China Tour Day 2

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So, onto day 2 (written by guest choir tour members Sophie and James!). We woke up to an amazing selection of breakfast goodies, including the most delicious pancakes with maple syrup and fruity fillings. After having stuffed ourselves with savoury and sweet dishes, we got ready and hopped into a taxi to continue our sightseeing experiences in Shanghai.



We decided to continue our bus tour, sitting on the open top deck with a similarly strong wind gust (but thankfully not as perilous as the bridge yesterday!). After seeing various parks and high end shopping boutiques (think, Cartier, Dior, etc.), we stopped off at the Jade Buddha Temple. There were some beautiful authentic Chinese buildings housing Buddhas with different faces and personalities, and an unofficial tour guide informed us about praying to particular Buddhas and the parts of the Buddha body which have significant meanings, e.g. Long earlobes = wise and rubbing their belly is lucky (we did this. A lot.). Of course, there was a 'gift shop' in which a very eager saleswoman convinced three of us to buy miniature Jade Buddhas (our first souvenirs!). Inside the temple grounds there was a little river with a bridge and benches - after admiring the flowers and foliage, Helena decided to buy some fish food to feed the Koi fish in the river. They went absolutely mental as soon as Helena took up her position on the feeding mat - it was like a mosh pit of fish as they fought over the food!



By this point we were getting a bit hungry, so we walked down a rather dirty street to the metro station and travelled to a restaurant in the French Concession area of Shanghai. We ordered some Jasmine tea and dumplings (which were so tasty!!), along with some other sharing plates. After meeting up with another group of choir people, we headed to an American ice cream parlour - Helena had green tea flavoured ice cream, whilst we went for a more conventional mango (though the green tea was very tasty too!). It was getting quite late so we hopped into a taxi back to the hotel in time for our coach pickup to our first rehearsal.



We were all VERY tired during the first rehearsal at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre, though David was very sympathetic having only flow into the city earlier in the morning. The venue was quite large but had a revealing acoustic which unfortunately didn't work to our advantage, and after singing for three hours we were all ready for food and bed (although the 'cake with filling milk' snacks at the venue definitely bridged the hunger gap!).



The only unfortunate part of the day was the lack of food availability for an evening meal due to how late we got back from the rehearsal. We were allowed to order room service food which took an hour and a half to be made (Helena had a lucky escape with some leftover Chinese pizza from the street food tour and got to bed earlier than us as we waited up for what turned out to be our worst, yet most expensive meal!). The day had been extremely tiring but we all felt that we had utilised our main free time in Shangai to the best of our ability. Let's see what tomorrow brings, first concert on tour!

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