The Nanjing University Orchestra

It's been a few weeks since I've posted. Apologies. I promise I haven't been slacking, I've just been extremely busy over the past two weekends, so I haven't had much of a chance to write. Last weekend in particular was quite the adventure.

As one of my classes at Nanjing University, I joined the Nanjing University Orchestra. It's been an awesome experience. The teacher/conductor is awesome, and even though nobody in the orchestra is a music major (there is no music program at the university) we do pretty well. The first week of school, we started rehearsing. At first glance, I thought the music was challenging, but doable. The second week of school was a national holiday, so we missed two weeks of rehearsal. However, during those two weeks, a message was sent out to all the orchestra members saying that in just a few short weeks, we would be going on our first tour around the province. As might be expected, our next and last rehearsal before the tour was a much needed 9AM-9PM marathon. Utterly ridiculous. I don't think I've ever been so tired after playing the violin.

The next Friday at noon, we left Nanjing on a bus. We drove about two and a half hours until we arrived at HuaiYin High School (which looked more like a college campus, to be honest -- it was huge). We took all of our stuff off the bus and immediately started rehearsing. After dinner, we immediately changed our clothes and went to perform. The next day was almost the exact same schedule: Get up, eat, get on a bus to the next location, eat, rehearse, eat, perform, eat some more, sleep. The same thing happened on Sunday, but this time we finally made it home to Nanjing. It was an exhausting weekend for sure.

The performances themselves were a good experience -- and they definitely went better than I had anticipated -- but I think the best experiences of the trip were not necessarily centered around these performances. Most importantly, this was my first time going out and doing something with a giant group of Chinese students. Up until this point, I had definitely had opportunities to interact with Chinese people in classes and such, but most of the big activities had been with my fellow American students. Last weekend, I got to ride the bus for hours on end, eat lots of big meals, perform, and explore with Chinese students, and it was super fun! I think Friday night was the most noteworthy. We got back to our hotel at about 10PM, and a few orchestra members decided to go out and explore the city. It turned out that there was only one street in the city that actually had anything going on at that hour, but we had fun buying snacks from little street stands, drinking fresh fruit juice, and eating barbecue together. It was a fun time.

On this trip, I also got to know our conductor a lot better. He's a very special person. Because all of the performances were at various high schools, he would explain a lot of background to the audience. I learned very quickly that he loves to tell stories through music. There is one piece on the program in particular that was written by a Chinese composer, which he would explain in great detail every time we played. His story would always draw the audience in, and they would always clap when we played the main theme. It was awesome. Our conductor is the kind of person that reminds me why I love classical music.

Well, there you have it, that's what I have been up to the past two weeks -- violin, violin, and more violin. Great times had by all. Here's to better performances in the future!

-小强

A few side notes: We ate some interesting food while on our tour: pig ear and giant crab dumplings. We stayed in super nice five-star hotels both nights. My picture ended up in the local newspaper of at least one of the towns we visited. Lastly, the piece that our conductor would explain in detail is called 第一交响序曲 by 关峡 -- I'm sure you can copy and paste and find it on Youtube.

The school gym slowly being filled with students excited to see our performance.