I’m back in the USA again after a 17-day tour including Beijing, Harbin, Shanghai, Wuxi, Guiyang, Guangzhou, and Zhuhai, which is a bit too much to process at the moment. But here’s a top ten in no order:

1 – The enormity of Zhonghua (that means “China” in Mandarin) and my minute-by-minute perspective shifts.

2 – Guangzhou, as in I-Heart-Guangzhou, where I played a proper bar gig and had big fun at the Ping Pong Art Space.

3 – Checking out the Dragon Boat Races in the Panyu district – an adequate fix, being so far removed from the stock car action back home – and being interviewed about it on TV.

4 – The bizarre mixture of keystone kop driving and complete lack of road rage.

5 – The fabulous Free Sound Record shop in Beijing – the oasis for Chinese independent music – where I once again found everything I wanted and got hooked up with everything I hadn’t known I wanted.

6 – Bad luck highlight: leaving my camera at the very tail end of my tour in a Beijing taxi.

7 – All the kids from northern Harbin all the way down to southern Zhuhai, who turned up and tuned in and made the entire experience such a pleasure.

8 – All the American and Chinese foreign service officers who knew how to take such good care of a lowly folk singer.

9 – Squid, jellyfish, eel, sea cucumber, preserved goose eggs, and turtle blood noodles, to name just a few.

10 – “Hǎo yī duǒ měi lì de mò li huā…”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.