…but we’ll come to your caning...and try to sell tickets to the show.

Orientation day; 36 jet-lagged, confused, wide-eyed and under-caffeinated performers, directors, and producers gathered altogether for the first time in the 7th floor conference room at the peculiarly-placed Rivan hotel in Longgang, China, one of the nation’s leading industrial cities. No one had quite recouped from the 24+ hours of travel the day(s) before, as we all determined upon miraculously waking up at 6am…a mere five hours after our heads had hit a pillow for the first time in days. Previously, a 16-hour flight from JFK during which two meals were served…I had chicken and “chicken,” we created our own “happy hour” (free booze=happy), I watched three and a half movies, slept for half-an-hour three times, and played video trivia with cast members on our personal televisions.

Arriving in Hong Kong was hardly a destination, as we went through customs and boarded two buses that scarcely fit our luggage, then proceeded to the Hong Kong border where we made two stops; one to get off the bus, walk through a customs office, have our passport stamped and visa crossed off, and get back on the bus to drive another few hundred yards only to take ALL of our baggage off the buses to go through a whole new set of customs just to get into the People’s Republic of China. At 11pm. 80 degrees and what seemed like 95% humidity.

And so, after waking up in our plush five-star hotel rooms on the twelfth floor, overlooking a river and what we later discovered to be a marketplace with unusually-large zucchinis and 50-lb bags of rice, after discovering how to use the showerhead that resembled a light saber more so than anything that could produce water, and after fending our ways through the “asian-fusion” style breakfast (would you prefer fried eggs or rice noodle soup with warm soy milk?), we convened in that conference room, feeling a little like fighter pilots in the beginning of Top Gun (remember…very little sleep now) and thus ensued our “orientation” to the 42nd Street tour of China.

And hardly China, as we soon found out. Not only was mainland China on the menu, but South Korea as well as, oh, I don’t know…Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia. We heard all about safety, the production company, the “exciting” public relations opportunities we would have (riding bikes in local parades, judging “China Idol” type competitions, sing-a-long contests, video blogging and guest appearances), as well as what we can and cannot do while on tour. One big no-no was drugs. We are under strict law of the country in which we are traveling and therefore subject to THEIR laws. Meaning if we do drugs in Singapore, we could quite possibly be sentenced to public caning. But as our producers assured us, were we to have a caning, they would surely attend. And probably try to sell tickets to the show. Publicity IS publicity!!