Day 17 - Beijing

The Forbidden City in Hue, Vietnam has been mostly destroyed by bombs and not rebuilt, so it was lovely to go through Beijing's that has been very well kept and restored. In fact various parts of it are under restoration now. We entered from the back entrance ie not the Tianenmen Sq entrance, and discovered that most people start at the other end. Therefore we spent our whole day there walking against a sea of people.
In the evening we had tickets to see the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra. We went to a little restaurant for a quick bite before the show. It looked like it hadn't been open for long, and I'd say from the attention we received, that we were the first westerners to grace their tables! Pretty much everyone who worked there came out to take our order. Again we weren't sure whether everything had translated, but the food came and was lovely.
We had great seats for the Philharmonic, until seconds before it started. The people sitting next to us also had seats in the next row, but at the other end. They seemed to be one seat short and decided that they would share a seat...some of which was MY seat! hmmm....interesting. The performance had a young German violinist as the guest artist. He was very good...quite flamboyant, although could do with getting some good fitting clothes made in China!!
After the show, we tried to get a taxi to no avail. We realised we weren't really sure what part of town we were in, but I had a feeling we weren't too far from Tianenmen Sq. As there were plenty of people around, we decided to go for a walk and try and get a cab further along. We ended up in the square, where there were hundreds of people just wandering around, flying kites, taking photos and enjoying the balmy evening. With the square all lit up, it was a lovely way to spend our last evening in China.

Day 16 - Beijing

John went to meet with government officials today who are involved with arts and music projects in Beijing. We are hoping to be part of their festivities next year during the Olympics. After lunch, we ventured into Tianenmen Square. Having been to Moscow, I can see the similarities with Red Square. The 2 countries have certainly influenced each other. Chairman Mao overlooks the square from the entrance gate of the Forbidden City. The square is pristeen and full of tourists - mostly Chinese from other parts of the country. In Shanghai, we weren't given a 2nd look as odd looking westerners, but in Beijing, with many visitors possibly from parts of the country that don't get a lot of passing trade, we grew accustomed to direct and long stares...mainly to John - he's so exotic looking (lol, ie Hairy!) Mao's mausoleum is closed til September, as are all the interesting museums, all being renovated for the Olympics. The Natural History museum, however, will be closed til 2010. This apparently happens quite often.
The Gate of Heavenly Peace, behind the Mausoleum, and formerly the entranceway to the city, is very ornate, houses some interesting historical pictures and museum pieces, and has great views of the city.
In the evening we had a gig at a venue that we don't actually know the name of! It certainly wasn't in a glamorous part of town, and wasn't much of a venue. The whole evening was a bit of a puzzlement. A businessman connected with the club in some way had paid our trainfare from Shanghai, 2 nights accommodation, and a flight for Ren from Shanghai also. The gig wasn't advertised, and we weren't even introduced.

Day 15 - Beijing

Having a relaxing train trip is one thing. Trying to get off the train at a busy station with too much luggage is quite another! Again, quite a hike to street level where we met Mr Liu who was sponsoring us for train travel and accommodation. There was quite a discussion about how to get us to the hotel as we stood in the heat fending off beggars. Finally, we were loaded up and on the road. The first hotel we were taken to turned out to be the wrong one. Shame...it looked quite nice. The 2nd hotel was ours - City Hotel Beijing. Shame...for the opposite reason. Our room was an apartment. The hallway looked like we were on an abandoned floor and our apartment wasn't much better. The floor looked like it hadn't been vacuumed for about 2 years. Not happy. We went down to reception and asked to see another room. The showed us exactly the same thing on a different floor. Not happy. 3rd time lucky, we asked to see a standard room, not an apartment, and this was fine. 2 3/4 size single beds that are hard as a rock, but otherwise just fine.
All settled in we then headed to the Great Wall. It's quite a way out of Beijing. Badaling is quite a tourist trap. I believe there are better places to go to, but this was all we could arrange. It's hard to walk 2 paces without something being sold to you, and they are very persistent. The wall is vast, as I knew it would be, but I wasn't expecting the steepness. It was very hot and I found it difficult to walk far as I was still not feeling great. John and I followed signs to the cable car. The first sign said 1100metres. That sounded ok. The 2nd sign said 3000metres. Hmmmm....I think the taxi drivers are in charge of putting up the signs. We had one guy follow us for almost the entire time we were walking! He just didn't get that we just wanted to enjoy our walk!
Back at the hotel we just crashed for the night.

