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Suzie Vinnick stars in the 2007 Women’s Blues Revue on December 1 at Massey Hall
Suzie in China
Suzie
Vinnick on the Great Wall: “My time in Beijing was very short – it allowed
enough time to visit the Great Wall, which was amazing! Kim said it was better
to take the more challenging route as there were less people. It was true on
both counts – it was more challenging and there weren’t a lot of people. The
wall stretches over 4000 miles - we walked maybe a mile and a half of it.”
In early 2007 Suzie Vinnick travelled to China with Vinnick Sheppard Harte (VSH) - Elana Harte, Kim Sheppard and Suzie, They were invited to come and perform in China the first week of May 2007 at the weeklong Mayday celebrations as part of the Maple Rhythm Festival. Here is Suzie’s first-person account of this amazing trip courtesy of Liz Sykes and the Ottawa Blues Society newsletter (OBScene) where it was originally printed.
VSH left Toronto on Saturday April 28, and 15 hours later landed in Shanghai,
the first stop on our trip. It was a pretty sweet flight to Shanghai, I have to
say – due to some connections with Air Canada we were lucky enough to get moved
into 1st class, so cosy seats and “nummy grub”, general spoilage we received. I
even managed some Chinese lessons with my seatmate, Mr. Ho. He was watching me
stumble through my Chinese phrase book and through some sign language (he didn’t
speak English), offered to say the phrase to me, then have me repeat it to him
in Chinese. Then he asked me to say it in English to him as it gave him a chance
to learn, too. He even proudly ordered some ‘sushi’ in his new-found language
when our flight attendant came along with the dinner options. Was fun,
informative and good for a few laughs for anyone listening to us!
We landed at the airport in Shanghai - it is HUGE - 18 million people. Lots of
green, lots of buildings, downtown just seems to go on an on and on. Lots of
honking, too...honking is a way of life when driving here, apparently. There are
lots of folks on motor-scooters and bikes; when the sun comes out again Kim said
we’d see even more folks out biking. It took me a few days to acclimatize and
get over the jetlag as our clocks were turned around 12 hours – 8am in China is
8pm in Toronto.
The Food: In general, our meals were great – we’d usually all sit in a separate
room set aside for larger groups dining together, served on a lazy susan in the
middle of the table – nothing too exotic, much like we’d do it in Canada –
mostly chicken, pork, beef, whitefish, lamb and some seafood. One day they
ordered eel (I didn’t have the courage to try it); a couple of the restaurants
also served the dishes including the chicken and duck’s deep-fried heads, which
a couple of our crew ate (I passed on ‘em). The dishes were served with rice and
green veggies – baby bok choy and other Chinese veggies. It was great, as we’d
all get to take a bit from each plate of food that was offered. I wish I’d found
out what a few of them were called so I could order them when dining Chinese in
Canada! One other food experience was a hot-pot restaurant – you sit at a table
that has a big pot with two sections set down in the middle of it filled with
water, spices, one half had a fish, the other had a multitude of red hot
peppers. The server lit the propane element underneath the hotpot and got the
water to boil. They provided us with plates of raw meat (lamb and pork for us)
and veggies - once the water was boiling we just had to toss the food in to
cook. When the water was boiling again the food was ready to eat. None of us
were into the fish-head side of the pot, so we ended up putting a few of the hot
peppers over to that side (was just a touch on the spicy side for most of us!).
The hot-pot meal was much fun and very tasty.
Vinnick Sheppard Harte performed 5 shows in total; I was only able to be part of
2 of them as I had to make my way back to Canada to teach at the Hornby Island
Blues Camp which I had previously committed to before the China trip. Our first
show was in Shanghai at 4-Live, a nightclub in downtown Shanghai. All the bands
performed a set that night.
