Well, after a night we wouldn't forget, or at least had thought so through most of it at the time, we got up groggy, a little bit drunk still, and way later than the bus to Qinghai Lake was supposed to have left Our Mississippi Bluesman and I sat down to two bowls of granola, which we ordered because we figured they'd probably come with spoons. Sure enough they did, and right after we were done, I treated everybody at the hostel with a vigorous bout of solo spoon music, which I played right on out the door, and that's how I got some new spoons to play at tonight's concert.
The poets were all staying at a resort by the Yellow River about two hours outside of Qinghai lake, somewhere off in Qinghai province. We were so late getting out the door it turned out, we had not only missed the bus to Qinghai Lake, but if we were to hire a car to get to Qinghai Lake, everybody else would probably have left already to get to the resort, so we went straight there.
Now, that meant we had about two hours to practice our music at the resort. I wish I could show you some pictures right here of this resort, because it was something else. Why there was a big marble lobby with big Chinese vases and the like in the middle of a huge campus, but the sign only had three stars on it.
Here in China, rating hotels and resorts works very much like it does in the U.S., except in China, I suppose they're a little more lenient about the presence of fiberglass squirrel and panda sculptures deteriorating in the glass. This place hadn't had business in years. The swimming pool was not only drained, but slowly turning into a terrarium, despite neatly swept decks. The lawns were lush and freshly mowed, but the exercise course was rusty and poorly painted. The greenhouse was full of weeds. Also nobody was there but us and five staff members. Three of them were sitting out back eating sunflower seeds out of an actual sunflower, watching kung fu movies. They gave me a huge sunflower and invited me to watch kung fu movies with them. It was a strange place to have a poetry conference, and something of a change from the luxurious five star Qinghai Hotel we'd performed in the day before. I wish I could have shown you some pictures, but despite my dedication to charging my camera battery the previous night, the charger had somehow not made it all the way into the wall.
Yet, the river was beautiful Here are our Mississippi Bluesman and our Poet setting up for an interview after a brief dispute with our Wiz Kid Videographer who only wanted to interview the Bluesman in this beautiful spot and had to be reminded whose project this was.
Where were we to perform? We were to perform at Guide, the site of the worlds largest prayer wheel! The site actually holds two simultaneous world records: the largest prayer wheel in the world, and the tackiest thing in the world!
Here it is folks, over 200 tons of spray painted metal, about three stories tall on top of a large concrete plinth before a glorious reflecting pool festooned with vibrantly colored plastic flowers. Once the sun went down, the spotlights went up into the sky and the LAZER LIGHTSHOW LIGHTS turned on!!! This prayer wheel has nothing to do with the monks, it is sponsored by a real estate firm.
But what a stage for us to play on! The stage was IN THE REFLECTING POOL! Mississippi Bluesman, Alex Wand performing with Wang Ping, the poet. Our Mississippi Bluesman had to concentrate very hard to impress the crowd and could only allow our Poet, the leader of the project a couple minutes on stage at a time.
The crowd loved us! I played the spoons. I played the spoons so hard we made it on Chinese television!!
And it was here that my camera died.
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