Day 14 - Shanghai to Beijing

Our last day in Shanghai. We tried not to shop. We decided to make our last day at least a little bit cultural and had plans to go to the Urban Planning Centre to see what Shanghai is planned to look like in the future. Unfortunately due to my upset stomach, that didn't happen, so we will just have to come back and see it in the future. We got as far as the Jin Mao Tower. This is currently Shanghai's tallest building at 85 floors. I say currently as there is a taller building under construction just next door, so it will be knocked off it's perch somewhat! I wonder how it's tourism centre will go?? The veiws would be quite spectacular were it not for the dense pollution. There is a view down the centre stairwell of the hotel which is also head spinning. Plenty of things to buy there including an interesting little scam of sorts. For your admission ticket, you get to choose a fresh water pearl, absolutely free. You can watch them take it straight out of the oyster! You can then have a hole drilled into it - absolutely free. Then you can choose a silver chain - absolutely free. The catch? The clasp the attaches the pearl to the chain ranges in price starting from 100RMB. Not a bad scam really, and we enjoyed getting our own pearl necklace made up from oyster to chain.
All packed, we were picked up by Giselle and Peter, who came bearing gifts....lovely, but more packing!!....and went to catch the overnight train to Beijing. It was quite a hike so we were lucky to have a couple of extra hands. I have travelled by train in VietNam before, so had an idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. The trains are much more modern and comfortable. We had booked a soft sleeper to ourselves. This means having to buy 4 beds instead of 2, but if your budget can stretch, I definately recommend it. The cabins come complete with nice quilts and pillows and are airconditioned.
The dining car is quite small for the amount of passengers onboard, but as you walk through the other cars, you can see why they don't bother expanding it. The locals all BYO! We ordered a couple of nice dishes but the last one looked like beef with green beans. WRONG!!! Green peppers. And very very very hot! The night was difficult for me as I wasn't well but it was as comfortable as it could be. Certainly safer than the internal flights.

Shanghai - Day 13 - Concert at Oriental Arts Centre

The big day - a concert at the Oriental Arts Centre, in the Opera Theatre which seats 2000, with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band. We had been told a few times that tickets were not selling well, so we were pretty nervous about what the night was going to turn out like! We set up and rehearsed and then relaxed in the dressing room. The girls from the Arts Centre, Kelly and Wendy, came to get us to sign some programs. I asked how many tickets had been sold, expecting under 200. They had already sold over 800, so we were very relieved. The first half of the show was just quartet. John on drums, Tim on piano, Ren from the JZ club on Bass and myself singing. It's hard to do an intimate set in a theatre that size! Celebrity owner of the House of Jazz and Blues, Lin Dongfu was our compere and did a wonderful introduction. I walked out to see at least 1000 people in the audience, so it was really exciting. At the end of the set we did the Beatles song "Can't Buy Me Love" which I use as an audience participation number. With an audience of 85% Chinese, it was really hit and miss whether this would work....but it did! The management were so shocked. We met with members of the Australian Consulate in the interval, then went on for the Big Band set. The Shanghai Symphony guys did great, with some wonderful solos also. The pieces that went down extremely well were the chinese songs we had prepared. Tim did a beautiful reharmonisation of a popular folk song called Jasmine. It was superb. After John's big drum solo to Caravan, I came out in a chinese outfit singing "Tian Mi Mi"..Sweet Honey. Needless to say, we were a hit! We sold a few CD's and did some signings after the show, then the General Manager of the centre took us all out to dinner with his staff. With 2 other shows on in the centre, that's a big sign of congratulations for us. They haven't really promoted a show as a "jazz" concert before, so we were very happy at the success for them. It also means that we have paved the way for more jazz concerts to be held there instead of all Philharmonic orchestras.

