China Tour Blog #9: Free Day – Finally!
After the successful Beijing concert and the opening night of the China-ASEAN Music Week in Nanning, the orchestra finally got a much deserved day off!
Some slept, some partied. On our one day off’ some of us participated in a three hour round table discussion followed by an extensive newspaper interview (me!). A small group took a day trip to the Vietnam border, a five hour bus ride! Sandy Baron, violinist, said it was really worth the trip. There is a famous waterfall there, very beautiful and quite spectacular. Behind the waterfall are row upon row of the recognizable carse mountains of ancient Chinese scroll fame. These mountains are some of the most scenic in China. The site is one of the major tourist destinations. These musicians overnighted it in a small local hotel and beetled back the next day in time for the dress rehearsal for our very own Esprit concert in the concert hall of the Guangxi Arts Institute!
I spent some time wandering into some Chinese instrument stores. What a wealth of beautiful looking instruments!
On our day off, our PA’s led us to the night market. Now that was extensive, exotic, hot, and noisy, but was it fun! First of all, the whole area was filled with small stalls offering the most exotic of foods. Not only did you have displays of the most unusual and beautiful looking fruit and vegetables, you also had rows of unusual huge shellfish and giant crustaceans.
There were deep fried whole squid hanging from wires for your dining pleasure. Stephen Sitarski sent me his photo of the ‘octopus station’! The uncooked beast was hanging there in mid-air! There were live frogs and worm-like creatures. You could even find crocodile meat!
The whole area was seething with hungry humanity. It was particularly hot because every other stall featured an open fire charcoal grill upon which the proprietor would throw on a stick of grilled meat, chicken, oversized oyster, or scallop on the half shell, or some other flesh of your choosing, slather it with basting sauce and hand it over to you!
We were all actually amazed at the things we saw at this market! It was like none other that I have ever seen - and it covered a lot of territory. It was big.
We chose a restaurant and eventually, all the Esprit members who came to the night market ended up there. The restaurant was a casual extension of its charcoal grill. Nothing fancy. Most of our group immediately ordered a beer. Look what appeared - not a lot of individual bottles, but a large glass vessel of beer.
It was great fun as Alex acted as ‘spigot master’. We ordered some of the specialty dishes of the house including lamb right off the grill. It was succulent and it tasted completely different from the lamb on the Danforth. It had been basted with a Chinese grilling sauce and cut up into bit sized pieces. Then you were to dip it into some dried herbs, which is quite unusual for Chinese cuisine. One herb was like caraway seeds (most unusual) and the other some kind of dried powdered hot peppers (piquant!).
We also ordered the regional specialty - the whole fish casserole dish (complete with continual flame underneath) mounded with dried hot peppers and onions and spices. And then there were the wonderful grilled vegetables - another southern regional specialty. In Cantonese we call this vegetable “Gow Choy” - something like large chives. Grilled with a basting sauce, it was a real treat!
Completely happy, completely satisfied, we wandered out into the night.
The orchestra was relaxed and ready for our final concert in Esprit’s first tour of China. In fact, they were eager to ‘show their stuff’.
Fun, Food, and Music – what better combination!
– Alexina Louie