Spent the day in Hong Kong yesterday with a few folks from the tour. Took the subway to the Chinese border, went through immigration and customs, got our passports stamped, then walked right onto the Hong Kong subway… easy as pie. Spent the day touring The Hong Kong Museum of Art, looking for cheap sunglasses (didn’t find any), ate Italian food, took the Star Ferry across the bay from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, took a tram up to “The Peak” for some gorgeous views of the city and got back to Shenzhen by 11 last night. Hong Kong is a great city — full of English-speaking people, clean, lots to do, and the traffic follows Brittish convention and drives on the left side of the road. A great day off!

A side note… my website seems to have been blocked in China. I can’t seem to access it straight away (I’m using Tor right now to make this update). Have I been spewing that much negativity about the Chinese government?

Just finished up a short run in Nanning. Loaded in, did three shows, and loaded out. Seemed like an awful lot of work for such a short sit in a city. I managed to get out and around the city a bit — found a DVD shop and picked up a few more for my Chinese-bootleg collection. Located a pretty nice Japanese restaurant by mistake which became a favorite of ours — we gave directions to a taxi driver for a Thai place the hotel told us about. The driver didn’t seem to know where it was, so he took us to the Japanese place. It was good… not what we wanted, but good.

Made it to Shenzhen this afternoon after a long day of travel (despite the short, 1-hr flight). Doc, Jake, Chris, Nicole and I found a great gem of a Mexican restaurant. Three Coronas + enchiladas + three bowls of salsa = Heaven. It’s amazing how good it tastes after only being back in the country for three weeks.

Here’s a pict from Nanning. I think it kind of sums up China’s state in the world right now: Western infulence (ie, Walmart), construction around every corner, and a billion bikes. This is a pretty typical sight for any city we’ve been to and surely a sign of things to come.

Random dried meat product of the day: Dried Squid. Original OR BBQ, no less. Enjoy.

Found this on the internets today, via reddit. Enjoy!

After being back in China for a week, I’m writing my first blog entry. I had told myself I was going to update this thing more often… I guess I didn’t get off to a great start. I’ll try and do better.

Load-in here in Harbin went great, considering we’ve got a new Head Carpenter, Sam, and that we got a late start Sunday, due to the truck drivers not being ready to move the trucks into position until they were paid for the extra day they ended up sitting in Harbin. Everyone’s got a price, even over here. Everything went in well over two days, we rehearsed on Tuesday with the cast and orchestra, brushed up a few scenes Wednesday afternoon and opened Wednesday night to a sold-out crowd. We got great reactions from the crowd and everyone in the show had such high energy — it’s obvious we’re all ready to be back here.

A group of us visited the Siberian Tiger Park located 45 minutes from our hotel here in Harbin today. It started off as a stuffy, cramped bus ride through some tiger enclosures — nothing much better than you’d see at your local zoo. The wildlife was lounging in the shade, seemingly apathetic to our presence. After the 30 minute ride, we got to walk through an enclosed walkway ten feet off the ground above another tiger enclosure. Here, you could pay 100 Yuan ($14) to feed a live chicken to the tigers — needless to say, the tigers were a bit more active. They also gave us the option of feeding them a cow (1000 Yuan)… we passed.

Upon exiting the park, we had the option of taking a picture with a baby tiger cub. Sarah and I split a picture for 50 Yuan and were very pleased with the experience. A fun, hot day in Harbin. It sure is nice to be back on the road and to be able to do some sight-seeing with our days. We’ve got a show tonight, two tomorrow and one more on Sunday before we load-out and fly to Nanning next week. It sure is wonderful to be back on the road with such wonderful people!