Shanghai - Day 12

I'm sorry to say that I went shopping again today. It does seem that it's all we've donen, but the shopping here is fantasic...and addictive! I went to a market place with Giselle near the Jing An Temple. It was all the same stuff we can get at home at Paddy's Market...funny about that! But ti was great fun and I got the last few things on my list like sandals for John's little girls, Mary and Sarah, to wear for the wedding. We can home and started to get things packed up ready for our move to Beijing, then in the evening headed nout for another performance at JZ Jazz Club. First we went to dinner up the road from the club. A morrocan restaurant called Marakesh. The food was great. North African food to give our tastebuds a break from the Chinese food. We also had a bottle of Morrocan red wine. Back at the club we were just playing a short set before the JZ Big Band so we decided to just call tunes we all knew. When I got on stage, I felt really strange. Not drunk. Not stoned. Just really spacey. I couldn't concentrate on what I was singing and, in my mind, sang some really awful stuff! Just not together at all. At the end of the set I told Tim that I felt strange and he said he felt the same. Don't know if we were just over tired, or if it was the wine...or maybe the cous cous!!! It was a bizarre feeling. We sat a watched the JZ big band which is a mix of local muso's and ex-pat musicians from USA. It was a pretty happening band doing very difficult charts by the director and arranger, a guy called Rolf from Germany. A woman in a very short skirt bought us a bottle of champagne and came over with her texan companion to hang. She is a lawyer who studied at the Sydney University. What was interesting is that she didn't cme to our gig there last Tues, she wasn't coming to the concert on Sunday, and she missed most of the short set we did that night. I think she just liked the celebrity factor!

Shanghai - Day 11

The time has come to actually do something other than eat and shop. Today we went to the Shanghai Museum. This is a beautifully laid out building with 4 floors of exhibits. The floors are set around an open courtyard style stairwell....not quite sure how else to explain it. Each room is a specific exhibit....coins, sculpture, pottery, textiles and masks, furniture. It was a pleasure to wander around and everything could be viewed clearly. As we left the museum, the boys stopped to haggle for Rolex watches...again. We moved on and were approached by a group of 5 young students who were learning English and wanted to know all about us. They were really fun to talk to and were all in their early 20's, on holiday from Wuxi, near Suzhou. They told us they were going to a traditional Chinese Tea ceremony and asked us if we'd like to come. One of this girls, Ling Ling, spoke English very well. So well, she barely stopped to breathe! She was an absolute livewire. The tea ceremony was very interesting, and Ling Ling was able to translate everything our host was saying about the where the tea is from and about the traditions behind the serving of it. After the tea ceremony, we needed to get back to the hotel but it was raining and getting a taxi was near impossible. The young students were spread out along Nanjing Rd trying to hail taxis for us. Finally on the road, we were all starving and the boys convinced me we should go to Hungry Jacks for a quick bite as we were short on time. Tastes just as disgusting as in the west!!!! After a very quick change, we were picked up by Giselle to go to the Peking Opera. She had secured tickets for us and also permission to go back stage to see the actors get ready for the show. That was amazing to watch. To see the incredible costumes up close and watch the actors putting on the traditional pink and white make up was such a treat. We were stuck in Friday night gridlock on the way there, but it was worth it. We were whisked away from there to go to the 65th floor of another hotel for a reception by AustCham - the Australian Chamber of Commerce. This was another opportunity for us to promote the concert. John and I did an impromptu version of Chega de Suadade with John playing the raffle box!!
Job done, we headed back to the Peking Opera and arrived in time for the interval. Our seats were front row and there were people in our seats who quickly got turfed out. The lights on stage are so bright that it feels like the house lights are up. The audience talk out loud throughout the performance and seem to clap and cheer at strange (to us) places. I wondered whether we could take photos. No need to wonder - people even had long lens professional cameras and there were 2 professional looking video cameras. As we were sitting in the front row I had excellent view for my little camera! Back to the hotel for an early night for me, but the boys have gone to the JZ club to see the Latino band.

