June; China day 4, we arrive in Shenzen.

The temp as we got off the plane was announced as 88F.  We're not far from Hong Kong, and it's very tropical. We were here last May on our inaugural China tour, and loved the city and the food, and the concert hall. In order to be able to accept the invitation of China Merchant Bank to perform tonight, we had to fly from Shanghai this morning.

Brian spent a lot of time on the phone over our run-out to Shenzen since it was an independent arrangement for us with new partners.  Everything was very smooth, considering that Shenzen is in the south of China which continues to be afflicted with very heavy rains and flooding.  If you look at that big circle over China indicating the affected area - that's what we flew over.  Our other cultural delegate colleagues from San Francisco were set to perform outdoors at the Expo grounds today.  Hopefully the rain seemed to be impending as we left will hold off.

A nice young guy called Bo Lu - a friend of a friend- guided us into the airport and into the right line.  It's always good to have help when you understand nothing at all of what's going on around you.

Watching world cup while waiting for news of our flight.  It was announced to have a half hour delay, then an indefinite delay (nervewracking when there's a concert tonight.)  Then right on the original schedule everybody got up and rushed to the gate, we followed them and boarded, then we waited about half an hour to take off, which put us into Shenzen about an hour late, time to rest for an hour or so before going over to the Shenzen Concert Hall.