yankees cited above, and the 101 year old Tuscans on the other side of the double helix – but this enthusiasm is often short-lived, because, after all, I have to go to work like everyone else and put money in my feeble IRA and pay my mortgage and, oh yeah, I’m just going to die anyhow.

Episode 3: Do These Bifocals Make My Butt Look Big? One of the more curious manifestations of this 50 thing is a sudden obsession with the fact that one will inevitably lose whatever physical attractiveness one has managed to muddle through life with. I must say, it’s a strange obsession for a person who spent most of her life wearing jeans and baggy black sweaters, refusing to spend more than 5 minutes on any given hairstyle, chowing chocolate chip cookies with little regard for their effect on the posterior view of said jeans, and regarding parking-in-the-next-lot-over-from work as “exercise.” The obsession manifests in extremes which swing madly from buying nice clothes and begging the dermatologist to fry off the sun-spots on one’s face, to weeping because no matter what you do, you still look 50, and there’s no turning back. There is no way to reach 90 without looking at least 80, so why panic? I regularly see older people whom I consider extremely attractive; so what’s the deal? What makes me think I will scare small children? It’s a complete ego trip, really, but knowing that doesn’t seem to stop the emotional reaction (although it can sometimes show me the humor in it.)

Episode 4: Things That Make Me Unhappy. It somehow feels imperative to Fix All of These Things Now. This is partly because You’re Going to Die, but partly because because God Forbid you should live another forty years and still be made unhappy by these anathemae, whatever they may be. This particular episode contains a variety of regular sketches, such as 1) The Place I Live Sucks; 2) No One Appreciates What I Do and its sinister variation, I Actually Have No Idea What I’m Doing; 3) My Partner Must Think I’m An Idiot (this plays well with the unattractive obsession outlined above); and 4) Christ, I Have Made So Many Stupid Decisions. These recur during the course of a day like a bunch of happy little Baroque ritornelli. It is basically the Eight Worldly Dharmas (gain and loss, praise and blame, happiness and unhappiness, etc.) on hyperdrive. Alas, this burning need to fix everything that makes one unhappy (rather than fixing your Self) leads to…

Episode 5: Emotional Panic. This sometimes also occurs for no apparent reason. People love to blame this on hormones too, but it also happens when you prepare to read the annual letter from the mammography lab, so I suspect it’s connected to the You Gon’ Die syndrome. The anxiety sometimes happens when one forgets the name of someone one has known for years, or one can’t remember what you call that utensil that people use to eat soup. (My mother tells me that this last thing is hormonal and will go away, only to return for good in another 20 years or so; thanks Ma.) But it’s not just physical stuff. The panic sometimes creeps up when one ponders some unrealized dream that is now unlikely to be realized, or more likely (for me) when I ponder something I’ve done or said (or didn’t do, or didn’t say) that I regret with great force.

The truth is, for both fifty-ish men and women, the only thing that would really make us feel any better about ourselves would be to lose 30 pounds, get some exercise, and find a satisfying spiritual practice, be it simple or complex. In fact, virtually every one of the above “episodes” could be addressed with one of the various Buddhist practices I have been taught. And perhaps they are somewhat effective – after all, I am writing a blogpost instead of driving endlessly around the Loop blaring “All Along The Watchtower” out of the sub-woofers. Wait – I do that too. No…who am I kidding? I’m in a Honda CRW, I’m usually on my way to the garden center, and I’m referencing Jimi Hendrix. I might as well tattoo “50” (uh, 53) on my forehead.

So what to do? Someone once said, live and work as if you were going to live forever, and do your spiritual practice as if you were going to die tomorrow. And as for that first Episode in the Midlife Crisis Show, The Washed-Up Syndrome, I give you a paraphrase from Julia Cameron’s wonderful book “The Artist’s Way,” in which she has a variation on the following question:

Q: What, learn how to play the piano now? Do you know how old I’ll be before I actually learn how to play it?
A: Yes – the same age you’ll be if you don’t.

And there it is, folks. Whatever it is, just do it. Remember Country Joe McDonald singing in the Woodstock movie?