Shanghai - Day 10

More shopping. Is this blog getting boring???? We went back to the Textile Market to pick up the clothes we ordered. Everything has turned out wonderfully. So wonderfully, we all ordered MORE stuff. One can never have too many clothes made of fine silk and satin! John even found nike sneakers for the 3 kids. After a quick spending spree that put smiles on a few faces of store owners, we left for our 2nd rehearsal with the big band. These guys are all such professionals. And for classical players they are swinging just fine! There are a few rough spots every now and then, but it will be great performing with them in the big concert hall on Sunday. Now, we just need an audience for this 2000 seat theatre and we'll all be happy. There has been quite a lot of advertising for the concert, but for a concert being billed as jazz in a concert hall that has the Vienna Philharmonic waiting to play in it, it probably needed a lot more to persuade people to come and see what this "jazz" is all about. We have done 1 press conference and that's it. I assumed we'd do a TV chat show or radio show with an interpreter, but it has just been that one media call. After the rehearsal, our agent, Michael suggested dinner but I was still full from lunch so I went back to the hotel for an early night.

Shanghai - Day 9

Because the big band are so good, we have extra free time as we don't need to rehearse. Today I met Giselle and Tim to go shopping, but my back was really bad and I could barely walk. I headed back to the hotel and went and had a massage. The massage people aren't as good as the chinese guys I go to in Australia. After the massage, my guy suggested I try cupping. I have had this before but not so many. I had about 10 cups suctioned to my back and now my back looks like I have had a hickey session with some strange romantic creature! In the evening we went to Great World, where we could see different stages with acrobats and magicians. Alas, the building is all closed up, so we went to a shopping centre and had dinner. Hotpot! I highly recommend it!

Shanghai - Day 8 Swinging with the Big Band and JZ Club

Today was a make or break day for us. Our first rehearsal with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band. They are all excellent symphony players, but only do a couple of big band gigs a year, so we were unsure of what their jazz playing was going to be like. At the end of the first 4 bars, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief! THEY SWING!!!!! We had a run through all the pieces for the concert and then headed off to get ready for our quartet gig at the JZ Club. The boys went off to dinner with our bass player, Ren....Japanese food and sake....while I took time out to relax before the gig.
The club is small so "packed" means about 150 people. It certainly wasn't quiet! We had a few tables right in front of the stage that were there just to listen - mostly westerners - but the other tables were really just there for the venue. We played really well and were very well received so it was good promo for our concert on Sunday. We stayed to watch sax player Alec Haavik who we saw at the art gallery on sunday.

Day 7 - Shanghai

Our day started with shopping. Again!!!! We went to the Dongjiadu Cloth Market. Lots of tailors and reams of fabric. We all placed orders for things to be made and in 2 hours had made a few businesses very happy. We had to race back to the hotel to get dressed up for our press conference. The concert at the Oriental Arts Centre is with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band. As exciting as that sounds for us, the concept of big band swing is not huge here, so we are working hard to increase ticket sales. It's a 2000 seat theatre, so we may be swinging for our own pleasure!!! We played 3 songs for the press and then had a Q&A session. The concert is being promoted around John and I falling in love and having a romantic trip to Shanghai. Many of the questions were about our relationship than music, but we managed to meld both topics quite nicely. Our agent, Michael, planned to take us to a very popular restaurant famous for duck, in particular, Peking Duck. We had a couple fo hours to kill, so Tim and I went in search of a massage which is done in the Jing An Hotel, parent hotel to the Shanghai. The directions we were given were the complete opposite of where we needed to go, so by the time we found it, we were drenched in sweat. We also had no idea what time it was, so we were halfway through our massage when John popped his head in. It was time to go and he'd been looking for us.
The restaurant was packed and again, the food kept on coming. We had lots of different dishes...mostly duck. Duck tongue, duck egg, duck stomach, duck feet, as well as the famous Peking duck....cut in 2 different ways. Despite my massage, my back was giving me grief so we headed home for an early night.

