Musical Trip to Growing China
Opens Both Eyes and Ears
By Marvin Rogers

At long last the plane touched down and we were finally in China! Unbelievable. We were in China—exotic, extreme, extraordinary China.

I was there with a concert band from Valparaiso University from Valparaiso, Ind.—a group I had just met a week previously for intense rehearsals.

The band, called Windiana, was a group of 45 musicians, and I served as a flute and piccolo player. We were invited guests of the government of China for a cultural exchange for two weeks in some of the largest cities and the most prestigious venues in China.

China is now encouraging free enterprise and private ownership and is increasing its contact with the West. We were welcomed as friends bringing the message of "Music Builds Bridges Through Friendship."

As guests of the government, we had every detail arranged for us including four-star hotels and meals in fine restaurants. We enjoyed a busy schedule of tourist activities, including climbing the Great Wall and visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing. We hiked in the mountains near Qingdao, and through a cave with incredible formations near Guilin. Perhaps the most impressive day was spent taking a boat ride down the Li River near Yangshuo which had the iconic limestone karst mountain formations seen in many Chinese paintings.

Lots of Rehearsing

We came to learn about China and enjoy what it had to offer but we came as musician ambassadors and spent much of our time rehearsing and performing seven concerts in some of the finest concert halls in the world. Especially impressive was the Grand Opera House in Ningbo with seating for 2500, beautiful architecture and impressive lighting, and superior acoustics.

In Qingdao, Windiana performed in the opening of the Cultural Festival that precedes the 2008 Olympics— Qingdao will be the site for the sailing competition. We were one of several performing groups before an audience of 15,000 in a football stadium and to a world-wide television audience estimated in the millions.

Equally impressive was a concert we gave in a school gymnasium in Xinchang for 800 appreciative students who seemed to enjoy every moment.

Our music represented an eclectic mix of fiddle tunes, marches, classical short pieces, and even some humorous music by one of the composers in the band written for "boomwhackers" (plastic tubes of varying lengths that emit a pitched sound when they strike a railing or back of a chair).

We also shared the stage with a quartet of traditional Chinese musicians playing the Erhu (a double stringed cello-like instrument), the pipa (similar to the lute), the dizi (transverse bamboo flute), and the guoquin (resembling a large zither). There were special pieces in which our concert band and the Chinese quartet would play American or Chinese music together.

In all the concerts it was truly an overwhelming emotional experience to look out at the sea of smiling faces. That view brought home the feeling that a new China is emerging, a China of hope and promise and of change, eager to hear western music and a musical blend of both cultures.

The growth of the country was apparent everywhere. New and futuristic architecture, designed by internationally known architects, is filling the skyline of every city. Buildings in Beijing are nicknamed, and look like, a Dragon, A Bird’s Nest, a Water Cube, and Leaning Towers. Well-designed multi-lane highways are in place. It’s not uncommon to see a mix of bicycles, hand-drawn carts, motor-bikes, buses, trucks, and regular cars all sharing the same road space.

Possibly the most fascinating for us was to see the old and exotic China still exists. It was humbling to realize that China has existed as a culture longer than anywhere else on earth, dating back to the second century B.C. You sense the magnitude of history, seeing the traditional costumes and their writing, listening to their language, and feeling the beauty of their poetry and song.

To our ears it was so different and strange, but this is exactly the reason an exchange like ours is so important. If we make ourselves open and receptive we can truly "build bridges," whether through music or sports or through any other means of exchange.

We felt that through this exchange we received from the Chinese at least as much as we gave through our music.

And the exchanges will continue. Windiana has already been invited back for the summer of 2009.

(Marvin Rogers and his wife Carol, who accompanied him on this trip, are longtime residents of Brookfield and have offered many contributions to the musical life of Central Vermont.)