Xiè-xie, Frostburg State University!!

This trip to China with FSU’s Chamber Choir has been truly transformative for everyone involved. I am very thankful I got to go on this trip and hear these students sing, especially during such an explosive moment in China’s history, when its leaders are welcoming the United States, and its cities are in a state of tremendous change and development. Our students’ voices—whether they were joking around, casually singing on a bus, quarreling before a key performance, or filling the hearts of audience members with their deep, rich harmony—threaded through everything, a compass of sound that took us all to higher ground.

For me, this higher ground is an unshakeable confidence that I can go anywhere and be a storyteller—even to the other side of the world. I traveled to a completely different country to be a part of a cultural experience that was absolutely amazing. I took a million pictures and published all of this stuff online on my own, for the sheer joy of writing about it and getting it down every night, so I could release all the inspiration I felt from being there.

And then there’s this whole other major part of what this experience was about–I can’t even begin to explain it–it’s like these faculty and students have accomplished something akin to the ping pong diplomacy of the 1970s. They journeyed to a part of the globe very different from their own and opened their hearts. They gave themselves through song many times over, made friends with so many people we met there, embraced China’s idiosyncrasies. They heard China’s own song of greatness and became inspired by it.

The last night we were in Changsha, our friends at Hunan Normal University treated us to a farewell banquet. To say goodbye, the students sang “Usuli Boat Song” one last time. As the words came together during that final moment and their voices filled the room during our last meal we would share together in China, we all knew it was the ending of something life-changing—that experience of growing together as a group, of seeing things for the first time and embracing challenges—musical, personal, cultural. Many of us were crying—I felt tears running down my face while I snapped pictures, and had to stop and wipe them away.

Thank you, Frostburg State University, for giving us this time together in China. Many thanks especially to the administration and to all the people there who worked so hard to make this trip possible—Hank Bullamore, Bill Mandicott, John Bowman, Karen Soderberg Sarnaker, Jonathan Gibralter, Hongqi Li, Yanling Fan and the many others at FSU who helped this come together. This is the type of education our students need to truly understand who they are and how they will be a part of this world.

Our deepest appreciation is also extended to all of the great people in China who made our trip so special through their friendship and assistance– Lily, Susan, Ashley, Alex, Martin, Manshu, Jennie, all the students, faculty, staff and government officials we met at Beijing Chaoyang Xinghe Primary School, Hunan Normal University and Hunan City University. We hope to see you all again very soon—whether it is here in Maryland or in China again. Zài jiàn!

The Hunan Normal University performance drew more than 400 people!

Lost—and Found—in Translation

So music might be an international form of communication, but what little things have to happen along the way to facilitate this type of experience? Before our Chamber Choir arrived in China, they spent at least 5 days during their rigorous January rehearsals mastering the pronunciation of Chinese words in “Usuli Boat Song” with the help of FSU instructor Yanling Fan. You could sense that kind of effort every time the Choir performed this timeless Chinese folk song in China, where audiences nodded in pleased recognition, sang with them and came up after their performance to compliment the students on doing so well in their delivery.

Our friends at Hunan Normal University also made an effort to help us convey our music to Chinese audiences. Our translator and the concert’s MC took the time to listen to the students as they rehearsed their program. The MC asked our guide a few questions in Chinese and took notes in the margins of a prepared progam so she could really express the songs’ meanings to the audience at the later evening performance. At Hunan City University, the Choir sang on a stage flanked by giant, electronic marquees featuring both the English and Chinese name of each selection that was performed.

There were lots of other little things that added up to help us feel at home in China and encourage our Choir to sing their hearts out – the welcoming receptions prior to our school performances, the students who came rushing up on stage as soon as the Choir’s concerts were over to talk to our singers and take pictures. We also all really appreciated the fact that Hunan Normal University students accompanied our guides on many of our sightseeing excursions and even took an afternoon to pair off with FSU students to get to know them better, exchange contact info for future correspondence and just generally learn from each other.

As for me, well, as soon as I heard I was going to China, I read tons of books and listened to Mandarin CDs at work so I could retain a few handy phrases for future conversations while I was there. John, Karen, Mark and I also came equipped with business cards featuring both English and Chinese text, which we handed out to all the great people we met.

All in all, we came to China with the intent and enthusiasm to really connect with and communicate with its people, and I’m so glad we did, because it made the trip that much more meaningful and helped our music to be heard in the most personal way possible.