Day 6 - Hangzhou to Shanghai

Back to Shanghai - very early start! Too early for musicians but best to beat the traffic which is heavy even on a Sunday. Our time in China is not just for pleasure as tourists. We also have work to do - 2 jazz club gigs and a major concert. Our pianist from Sydney, Tim Fisher, and our agent, Michael Xu, arrived last night, so today we get to work. We had a rehearsal with our bass player, local jazz identity and JZ jazz club owner, Mr Ren...known to us as Ren. He is a fine bass player, so we can relax. He is also coming to Beijing with us. After our rehearsal he took us to lunch. That's all we seem to do here - eat and shop! I don't mind, but when we eat, it's always a banquet! It's also hard to not eat too much, because they order interesting things that we want to try. After we went to an art gallery where friends of Ren's were playing. It was a contemporary jazz group led by soprano saxophonist Alec Haavik. It was a very exciting band to listen to - mostly players from the USA. The audience were about 40% westerners which was interesting because I think in 6 days, I saw less people than I saw in that one room! In the evening, John, Tim and I headed to the Bund. This is an area beside the Huangpu River, packed with restaurants and tourists, it's the place to go to see the lights and skyline of Shanghai. We took a boat ride for an hour which was a very pleasant way to spend the evening.

Day 5 - Hangzhou

Another day, another hotel.
Hangzhou is a very beautiful city, surrounded by mountains and built around the West Lake. We headed up the mountains to the famous Dragon Well Tea Spring. The tea grown in this region has been cultivated for hundreds of years, however it is not just the quality of the leaf that is famous, but the well that the spring water is drawn from. We saw some tea there that was approximately AU$200 for a half kilo! Today was so hot that it was more comfortable to just drive around and see the scenery from air-conditioned comfort. We stayed the night in a more resort-style hotel, and as we were all a bit under the weather from the heat, we had a relaxing night in. The only problem with that came when we were ready to order some room service and didn't want to bother Giselle to translate for us, so we thought we'd give it a go ourselves. John began by trying to order but got the impression that the restaurant was closed and no room service was possible. It was only 9.30pm so I thought that was a little odd. We knew something was being sent up but weren't sure what. A few minutes later, our cook-in-pot 2 minute noodles arrived. I decided to have a go myself. I pointed to the menu in the hotel booklet, pointed to the phone then pointed to the girl. I thought she had the message right that I wanted her to order what I pointed to when she picked up the phone, but I realised she was just checking the room service phone number. I kept pointing to her, the phone and the menu, but that didn't seem to help. I flicked through my trusty Lonely Planet guide. They only have a handful of phrases included there but I found "I want to buy..." so I pointed to the phrase, the menu, the phone and the girl....and voila! About half an hour later our dinner arrived. Of course, what I didn't really know was exactly what I was ordering. There were some green vegetables. Great. A wafer type of thing. That was OK. And a huge crock pot. When I lifted the lid, there was a whole duck, beak and all, simmering in soup. Confronting at first, but extremely delicious. I recommend blind ordering...but only occassionally!

