Proper touring now.
You wake up and nothing is familiar. The hotel room is not how you remembered it, and only when you, mercifully, recognise the person in the next bed, does everything seem ok again. But it doesn’t help that it’s 5.30am and you are being told to get up for breakfast.
You look out of the hotel window and it’s the Yangtze River. Ah, it’s all coming back…
Today it’s Yuhan to Zhuhai and this isn’t a straightforward journey. First, it’s a coach drive to the railway station, noticing that Wuhan is huge; but then 8 million people have to be fitted in somehow. Then the bullet train back to Guangzhou.
It’s quite clear on the train journey that excitement levels are high, though.
From Guangzhou it’s a two hour coach journey to Zhuhai. You can’t keep a good teacher down and Mrs Martin and Mr Brookman grasped the opportunity to teach: Chinese history and then rice production. The boys couldn’t believe their luck.
The long journey finally ended in Zhuhai and this city is also space age in its design.
We’ve done a few concerts now so we only really needed a bit of a sound check but this was sufficient for us to be inspired to perform to our best. The Grand Theatre is another fabulous venue: quite new and with a really zingy acoustic. Ms Laetitia Federici, our brilliant pianist, also proclaimed it the best Steinway D so far.
How was the concert?
Well, it contained a few tour premieres, notably the first (thankfully offstage) vomit. This is always a proud moment for the choir as it affords us the opportunity to demonstrate our professionalism regarding the act of vomiting. Professional vomiters have a code of conduct which we are taught to abide by: there should be the minimum of fuss, no sympathy should be sought or expected and we must never react to another boy’s adversity. If a fellow chorister passes out or runs out to throw up, it is never appropriate to register any interest or concern. He knows he will be dealt with eventually, and sometimes even compassionately, but the show must go on.
As the boy, now known as the vomiter, was a key soloist this meant quite a bit of instant rearrangement. It mostly worked but, although most pitches found a new home, not all the words were rearranged in the right order. We reassure ourselves that English is not the first language of most of the audience and that random vowel sounds, occasionally accompanied by equally randomly selected consonants are not the first language of anyone over the age of one.
We smiled, we waved, we sang, we had fun and we think our very lovely audience of all ages also enjoyed our performance. Tomorrow we have a day off singing and we think we need it!
These were our views during the short walk back to the hotel.
And this astonishing view is in our hotel. We are looking up!
Trinity Boys Choir 