We had an event last saturday in central China in a city called Xi’an. Best known for its famous Terracotta Warriors.
It ended up being a pretty long day….. We flew out early on a 7.30am flight. Had this weird VIP service when we arrived which was pretty funny. A guy had my name card at an intersection on the jetway. We thought he was going to take us to the bus to go to the hotel, but instead he lead us into a room with couches, snacks and a TV. Not bad as we didn’t need to go through with the crowds looking for the bus etc. They said the VIP service was cheap in Xi’an, so why not!
Looking out the window, at the construction happening. The pollution and the traffic, I’m pretty happy to be living in Shanghai. It doesn’t suffer the same levels of pollution as other cities in China. Probably because it’s close to the ocean, and is more of a financial center….Anyway...
There are apartments being constructed right near this thing. Imagine waking up every morning and looking out at that!
After arriving at the hotel we had lunch nearby. The food here is quite different. I’d say more European, the noodles are like pasta, and this was something like a minestrone soup: Bigger portions too.
The event was for a Shanghai based company. And dealing with these guys was really smooth. I asked them to organize an upright bass and a whole bunch of other stuff, and it was all done. Super easy, I normally hate dealing with all of that kinda stuff, but it all went to plan.
They’re apparently building the tallest building in Xi’an, and somehow the gypsy jazz band was a matching style for the project……
Well…. It’s all the same to me. It’s a commercial gig after all. This one was pretty cool, cause we got to play some music. Often it’s just a couple of songs and waiting around the whole day. This one at least we had a couple of 40 minute sets.
We finished pretty early, around 6pm. Our keyboard player ended up going back to SH since he had a gig the next day. The rest of us had a rest, and went out to a new Xi’an jazz club. I had heard of this place from a few musicians, and our guitarist had a contact with the boss there.
Pretty cool place I thought. It’s small but is set up properly and had some pretty good local jazz musicians too.
They were also very friendly giving us drinks, and even let us play a few songs too!
It was pretty hard getting up that morning…. I felt sorry on the flight home there was an interesting conversation happening about the future, passive income or whatnot. I couldn’t control it, just fell asleep.
Apparently the bar we played at later that evening were impressed and there could be some future gigs next year.