Day 4 - Shanghai to Hangzhou

Today was , thankfully, a much laid back day. Giselle went to work so we were left to our own devices. For musicians, that involves sleeping in and generally not doing much at all! However, we still had serious shopping to do, this time for John. I thought it would be easy to find a made-to-measure tailor in Shanghai but apparently not. We ended up bumping into a member of staff at the hotel who was larger than the average Chinese gentleman and asked him to point us in the right direction. A short walk from the hotel we came across quite a posh tailor shop called Fit Well Fashion. Henry, the elderly tailor, speaks excellent english and knew exactly what we wanted. The fabrics are beautiful - cashmere for the suits and egyptian cotton for the shirts. When I told him we needed a suit made for our wedding, he said "OK I make him look extra handsome". After that, everything he said was about making John look slimmer! I think John got the message!! For $1000 John is getting 2 cashmere suits, 3 egyptian cotton shirts and cufflinks and ties. It's more than he expected to pay, but we didn't expect to find such luxurious fabric. Still got to find where to make a new red zoot suit!
The nearby shopping centre was nice and cool to walk around, but price wise, it was like trying to find a bargain in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney. It gave us shopping withdrawal. We headed up to the top floor to a nice cafe for lunch. They automatically gave us western menus - not just in english, but with western food...pasta, pizza, sandwiches etc. We had to ask them for the REAL menu. We ordered 2 dishes and some pork buns which we thought would do nicely, but the waiting staff kept coming over and having a little giggle at us. We realised what they were laughing about when the last dish arrived - it was huge! Mind you, we are getting used to being stared at, because often we are the only westerners around. The last dish was like a noodle pizza with the crust being crispy noodles. And yes, we managed to eat most of it!
Giselle and her husband Peter and their little boy whose nickname is Snoopy, picked us up at 4pm for the drive to Hangzhou. Peter's presence was a surprise because he had just returned home from Australia. He is sponsoring our trip, and they are fabulous and generous hosts.
Their company also did some new artwork for our CD we are producing in China. They are very talented! The artwork is most impressive.
Hangzhou is about 3 hours drive from Shanghai. It is a very modern city and appears to be a bit of a party town. The hotel we are staying in is suited to couples away for the weekend. The shower is large enough for 2 and has 3 full length pictures of a naked woman on the wall...tastefully done of course. Everything is very modern and just big enough to spend the whole weekend in bed.
We went to a very famous restaurant for dinner - Zhi Wei Guan. The food was exceptional and the tastes I think quite different to Shanghai. The main feature of Hangzhou is the West Lake which the city is built around. We went on a little pleasure boat around the lake and saw all the pagodas for moon watching and the lights of the city.
Home to bed...another exhausting day!

Day 3 - Suzhou to Shanghai

This morning we headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I'm always surprised by what different cultures eat for breakfast. Today was no exception. Scrambled eggs...no surprise there. Fried noodles...well we are in China. Pumpkin. hmmm....not sure about that one, although out of everything that was laid out, this was the most edible. The burners had been turned off and everything on offer was rather cold and greasy.

Giselle and her father picked us up and we headed to the Suzhou Museum where we saw a fascinating display of artifacts up to 5000 years old. It's quite difficult to comprehend when you come from a 200 year old country. Suzhou is known for it's magnificent and plentiful gardens, so next we went to the Garden of the Master of the Nets. This is said to be the most beautiful and the smallest...thankfully. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, and it has cultural significance which adds to the beauty factor.

Lunch was at a Korean restaurant which was tasty and less eventful than the previous day.

At the end of the day we went to pick up a couple of the garments I had ordered, but they were not quite as ordered and needed to be re-done. Giselle and her mother weren't going to let anything get past them as they closely inspected all the seams and stitchings and made the tailor give me a free shawl and purses. Note to self....always take them shopping with me.

Driving in any asian country is always quite interesting and eventful. There don't seem to be road rules....and if they are, they're a well kept secret. People seem to drive where they need to go without worrying if anyone is in their way. We were almost home when, what I felt was the inevitable, happened....we had a "bingle". Whose fault it was will be left up to the insurance companies to fight out, but no-one was admitting guilt. Thankfully it was only a little bump and no-one was injured.

Our evening had been booked up to go to the House of Jazz and Blues Bar which is owned by Dongpu Lin, our MC for the concert we will do at the Oriental Arts Centre with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band. We were expecting to pop into the club and meet Mr Lin and basically schmooze a little. We got dolled up to the nines and headed out. At the club we were met by the PR team from the Oriental Arts Centre and we discovered we were to be photographed and interviewed. No problem. Then we saw the stage was set up with instruments. When we asked who was playing tonight, they replied "You are". hmmm....didn't get THAT memo. The house band is a blues band from the US who are in residency there for 4 months. We had a quick chat and worked out what they could play that we knew and vice versa and waited for Mr Lin to arrive to announce us. We're not sure what happened to Mr Lin, but he was somewhere else tonight, so we just got up and did our thing. Hopefully the PR people from the Arts Centre were happy with what we did and it helps the ticket sales.

