Shanghai

April 8th
Shanghai

Today was another turn around day in Shanghai, but similar to the last one, we ended up running way late. First, we got into port many hours behind schedule, I have no idea why, and then didn’t end up leaving until late that night. For whatever reason, we’re having a really hard time with this port, probably because we’re 90 minutes outside of the city. But anyways, do to the lateness, I wasn’t even going to try getting off the ship and taking the crew shuttle into the city, there just wasn’t enough time. So I stayed on board and did the usual on the ship till the shows that night. I showed up to play the first show that night at 8:30, like scheduled, but was informed about 5 minutes till show time that it was cancelled because no one was in the audience, we still hadn’t gotten the passengers on the ship! So that was kind of strange considering I’ve never had a show cancelled like that before, and on top of that, the passenger drill that had been pushed back to right after the first show also got cancelled, another first for me. The next show at 10:30 was still on though, and we played it to a very responsive audience. Now this cruise is somewhat different because it’s been chartered out to a Chinese cosmetics company, meaning there’s no one on the ship but this group of people, about 1500 of them, most of which don’t speak English. So the language barrier made that show really interesting for the guest entertainer that night – an Argentinean doing a show in English for a Chinese speaking crowd. I don’t know if I’ve explained the show yet, but I’ll explain it again anyways. His act, Los Gauchos, is an act that dances traditional Argentinean dances, plays drums, crack whips, and does an amazing dance that includes swinging around plastic balls on a rope. There’s a point toward the end of the show where the main guy invites everyone on stage up to the front to take a picture. Usually, this takes a minute or so while the guest take pictures from their seats, it’s kind of awkward, but it’s always really funny that he interrupts the show to bring everyone up for pictures. Well, bad mistake when your crowd is a photo happy group of Chinese who all kind of know each other. For what must have been close to ten minutes, we had dozens of guest coming on stage taking pictures with the act, with the individual band members, with the girl dancers of the act, everything, and they wouldn’t stop bombarding the stage. He probably should have known something like that might happen from when we posed for the first picture and literally everyone had their cameras. I’ve never seen so many cameras in my life pointed at me before, it was kind of intimidating having the Chinese paparazzi after us. But it ended up lasting forever, so long in fact everyone who didn’t have cameras or those who were just impatient, actually left the theater thinking the show was over. After we finally got every one off the stage, we played the last couple tunes and finished the show, but I think the Andres (the main guy) is going to think twice now about having his picture session during each show. And then that’s about it for the night, but I just had to write about that show, it was too funny for all of us on stage to not make it on the blog.
The cruise did eventually sail, but our itinerary has been completely changed accommodating for the late departure, meaning tomorrow is going to be a sea day with an early boat drill to make up for the one we missed tonight. Otherwise, that’s about it. Thanks!