Mainland

Well, having been all over Taiwan again since my recovery, enjoying a visit to a small island called 'Xiao Liu Qiu' (sorry for the pinyin) and also to 橋頭 where I intend to return to race their karts, the time came to go to Mainland China. This was something I'd been nervous about for a while, not because it was unknown, actually I was there myself in March, but one person with a small suitcase is quite different from 3 people with instruments!!

We had to land in HK, get an express visa immediately, the next afternoon rush to Guangzhou, be in the city centre for an evening meeting, then head out to a university campus in the countryside area. The next morning we had to rush to Shenzhen, stay the night there and the next day take a day trip to HK to attend another meeting (going back to Shenzhen in the evening). This was all for government meetings in each place, so it felt quite annoying to be carrying all the band's equipment around with us. Definitely one of the funny moments was walking into the Guangzhou meeting, full of suits all listening to a lecture about the economy of the Guangdong province, when suddenly the doors open and a band comes crashing in (quite late) with all their gear. It was quite an unlikely scene.

Well, we did have 2 concerts at the end of the trip, both in Shenzhen, largely thanks to our friend Liu Yi, so that seemed to make the trip worth doing I think. Both gigs went well, especially the first one and we were also invited onto one of the biggest radio stations for an interview (going out to the city of over 10 million people so that makes it bigger than London).

So China was definitely a high pressure trip in some ways, but it finished much better than it started and no doubt we'll be heading back there at some point. Having said that, coming back was also a very good feeling :).