Great Food, Better People

By- Chris Billquist

It is now the morning of day seven and we are on our way to Luoyang, a three-hour bus ride from Zhengzhou. The differences between Beijing and Zhengzhou are very prominent, at least for us tourists. The people in Beijing seemed to, more than in any other city I’ve visited, want us to buy everything we saw. We visited the legendary jade factory for near about three hours and then proceeded to play forty-five minutes of music on the Great Wall and use our remaining hour to climb it. The next day we had lunch on the second floor of The Cloissone Factory and were then thoroughly encouraged to visit the gift shop on the first floor. The day we visited the pearl factory I finally got suckered in to buying a nice pearl bracelet for my dear sister. I guess the moral of the story is even those of us who are set against being persuaded to overspend will finally be suckered by “ancient relics” and “Chinese culture.”

When we arrived in Zhengzhou the trip really began to take off for me. We were warmly greeted at the train station by Derek, a very knowledgeable and humorous man. He told us that being a tour guide was a very respectable job in China and required a lot of schooling in order to understand the thousands of years of Chinese history plus be fluent in English. In Zhengzhou we played our first concert for a real audience which was one of the most exhilarating feelings I’ve ever felt. While Workshop was playing Matchell (Michelle Cox) and I talk about the fact that one of the highest dignitaries in the Henan Province was watching our concert and the fact that we were being treated so warmly here. I’m pretty sure I shook hands with some very important people after that concert and I can’t even begin to explain how privileged I felt.

Last night we played a concert at Kaifeng University and afterwards the students came up to us with prepared conversation starters and the menu for the meal we were about to eat translated into English by the students themselves. I spent the meal with some first year English students who want to teach English after they graduate. They kept commenting on how bad their English was but I understood them perfectly! We played basketball with the students and just spent a good two hours just talking. This was what I had been waiting for the entire trip!
To sum up China: great people, cheap massages, and Jackie Chan in his element (action movies actually in Chinese). Who could ask for a better way to spend ten days?!