In Tune/Tuned In

In Beijing, the sense of change is intoxicating—the Lite Brite nights, with their pulsing signs and people, the ever-changing skyline with its creative, hodgepodge architecture. All these things make it feel like a place where anything is possible if you can take a deep breath—despite the smog and the arid climate—and jump into whatever adventure comes your way.

By contrast, Changsha is literally—and figuratively—a breath of fresh air, but a deep one, one you draw in when you want to center yourself and figure out your next step carefully and with purpose. FSU’s Chamber Choir embraced this steadying calm during a tour of the Hunan Normal University campus. We had arrived in Changsha the night before at midnight after a marathon day of performing and travel, and now we awoke ready to stop, look and listen.

The listening came during a moment of the tour when we ran into three smiling Hunan Normal University students who greeted us in one of the school’s pretty stone buildings. It was an easy moment of friendly curiosity between our students and theirs, a welcome change to yesterday’s excitement in a somewhat unfamiliar setting. Here in Hunan, we were surrounded by lush greenery not unlike our own familiar mountainside in Western Maryland. And the air was cool and damp and easy to take in, as was the warmth of strangers. Suddenly the Choir students formed a circle around the three Hunan students and decided to offer them their own greeting. “Black is the color of my true love’s hair …” they began.

Surrounded by song, Hunan Normal’s own students settled into the joy of hearing something new and that early bloom of friendship that is possible when you feel something with someone you’ve only just met. At the end of the song, they were full of appreciation for our students’ talent.

I asked Jesse, one of our students about that exchange later, while we were walking back to the bus.

“Some of us like singing in the circle because its more personal to us that way … we feel like we’re really giving them something,” she said.

Her thoughts made me think about the physical presence of song, too—what it’s like to have sound coming at you from all angles, embraced by voices.

Later that day, we had a delicious lunch at the University with several of their key administrators and faculty. It was a lot of fun talking to them and realizing that our schools’ similarities are quite strong—Hunan Normal is also working on various sustainability initiatives and environmental research, and began as a teacher’s institution. That, along with a chance to sample Changsha’s spicy cuisine full of new flavors, left us all feeling rejuvenated and connected to one another and to all the possibilities that might be simmering in the months ahead between our two institutions.

Another Dragon Lady? : )

Ashley, our guide, insisted I put down the camera and stop working for a second so I could document my time at the Summer Palace. Here is the pic he took of me. Thanks, Ashley.

A lovely singer at the Primary School performance

Primary students gave us construction paper collages

A group pic at the Beijing Chaoyang Xinghe Primary School

Dragon Ladies and a Time of Daffodils

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing our talented students sing one of my favorite songs in their programming, “In Time of Daffodils,” a poem by e.e. cummings that was composed into a lovely work for vocalists, many times on this trip. During rehearsals, during impromptu performances throughout China, sometimes on the bus while we’re traveling to our next destination. I never tire of listening to the students soar beyond their years for a second, letting their lives rest in the maturity and wisdom of the poem through song.

During our last day in Beijing, “In Time of Daffodils” really took on a whole new meaning for anyone who heard it, I think. We had already spent the morning exploring one of Beijing’s most well-known places, the Summer Palace, which was originally built by Empress Dowager Cixi, or the “Dragon Lady,” a ruthless and powerful woman in China’s history. She began her rise to power as a young concubine who ruled China through a series of emperors. She was known as the Dragon Lady because it is said that she killed her own son so that her nephew could be emperor (according to our guide). But it’s not just her name (or her story) that make the Summer Palace a place of wonder, something that seems forgotten by time, or a setting for a fairytale. Swooping, stone roofs, a barge made of marble, kaleidoscope colors and storytelling paintings that line the Long Corridor give the whole area a feeling of enchantment. The quiet, misty lake is very much taken from childhood stories and legends.

Tours of foreigners (including many Westerners) fill the Summer Palace, from every country you can think of. Many of them trailed behind us as we made our way past the mythical qilin statue (which, according to Lonely Planet, is “a hybrid animal that appeared on earth only at times of harmony”). I kept thinking about how incredible it is that so many people from outside of China are now rushing in to appreciate its beauty, its culture, its light-speed economy that has allowed it to transform its cities in just the past few decades. It all seems otherworldly at times, like something in a novel, it is so vivid and intense.