It was neat looking nightclub with 2 floors that surrounded the stage in a U
shape. Sound was pretty good, there were funky booths all around for people to
sit in, a dance floor and they even had a separate room behind the stage with a
bar, some tables and a couple beds draped in see-through material, even, for the
folks who didn’t want to listen to the music. One of the biggest treats was when
fellow Canadian musician Ember Swift showed up! She is spending 3 months
studying the music of women in the independent music world in urban China and
speaks Mandarin. We decided to kidnap her to our gig in Suzhou. Each of the
bands traveled to Suzhou, an hour out of Shanghai, to perform on separate days.
We were the first to perform in Suzhou, and our show in Suzhou was the highlight
for me. It took place in a beautiful park on the outskirts of town – there were
hills that looked like they were from an old quarry and further into the grounds
there were green trees, pagodas and families picnicking all around us. We set up
on a little carpeted stage with no cover (and we had no sunscreen..oops!). I
suspect that only a couple of the songs we performed were familiar to the
audience but even with us singing in another language, we felt our music was
received favourably. I tried my hand at some Chinese, too - ‘syesye’ which means
thank you in Chinese, though, I believe mine came out as ‘she-she’ – folks just
smiled and laughed (I know better now). I think some might call this ‘endearing’
– I was trying at least. The local kids ended up being our icebreakers - we had
some shakers and invited them up to play and sing with us. Some of the parents
were plunking their toddlers on the stage next to us and taking pics just so
they could be part of the fun! Both young boys and girls joined us onstage, but
the real stars were two young gals, around 10 years old or so. They were very
bold and confident, shaking the shakers and singing into the mics.
In Shanghai we got to visit the Old City and the Bund, both in fairly close
proximity to our hotel (a 15 minute cab ride). Old City was one of my favourite
adventures; Randall Coryell, the VSH drummer and I split off from the group and
ventured through Old City. Every step you took you were tapped on the arm by
merchants asking if you wanted a bag, a watch, a jacket, luggage – they would
flash little photographs of knock-offs and try to get you to come to their
storefront to buy their wares. I must have said ‘no!’ a thousand times that day.
We ventured off onto a sidestreet in the Old City and found the Shanghai Cheh
Xiang Monastery. We paid the 5RMB and went in; it was a very peaceful place
compared to the hustle and bustle of the main street. I smiled at a Buddhist nun
and she smiled and bowed back; it was a sweet 5 second connection. Randall and I
watched as people prayed to the various Buddha statues, then a nun came and
performed some sort of daily ritual and rang a giant bowl. We enjoyed being
flies on the wall here. We left the monastery and ventured out again into the
streets down a busy laneway where we found another temple, the City Temple of
Shanghai, not as peaceful as the monastery as it was much larger and filled with
a lot more people wandering around and seeing the sites within.
We left the temple and found a side street that we decided to explore – the
first temple and this side street were a couple of my favourite things on the
trip. There weren’t as many people here, and it was more residential, more
peaceful. We were greeted by a few folks and also got to get a little peek at
another slice of life in Shanghai/China – it’s SO busy everywhere you go in
Shanghai, so this little laneway provided a lovely peek at another life in
Shanghai. Some people had their doors open, so from the corner of your eye you
could get a little taste of their life in a place like this. We came to the end
of our peaceful laneway after about 15 minutes, back into all the people.
Shopping in China: In general, when at a market you don’t pay the price first
quoted to you – you have to barter. I didn’t do a bunch of shopping, but I got
pretty good at bartering, wrangling some pearls, bracelets, a necklace and some
other wares. At the Great Wall I wrangled a souvenir down from $380 RMB ($60 Cdn)
to $60 RMB ($10 Cdn)! Culturally, Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing were not a lot
different than other North American cities I’ve been to – lots of tall
buildings, cars, billboards, busyness. The only difference came in
communicating, which is obviously a big thing. Only a handful of people we’d
encounter spoke English, and it was limited at that. Signage was all in Chinese,
though there were more English translations on the signs in Shanghai than
Beijing. Of course we had our hosts who ordered our meals for us, arranged our
accommodations and transportation so that took care of a great deal of the
language barriers for us - making it an amazing experience!
- Suzie Vinnick
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