"Welllll, there ain't no time to wonder why;
Yippeee! We're all gonna die."

Go to China, learn the gamba, get another degree, do Half-Handstand, buy the orange jacket. And when 55 does come, take the discount and Run.

Fall Down Two Times

Blogging is an interesting art, because it’s not at all the same as journaling. Blogging is only like writing in a journal if you’re the type who doesn’t give a damn who finds and reads your journal -- and that would not be me. After a certain passage of time, I’ve either torched or shredded practically every journal I’ve ever written, in terror that anyone other than myself would actually get their mitts on it.

I must say, though, I do admire people like Coyotebanjo (coyotebanjo.blogspot.com) who can blog about fairly personal things in a way that not only seems perfectly appropriate, but often serves to articulate things that are simultaneously deeply personal and yet have a certain universality with the human condition. Poets can do this also, and great writers, and really, REALLY good songwriters. But not me. When I try to write something relatively personal in a blog, I usually end up trashing it. My apologies to Patti Smith, but -- Poets Blog for Somebody’s Sins, but Not Mine.

However, I am going to stick my toe in the water this time and write about something that feels personal to me.

The third Buddhist precept, after Don’t Kill and Don’t Steal, is Don’t Lie. Now, I don’t ever set out with the intention of lying, and I’m not talking about the lying that Compulsive Liar used to do on Saturday Night Live – “I found this hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk…yeah…on the sidewalk…yeah…that’s the ticket.” No, I’m talking about something else – I’m talking about feeling like a fake. (is this personal enough? Yikes.)



In the movie “Happy Texas,” the character Wayne Wayne Wayne (portrayed brilliantly by Steve Zahn) is an escaped convict who, through a series of ridiculous events, finds himself training a bunch of elementary school girls for their performance in one of those Texas abominations that is essentially a Little-Kid Beauty Pageant. One night when his partner comes home, he snaps and starts screaming:

You have no idea what it’s like to be in a room full’a those screamin’ little booger-eaters starin’ up at ya expecting ya to…know stuff!

Of course, university students are NOT screamin’ little booger-eaters (mostly). However, if you have a great CV and you studied with a bunch of famous people, then students – and faculty colleagues, and various other people whose paths you cross - expect you to…know stuff. All the time. Every day.

And I don’t always know stuff.. Some days I am OK with this, but on other days, I get that sinking feeling that comes when you suspect that everything you do is, as the Texans love to say, “More hat than horse.”

Does this happen to everyone? Are there other teachers out there reading this? Do you ever get a question from a student, and while your mouth is saying “Well, that’s not my area, but I would say…blah blah blah,” your brain is saying “Dude, I have no f----g idea.” Does this bother anyone else but me? Can you just go on your merry way, with the healthy conviction that no human being is required to know the entire contents of Encyclopedia Britannica, The New Grove Dictionary of Music, and Wikipedia? Or do you feel like a fake? I am reminded of the time that I was assigned a Teaching Assistantship that involved teaching the General Musicianship courses in the Young Recorder Player Program. When I pointed out the obvious (uhh, I don’t play recorder) I was told that I would be trained over the summer, and all I needed to do was be “one week ahead of the first graders.” (I just heard Quantzalcoatl go “Aaarrrrgggghhhh.”) Well, believe me, I have a lot of weeks when I still feel as though I am just about one week ahead of the first graders.

Here’s a series of questions for fellow student-ensemble directors (and I know at least a couple of you are reading this): What do you do when you’ve planned your semester’s music in advance, like a good conscientious director should, taking into account the general level of the ensemble for the last several semesters -- and then you have to juggle a bunch of changes that happen in the ensemble’s personnel? I know that some directors deal with this by having the veterans actually perform, and the others learn a bunch of music with the intention of playing it the next semester – and guess what? That’s what I should have done, and I didn’t – I changed a bunch of the repertoire. The result was that some people struggled and others were bored out of their minds. Bad directing.