My thoughts on all things magical and moving stayed with me when we later visited Beijing Chaoyang Xinghe Primary School so that the Chamber Choir could sing to children. Our time there began with us taking a tour around the school to see its grounds. It’s a beautiful facility, with state-of-the-art classrooms and a large, clean athletic field. When we went into one classroom, the children rushed up to us with beaming faces and cries of joy and excitement, their hands full of construction paper collages they had made for us. They all cried out, “Hello! Hello!” over and over again. It made me smile because it echoed our own students calling “Ni hao!” to people they see in China. After our tour, we took a group picture and then settled in the auditorium for the performance, which was MCed in English and in Chinese by the school’s students. The afternoon went really well. We enjoyed dancing and singing by the Primary School’s kids and faculty (our students joined one teacher for an aerobic dance performance) and then our Choir performed. The school’s teachers and principal joined our singers on stage for “Usuli Boat Song,” a proud moment of sharing for our people and theirs.

When the Choir got to the time in the program for “In Time of Daffodils” beaming children suddenly filed on stage with roses in their hand for each singer. It was such a sweet and simple gesture that meant so much. I thought of several lines from “Daffodils” that seem reflective not only of FSU’s experiences here but of what’s happening right now between China and the rest of the world:

in time of daffodils (who
know the goal of living is
to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

then later it says

In time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes


Our time in China is a time for believing, of enjoying every moment for what it is—something that we master in childhood and sometimes struggle to hold onto later in life. Our relationship with China, as cultural ambassadors, representatives of our country, and perhaps most importantly, human beings who all share this earth, is about forgetting if and remembering yes, we can do this. We can be a world of shared knowledge, love and learning. Our experience here makes me know this possible.

Peking duck in Beijing!

The pic that reminds me of Edward Hopper painting I love

There's an elephant in the room ...

Spontaneous singing at Ming Tombs

The audience at the Great Wall

All the world's a stage ...

Stairway to Heaven and Stone Menagerie

I think all of us were pretty charged up today because it was time for the Ultimate China Experience—climbing the Great Wall. What better place to listen to voices carried away by song (and by the wind) than at of one of the world’s greatest wonders?

The Chamber Choir gathered at the foot of the Wall to sing several songs, including the “Usuli Boat Song,” which was particularly poignant in this place where thousands of workers spent years carving a cut-stone path into the mountains. There was a smaller crowd today, but as one student pointed out, it was an audience from around the world … with many Indians, Japanese and Europeans. Many visitors were anxious to begin the ascent, which entailed taking deep lunging steps onto steeply uneven stairs. But what a way to climb into the sky …

Some funny things I saw: this businessman (Japanese?) in an Armani suit climbing the Wall. A woman in knee-high, four-inch heel red crocodile boots and a belt to match, cavorting around at the bottom of the Wall, where you could buy drinks and sit. And the craziest of all—this guy who is climbing down the stairs to the bottom and stopped halfway down to … light a cigarette? Kind of crazy, all of it, but since I’m a people watcher, I loved how bizarre it all was.

Then it was off to the Ming Tombs—peace and quiet and freedom from the stampede of tourists. Lots of beautiful old trees. The Chamber Choir—on their own and without any direction from Karen—at one point gathered inside a domed chamber at the top of one of the buildings and began to sing. It was neat to see how they were starting to sing on their own, because they wanted to. They also sang frequently throughout the day during our ride between destinations, making Karen tear up for a second. “They pick the songs that are significant to them. It touches me, deeply. It’s different than when it’s a class."

One of my favorite moments of the day was the walk along the Sacred Way. The whole experience made me want to study Asian art history. There’s this long path stretching out before you, flanked by giant, intricately carved stone emperors, warriors and animals—horses, elephants, camels—and weeping willows. It’s a place of peace. You feel like it will go on forever and all you want to do is walk and think.

We capped the day off with a brief stop at a tea place where we sampled different teas and then a great Peking duck feast that was by far the best culinary moment of the trip. My table suddenly started conducting with chopsticks. Perhaps revved up from such a visual day, I took a picture that I recognized later as an echo of an Edward Hopper painting I love called “New York Movie.”

This was a visually intense part of the trip. Loved it and loved watching and listening to our students as they start to move forward on their own and perform just because they feel inspired, not because it’s on the itinerary. They are a solid group with a lot of talent.

Susan kept us smiling

This guy loved the Temple of Heaven park performance and talked to me afterwards

More bystanders at the Temple of Heaven park performance

Singing in the park at Temple of Heaven

another park pic

park performance

The Temple of Heaven performance took the students to new heights!

Charlene is over the moon about her China debut!