The Flood in Beijing

On the second day of our trip in Beijing, me and my dad wanted to go out for a walk to the Forbidden City.
First, we tried to catch a taxi cab. All drivers pretended they did not even see us. No-one stopped to drive us. Then we went to the subway station. We bought a [...]

Spectacle d’acrobaties

Hier, le 15 juillet 2008, le groupe a été profondément privilégié de pouvoir assister à un fantastique spectacle d’acrobaties chinoises. Non seulement avons-nous été témoins des acrobaties incroyables, mais nous avons profité des numéros qui étaient extrêmement visuellement artistiques. Il y avait des pirouettes, des culbutes et des roulades, toutes presque parfaitement coordonnées ainsi que [...]

Ce qui m’a frappée durant ce voyage…

Au retour, quel accueuil chaleureux! Heureusement que je n’ai pas décidé de rester en Chine, j’aurais manqué ça! Ce fut deux semaines bien remplies, très bien même, avec son lot de petites aventures qui nous font encore sourire.
Ce qui m’a frappée durant ce voyage…
Déjà vu une fleur de lotus? Les couleurs et les feuilles sont [...]

East meets West at the Shanghai Children’s Palace

The China Welfare Institute Children’s Palace (CP) is a beautiful marble and glass structure built in the 1950s. On July 13th , we celebrated ABT’s 12th birthday at lunchtime, in a restaurant located across the street from the CP. Then we proceeded to the large orchestra classroom on the CP 10th floor, for our musical [...]

Buddhist temple and the silk factory

Today was another wonderful day in China. Because of our concert this afternoon, our morning was filled with two visits. The first one was at a famous Buddhist temple, known for its Jade Buddha statue. At first, we saw similar statues that we had seen in the Lama temple in Beijing. However, there is no [...]

Huangshan (Yellow Mountain)

Our adventures in Huangshan, in English Yellow Mountain, began and consisted mainly of our scaling and exploring the mountain of the same name, Yellow Mountain. In this small and rural Chinese town of 1.5 million, Yellow Mountain is the main tourist attraction, being as it is one of the most [...]

Medical Excursions of The Occidental Tourist.

My 2006 edition of Frommer’s China provides a small section of advice to the unfortunate traveler who needs to seek medical help, but little did we expect that we would be turning to that page on the very first day of our China tour!
On the last weekend before leaving Canada, we heard that SS injured [...]

A coach’s perspective

…so here we are in China, and three concerts in, the kids are doing fabulously! Most excitingly, our musical delivery is still improving…it would be nice to have another 2–8 weeks of tour over here…perhaps visiting Manulifee-Sinochem’s other 30 or so branches around China, particularly Chengdu, Xian, and Kuming. The students are definitely becoming more [...]

The View from Huangshan

Very different from Beijing with its striking highrises, manicured gardens, and bumper-to-bumper traffic, Huangshan is a city of only 1.5 million with low rise buildings, and scooters and bicycles (no helmets) as the predominant mode of transportation. Our hotel was adequate, but just barely. The first morning we traveled through rural countryside [...]

Huangshan Ink Factory

While in Huangshan we visited the only and remaining ink factory in China where the ink is made completely by hand. We were able to see each step of the process and view some beautiful calligraphy nnd artwork. The black ink used for calligraphy is made using pine branches. The [...]