Bach Performance!

You know you're at Conservatory when...

at the end of the day, you count on your fingers all of the hours you have played since that morning and nearly run out of fingers. I played for ten hours yesterday, can I just say that that is absolutely insane. The craziest part is that I don't feel sore, my hands are fine, my shoulders are fine, my back is fine...so I guess I'll just try it again today. In the meantime...I want to share a few things I've learned about China:

1. No one wears white here because if you wash a white article of clothing in any water, it comes out a lovely slightly off white/yellowish color. 

2. The Chinese have incredibly high metabolism. They are all stick skinny but eat only fried food and food drenched in either sugar or oil.

3. Conservatory students think about one thing and one thing only...practicing. (I have definitely adopted this habit)

4. Elevators are like clown cars, you never know how many people you will squish into one elevator. (I have taken to just taking the stairs down from the 14th floor at the busy time in the afternoon...otherwise you wait almost ten minutes for the elevator)

5. The Chinese will wait for the laziest mode of transportation, i.e. the elevator or in the metro station there will be a giant crowd in front of the escalator while there are only two people on the stairs.

6. "For all the tea in China" is kind of a lie. Since I've been here, I've only had three cups of tea. I think I've drank more coffee in the last two months than at any other time in my life.

7. Don't cross the street on a red, you will get hit. For that matter, don't cross it on a green either there will be an angry taxi driver or a bus turning and they will not stop.

8. When buying illegal DVDs always ask if they are in English. We bought Wanted and it was actually dubbed in Russian...go figure.

9. I love jiaozi (dumplings in English).

10. No matter how much cool/interesting stuff there is in China, home will always be better, I think. But for now, this is definitely where I'm supposed to be!

The tallest building in Shanghai...and other things.

Well I'm still working on trying to get the video of my performance off of my camera and onto my computer, but so far I haven't had much luck. In general, I felt that my performance could have been better, but the moment I walked on stage I got into a crazy panic mode and could barely function. I think my performance ended up being about 95% muscle memory and 5% me. It was like I was in the backseat of the car with an invisible person in the driver's seat that I could only command once in a while. But I made it through my first performance without error (it just wasn't very musical) and He Xuan (my teacher) said that I did a good job. Now we are going to start working on technique as there is a technical examination in two months! AH!

On Thursday, they cancelled class and took us on a field trip to see some of the major sites around Shanghai. We got to see the tallest building, 100 stories, the Shanghai World Financial Center, then we took a little walk along the Huangpu River (the river that divides the East and West districts of Shanghai) and then I went to orchestra rehearsal while everyone else went to the Shanghai Museum...I was very jealous. But here are some really cool pictures of Shanghai!

SWFC with the Jin Mao building in the reflection.

Then we were in the future.

On the 97th floor with Joanna and Rachel.

View from the top.

The Chinese tourists also took pictures of this...they thought it was hilarious.

Me and the Oriental Pearl Tower.

I'm sorry I disappeared for a while...

It's like things have finally all fallen into place and school has actually started. In the last two weeks, I have been to roughly twenty hours of rehearsal, twenty some odd hours of class, and practiced in the range of 50 to 60 hours. Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of time to sit here and do updates, much less sleep. 

My schedule is a madhouse for the rest of the semester, I have three hours of Chinese every morning followed by an insane rehearsal schedule that changes from day to day. Monday and Thursday houses the insanity that is orchestra (it's bizarre, I thought it would be better than SCO or UCO, but it has to be one of the most disorganized orchestras I've ever been involved in. They don't let you take the music home to practice, so it's basically sight reading and we haven't even made it through all of the repertoire...we're performing in just over two weeks). Tuesday I have my violin lesson followed by a rehearsal with my piano trio. Wednesday I go from lunch to a string quartet rehearsal and then directly to my piano trio coaching. And Friday is another coaching for the string quartet. Amongst all of these things, I must find time to practice on my own. My teacher has very high expectations. Which is good, but also very stressful...I don't think I have ever been this stressed to go to a lesson before. 

Over the weekend, I went to the International Instrument Show at the Expo Center in Pudong. This basically took up two days of my life and was tiring more than anything else. They definitely had some cool stuff though!

This was a very pretty piano being played by a very pretty pianist in a matching dress.

Corinna decided to play the tiny piano! The guys in the stall thought it was hilarious and got out all sorts of phones and cameras to take pictures. When she got up, they practically forced me to sit down so they could take more pictures of the silly foreigners playing the children's piano.

Crazy colored violins!

Exciting Chinese instruments...these were supposedly made out of jade...but who really knows?

And an awesome tye-dyed piano to round up the show!

And now, although I hate to cut this so short, I really do need to go practice. I am giving my first performance as a conservatory student tomorrow evening. I am playing the Adagio and Fuga of the Bach Sonata No. 1 in G minor...it will be my first performance of the Fuga ever. I guess I have to start somewhere though, and why not start with the most difficult and work backwards?

China has a lot of people...

It's not like I didn't know that China was a populous country, but let me tell you that experiencing it's enormity in full swing is another story entirely. Today, Joanna and I decided that because the weather was nice, it would be a good day to check out Old Town and Yuyuan Garden (which was supposedly free but was actually 40 RMB to get into). So around 3:00 we get on the Metro, transfer to Line 2 at People's Square and it was there that we knew this was going to be one crazy adventure. We were practically lifted off of our feet onto the escalator and more or less shoved into the car of the subway. We only had to be super squished for one stop, so that was okay. 

It didn't take us too long to figure out where we were going, though we looked like total tourists. It's weird, I no longer feel like a tourist around the school, because the people in the shops and restaurants recognize us now, and they at least understand what we're trying to say. But once we get outside of our district, it's like another world. We basically ended up following the crowd and randomly found our way to exactly where we wanted to go. It was absolutely insane. Because this is a holiday week, there are a lot of tourists in Shanghai. The foreigners tend to leave Shanghai and all of the Chinese come in. There was barely any room to breathe and what air there was, you didn't really want to breathe in. Once we finally made it to the garden and the Bridge of Nine Turnings, and realized that to get into the garden you had to pay and saw that people were practically at a standstill on the bridge, we decided to turn right back around.

By this time, we were starving, but decided that we should just head towards home and grab something there. We finally make it to the entrance to Line 2 and find that it is in fact closed for the night. Great! We are now in Nanjing Road, one of the busiest possible streets to be on. It is packed from one side to the other, barely enough room to push through with elbows out on both sides. We end up walking for maybe twenty minutes before deciding that we either need food or to sit somewhere. Lo and behold, a McDonald's appears, like a sign from God, and we descend into a sort of Westernized heaven. It smelled delicious, we both got chicken nuggets and for roughly five minutes, pretended that we were at home and not trying to get to People's Square during one of the busiest times of the day during a holiday. After this fortification, we found a shortcut and in no time made it to People's Square Metro Station and shortly thereafter found ourselves at home. 

As beautiful as it was, I don't think I will be traveling back there any time soon.

We made it to Old Town!

Entrance to the bazaar.

Fun colorful hanging things.

Ton-o-People.

It's me!

Me and Joanna

Pretty fish in the lake.

Really cool buildings.

This is where we got lost.

Nanjing Road at night.