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.