Quickstart:

Welcome to the China gallery! There is a more formal introduction below, but for the impatient I will begin with a quick overview of the gallery organization.

• This is a huge gallery, so the first thing you may want to be aware of is that I will use the gallery rating system to draw attention to the "best" pictures. To take advantage of this, just click "Top Rated" at any depth in the gallery. It will take you to the top rated pictures within that category or album. Therefore, using it in the root China category will select pictures from the entire China gallery, but I recommend navigating a bit deeper than that first so you have a better sense of context (and so the pictures in the "Top Rated" selection are more related). You are also welcome to rate pictures yourself, and evolve the "Top Rated" selections.



• Next, I should mention some things about the organization. The gallery is generally organized by locations and events. There are also people albums (divided into "Us" for the band and tour guides, and "Them" for... everybody else in China) and random albums. View the random albums at your own risk. I make no assertions as to the level of maturity found there. Some will find the pictures in these albums to be quite hilarious. Others... may not. Hopefully, the gallery organization will seem more intuitive once you start browsing.



• People. As I mentioned, there are people albums. However, there are also pictures of people scattered throughout the entire gallery. The shots that wind up in the people albums are generally portrait-ish shots where the person is the main focus, rather than the context. This is more of a guideline than a rule. Fortunately, this gallery also provides a "search" feature, and I shall label pictures of "Us" with the names of those pictured (except large group pictures, which will simply be labeled as "band"). So if you want to see all the pictures of Ping in the entire gallery, you need only type "Ping" into the search box! (and then do another search for "band," since she's in a few of those pictures as well...)
  Also, I labeled pictures of myself in the third-person (that is, using my name), rather than as "Me." And there are, I admit, a few more pictures of me than there should be... but I figured it's my damn gallery, so the sorts of people who actually see it might be expecting that.
  
  
• Movies! Some band members thought to take more than just still photos in China, and this gallery software seems to support putting up movies with thumbnails along with the pictures (although it does not make it obvious that a thumbnail represents a movie rather than a picture). So... keep an eye out for those! Also, let me know if you have any problems playing the movies... I tested them across multiple players on three different operating systems, so all should be good, but I can't predict every computer's configuration and codec supply.



• Narration! Most people will perhaps not care about this, but FYI, this gallery includes a great deal of text as well, which can be accessed by clicking the "Click for narration" links on categories and albums. I also wrote descriptions for quite a few of the pictures, which of course can be seen below those pictures by clicking the thumbnails. This text was written at various times, and thus might not always seem entirely consistent in style and quality. But just to let you know... if you're curious about something, the information you seek may well be near at hand.
  The narration pages are set to open in a new window so that one can be looking at the pictures along with the stories. Yes, I could have made actual audio narration files... but I really don't think anybody would want that.



• Lastly, if you happen to be one of the folks who went on this tour, and you for any reason object to this gallery containing a picture by you or of you, please let me know (my name and this website should be enough to figure out an email address). I didn't want the gallery to look at this tour through the narrow lense of just my own camera, when so many pictures were taken and available, and I tried to do my best to ensure that everybody was represented well here. It was a fantastic trip and I think these are fantastic pictures. I hope you all agree.

That concludes the quick overview of the China gallery! I hope you enjoy your picture-viewing experience!

Introduction:

On June 12, 2004, I left for China with Cal Poly University Jazz Band 1. We would not return until June 22nd. Ten days seemed like such a long time before we left... but now I realize it was nothing. I will definitely have to go back someday. It was an amazing experience... I hope to preserve a small part of that here.

The beauty of modern technology has left me with a fantastic selection of pictures to choose from and share in this gallery. Almost every band member had a digital camera, and lead alto Nathaniel Martin thought to bring his laptop so everybody could upload their pictures to it. He then distributed the pictures on two DVDs to interested band members such as myself. This gallery contains my favorites from the band's pictures and my own (which of course carry some weight for their personal significance, and thus may not be judged by quite the same standards to which I hold the other pictures), as well as my own narration throughout. The narration may consist of stories, reflections, or just rants. I hope that the narration will be of some interest to visitors, but the primary purpose is to write about my experiences for my own future reflection (I did not keep a travel journal as some suggested... so this shall be it).

Some overview of the people and events may be in order... we toured three cities: Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. In that order. We played five concerts: two each in Beijing and Shanghai, and one in Hangzhou. We were well-received by audiences, and the band took the opportunity to have a lot more fun with the music and experiment, which had great results both for us and audiences. I even tried putting a little bit more... show... into my guitar playing.

The band was led by Paul Rinzler, the director/professor/whatever (the guy who made all this happen and to whom I will be forever grateful), and Ping (surname Liu.. I'm not sure if I should write it Chinese-style, Liu Ping, or American-style, Ping Liu... so I'll just stick with Ping), our awesome tour guide. We actually had two other tour guides for Shanghai and Hangzhou, but Ping stayed with us throughout the trip. She was a very significant ingredient in making the trip the great experience that it was. I was even fortunate enough to get a personal tour with Ping one day, which was probably the most memorable time for me of the whole trip. The band will be introduced as they appear, but if I mention a name other than Paul or Ping, I am most likely referring to another band member.

The time-zone difference and constant activity (I would say "chaos," but you might think I meant it negatively) of the trip made it rather difficult to keep track of the days, so with the exception of my day with Ping, I will instead categorize the gallery by cities and events (although I suppose the day with Ping could be classified as an event...). I hope that works out and is comfortable to browse. I will try to at least put the categories and pictures in chronological order rather than alphabetical order. Also, although I believe all of the pictures in this gallery are worth a look (or I wouldn't have put them here!), I will use the rating system to draw attention to "must-see" pictures for the visitor who doesn't want to spend time seeing everything. With the number of pictures we all captured, you'd better believe me when I say something is a "must-see." You can't take that many pictures without stumbling upon some gems!

Prologue:

I suppose I'll put the prologue story here. In the very first version of our plan, we were to leave from LAX on the 12th (or maybe morning of the 13th... I don't remember). Then, in the most lasting version of the plan, this was changed to SFO on the 13th. This was an exciting change, because it meant that some of us, most notably yours truly, could go home to the Bay Area and meet the band at the airport. However, as I was enjoying my time at home on June 11th and looking forward to my plans for the 12th... I received a call from Paul informing me that the travel agency had screwed up, and we would in fact be taking a plane from LAX on the night of the 12th. So rather than shaving four hours off my travel time by meeting the band at SFO from home, I had the joy of adding four hours because I now had to drive all the way back down to San Luis Obispo so I could meet the band and get on a bus for LAX. So, World Projects is rather unpopular among a lot of people right now. In the end, it wound up working to our benefit because we got an extra day in China through this situation. But that does not excuse World Projects.