In January 2008 the Orchestra travelled to Beijing with conductor Kurt Masur to give two concerts in the stunning new National Centre for the Performing Arts.

Inside the building, Maestro Masur is confronted with a large poster of himself.

Contrabassoonist Simon Estell during the concert.

Members of the Orchestra found time to visit the Great Wall, Beihai Park, and to have a 2 hour massage, at midnight! Here are some of their impressions.

'I arrived at Beihai Park (one of the oldest imperial gardens in China) at about 10am to find a long queue of elderly Chinese snaking round the corner.

Just as I'm taking my place at the back a policeman waves me to the front and I go and see if there's another ticket office that I've missed. No, just the one. I go back to the back of the queue.

This time the old ladies start nudging me out of line and jabbering at me in Chinese. They're all clutching forms and passport photos and I realize they must be renewing their annual passes for the park. It looks like this will take all day and they want me to go ahead of them. A touching gesture in a city where it's not uncommon to find yourself elbowed out of the way... '

Kate Birchall, 2nd violin

Beihai Park (image by Kate Birchall)

Transport
'We were sitting in a minibus – I was at the back – when we suddenly realised that we were driving past the Olympic site.  The driver got very excited, and stopped in the middle of 5 lanes of traffic, and then started reversing back to let us look through the hoardings.  Scary!

'Once I went off on my own on a bus, and was gestured to the only spare seat by the conductress.  It was on the back row, higher up than the rest, and I was simply too tall!  Sitting with my head squashed to one side, my head hit the ceiling every time we went over a bump.  Traffic regularly drives through red lights, and the conductress was hanging out of a window, yelling through a microphone to clear the road in front.'

Susanna Riddell, cello

'Learning English
'I had a taxi driver who was listening to his English linguaphone course as he was driving around, and practising on me.

We were regularly approached, for example in Tianammen Square, by people who simply wanted to practise their English.  I’ve had this before.  Last time we were there someone spent a whole afternoon with us showing us around so that he could speak English to us.  They’re really keen!

One bass player was approached, and we thought they wanted to chat to us again, but no,  they wanted to have their photograph taken with this bald, bearded Englishman!

George Peniston, double bass

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