Day 2 - Shanghai to Suzhou

After a lovely relaxing first night at the Shanghai Hotel, we were collected in the morning by our hostess, Giselle, and her parents....whose names we were never actually told. They don't speak english and we don't speak Mandarin, so names were not really a priority. We headed to Suzhou, which, as well as being a well known tourist spot because of it's lovely gardens, it is also a mecca for brides-to-be. The drive was a good 2 hours, most of which was at a snails pace, and the other time was spent speeding at about 140km in pouring rain! Suzhou is quite old and looks very rundown, but it is not as polluted as Shanghai. They have interesting traffic lights that are worth a mention. They have a countdown on them so you know how much longer you have to wait before the light turns green or red. It's quite clever, except that no-one actually seems to pay any attention to the colour of the light and they just drive around each other. My first glimpses in the dress shops were quite frightening....lots of very frou-frou gowns that looked like they had been inspired by haute couture designs and combined with their own ideas. As well as very wearable dresses, there were also interesting creations you would only expect to see on a Paris catwalk. I started to wonder whether buying my dress here was such a good idea. After a couple of hours of looking through shop after shop in alley after alley, I had found everything I wanted to order - wedding dress, 2 bridesmaids dresses in different styles, 2 flower girl dresses, and 2 evening dresses for me. Not bad going for a couple of hours work! I could not possibly have done that without the help of a translater.

Next was lunch. When we had first arrived in Suzhou, a girl followed us for a while wanting us to eat at her restaurant. When we were ready to eat, she was still there, so we followed her and were taken to a separate room upstairs at the restaurant. Everything seemed fine. We ordered and food started to come...and it kept coming...and coming...and coming! We discovered that each dish we ordered was actually 3 dishes. Giselle's father complained and when he was not given a satisfactory outcome, he got very angry and went downstairs to have quite a heated argument with the management. Giselle went after him to keep things under control, followed by her mother. John and I sat there looking at each other, looking at the food going cold on the table and decided the only thing we could do was dig in! It was an interesting first public meal to say the least.

Back to serious business...shopping! We went back to certain stores and placed orders for the dresses then headed off to our hotel. Our hosts left us to stay with relatives. After checking into the hotel, we both were exhausted anad hungry and thirsty. What??? No mini bar??? And apparently no room service either. Or internet. So back on with the shoes and off to town we went in search of food and pinjian...one of the only words in mandarin I know....beer! The amazing thing is, despite our absolute fatigue, we still managed to shop. We found a department store with a massive shoe sale. We were in heaven! John and I bought 2 pairs of shoes each!

The bed was hard as a rock, but we were so exhausted it did it's job!

Day 1 - July 3 Sydney to Shanghai

After an early start and a flight delay of an hour, we headed to Shanghai on our uneventful Qantas flight. As we came through the arrivals gate we were looking at all the little handwritten signs in search of our names to find our pick up. At the end of the line was a petite Chinese woman holding a massive, very professional sign, with our names emblazoned on it! She is Giselle, wife of Mr Peter Lee who is sponsoring us here in China. She presented me with a magnificent bouquet of flowers - apricot roses and lillies. While we were waiting for the car, she told me that as she was getting ready to come out, she found a CD of mine she had bought some time ago and didn't realise I was the same person! We are now at the Shanghai Hotel in a rather lovely executive suite where we will stay for most of our time here. Tomorrow we are off to Hang Zhou where we will shop for my wedding dress and stay the night.

John Morrison and Jacki Cooper hit Shanghai

Jazz drummer John Morrison and singer, Jacki Cooper from Sydney, Australia, are about to embark on a trip to China. During their 17 day trip they will be performing with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band at the 2000 seat Oriental Arts Center, JZ Jazz Club in Shanghai, and also a jazz club in Beijing (name unknown at this stage). As John and Jacki are engaged and are getting married in December 2007, they will also be shopping for their wedding attire. The concert has also been billed as "Love in Shanghai" and will feature a Chinese love song sung by Jacki in mandarin. Yikes!!!
The trip, commencing on July 3rd 2007, sounds exciting at this stage! However, we all know what can happen to the best travel plans. Tune in to see how the tour is going and what kind of adventures happen.