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.