So here’s the next question. If you screw up, how do you say “Oh well, I screwed up and I learned something” and then let it go? I cannot seem to do that. I have spent several nights staring at the ceiling until 2 in the morning. Why? Because my students depend on me, and I’m supposed to...know stuff. I have a goddam degree in this.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself. For God's sake, I'm trying to sing, play recorder, crumhorn, medieval harp, 5 course lute, and percussion in the same concert, while keeping track of what everyone else is playing, or not playing. (Of course, this could be part of the problem; I'm reminded of the Far Side cartoon with the piano-playing elephant who's thinking "What am I doing here? I'm a flute player, for crying out loud.") But there's a history here; a history of being expected to just "know stuff." I studied with Tom Binkley, one of the aforementioned Famous People. Now, I dearly loved Binkley. I learned an incredible amount from him, and for a complete hagiography I refer you to Coyotebanjo’s moving tributes to him. But for all that he inspired us to become the early music practitioners we became, Binkley could also drive you nuts. He forbade any of the “Collegium Direction” majors to take conducting, because he didn’t want our directing technique to be sullied by all that modern stuff. Of course, other than having been the director of a small, mostly amateur church choir, I had no damned directing technique to be sullied, and by God I didn’t get any in that course. Tom’s course in “Collegium Direction” contained 2 people; myself and an absolutely fantastic flute player, an Italian grad student named Luca. The course consisted largely of creating concert programs (very helpful), being lectured weekly on how poor our knowledge of repertoire was (not helpful), cutting the occasional crumhorn reed (long forgotten), watching in terror while Binkley reached into someone's viola da gamba and moved the soundpost around to make it sound better (long remembered), and discussing how to make budgets with incredibly small amounts of money (also very helpful). However, the Collegium Direction course only included one hour of actual directing. (Not one hour a week - I mean One Hour.) That agonizing hour consisted of rounding up a bunch of non-early-music majors and attempting to teach them a piece from original notation while Binkley watched us make idiots out of ourselves. (Maybe it was two hours - did we do it twice? I've sort of blocked it out of my memory, the way you block the memory of the sound of your car crashing into someone else's.)

Fortunately, in the 15 years since then, I did learn a thing or two. Not by being the assistant director in any of Binkley productions – that task consistently went to the same vocal performance major (not a direction major) who was a particular favorite of Binkley’s, and by the time I reached the point in my degree program to produce my recitals, Binkley had passed away. No, it was just taking the bull by the horns and working with ensembles by myself, and learning by observing my teachers, and by doing. Both of my doctoral recitals consisted of concerts given by ensembles that I myself put together. The first one was a concert of medieval French music, and if I do say so myself, it was good. Of course, I had the luxury of casting that particular movie with musicians from the Early Music Institute, who were not exactly a dusty bunch. For the second one, I was actually given the opportunity to co-direct the IU Pro Arte Singers in a concert of Byzantine chant, and somehow, I did it. It wasn’t easy, since they were mostly my fellow graduate students and some of them behaved like Bart Simpson during the rehearsals (HA-haaaaa), but they were awesome musicians; and I had the help of my teacher Paul Elliott and the mind-boggling expertise of Dr. Tom Matheisen, and it happened. In fact, it was damned good.

And yes, I occasionally helped with other ensembles (and I have been a member of a medieval ensemble for over 15 years; but that ensemble is a democracy, and not a benign dictatorship the way a Collegium needs to be; however, I did learn how to put a program together.) Seventeen years of writing early music radio programs deep-sixed the “Poor knowledge of repertoire” problem. And then I found myself in a situation in which I had to help people use early instruments when there were no applied teachers for those instruments at the institution…in which I was expecting myself to direct an inclusive, audition-free ensemble in which some people are very advanced, others aren’t; some are very committed, some aren't; some are good readers, and some aren't; some learn their pieces, and some won't practice…and somehow, I still have managed to make around 20 early music concerts happen with a bunch of wonderful people, most of whom had never played early music before they met me.

And sometimes, I screw up.

Then I feel sad and frustrated, and all my fears about being a "fake" start bubbling up. But there is nothing that can be done about it, except to maybe swallow the ego, get over myself, and maybe blog about it and see what other people have experienced.

Fall down two times, get up three.
--- Zen Proverb