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.