8:30 am - sound check!

"Seriously? Is this really happening? You've got to be kidding me!"

You know that scene in "Shawshank Redemption" when Tim Robbins locks himself in the warden’s office and starts playing Beethoven over the football field size speakers as everyone outside in the yard slowly stops and looks to the sky as wonder and amazement gently drifts over the crowd, meanwhile guards and officers are banging at the door, about the break in and stop such intolerable subordination from continuing any longer??!! Yeah, this morning was just like that, except instead of Tim Robbins it was some crazy Chinese man, and it wasn’t Beethoven’s 9th but the entire album of the original Broadway Recording of "42nd Street" blaring over every foreseeable speaker in the gigantic gated Olympic stadium complex our hotel is a part of at 8:30 in the morning, and instead of looking up at the sky, sixty tired and possibly hung-over company members tossed and turned in bed, wondering what asshole had thought this was a good idea.

42nd Street was EVERYWHERE! It was indeed my worst nightmare! And I guarantee, had we known what door to break down, there would have been a parallel scene of confused, pajama-clad dancers, banging and screaming at the warden’s office with our eyes still puffy and hotel slippers still on, pleading with every last inch of our consciousness to turn off that damn racket! Is this supposed to be welcoming hospitality?
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Our 8.5 hour bus ride yesterday to our new city, Hefei, turned out to be just as expected: long. It was relatively painless, except for the one rest stop that pretty much epitomized our attitude towards China at the moment; we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere when we made our regular pee stop at a location that looked more likely to appear in a horror movie than a trucker magazine. The truck full of pigs was the first tip off and the second should have been that we were the only other vehicle in sight. The bathrooms hardly deserved the title, as it was literally a long trough with three-foot high dividers every three feet, providing no privacy and forcing one to squat over the sickeningly unclean floor. The entire room smelled of month-old crap that had been cleaned up with worse smelling crap. The girls couldn’t bare it and so trekked over and popped squats in the nearby woods, passing rolls of toilet paper and holding on to trees to keep their balance. Oh china.

One we arrived in the middle of nowhere, formally known as Hefei, the first order of business was dinner, so a small group of us took taxis over to an Indian restaurant we’d found on our little tour packets thanks to the translator volunteers in the lobby. The food was amazing, as usual (it was a chain…the last city we were in had the same restaurant), and on our way out, a pleasant, intoxicated man stopped us: “I do not speak much English well, but it my mother’s birthday, and you will come…<>…yes?” We obliged and headed into their quiet private dining room as the son presented us white folks like we were a present for his mother. We put on our “we’re not laughing…really…we’re just very happy” smiles and awkwardly gathered around the table to take a picture, just as the son started clap-conducting all of us in a boisterous round of “Happy Birthday.” As he jumped into the second chorus and the four of us squeezed each other’s hands even tighter, trying our hardest not to laugh as we neared the clumsy “Happy Birthday to…moommmmmyyyyyy…..” section, I just about peed myself.

We declined the invitation to join them for cake on the fifth floor and went our merry way. Happy Birthday mom, I hope you have a great one!!!