Even when I finally realised that Anúna were really going to China, flights booked, hotels chosen, I still didn’t believe we were going. China had always been a place so alien, so far away that I never thought I would see it.

Until we touched down in Shanghai and travelled to our first venue in Hangzhou, arriving at night to an illuminated bustling city, I honestly believed that the trip wouldn’t happen. If I was younger and more traveled (three of the singers had already been there, with one of them, Shane Sugrue, actually living in Shanghai when we arrived) I would have been less daunted by the prospect of visiting this enigmatic country. Despite superficially looking like the rest of the developed world, China is a very special culture, with a unique and turbulent history.

When Anúna travel to a new country, I am always nervous. Will we be loved or loathed, acclaimed or booed? Audience reaction in China was summed up on the first night. Applause at the interval was muted, and more sustained at the end, but still quiet. However, when the singers went out to do our traditional meet-and-greet they were quite literally mobbed. People cheered, bought handfuls of CDs, photographed us alone, with them and with their children. I, coward that I am, stayed in the dressing room. When the singers came back they were ashen-faced with the strength of the reaction. I could tell that our agent was nervous up until this point, as the Chinese perception of choirs is a group of singers on stage with all the lights on, many of them flashing at appropriate (and inappropriate) moments. Anúna were capable of transmitting our subtle message to this audience with the same immediacy as everywhere else had been. From then on we didn’t worry about anything else except the mosquitoes and the fact that even small Irish people are classified as XXL when buying shirts in some parts of the country.

Many things will remain with me from our tour. The director of the big summer blockbuster The Beginning of the Great Revival Jianxin Huang, writing on his Weibo page [Chinese Twitter] after he attended the show in Beijing, said that he would love to hear us sing the choral sections from that film [you can hear some of them here] he was so impressed by the sound of Anúna. I recall also a lady who attended our performance at Chengdu’s Jincheng Art Palace following Miriam Blennerhassett around on her knees as she glided up and down the aisles of the theatre while she simultaneously filmed her with her mobile phone.

I remember the tiny, beautiful children that filled the theatres with parents in tow, laughing and chatting in the less Westernised venues as we sang ancient songs celebrating the mysteries of a Western God. Culturally we are expected to sit in silence attending concerts here. In China a concert can be a community experience, and the audience probably didn’t appreciate what we did any less than a Western audience would. Indeed, while we sang in most venues, we noted that huge quantities of the audience were texting. When we asked the agent if they were bored, he explained that they were posting to Weibo about the concert itself. All the comments I saw were hugely complimentary after the concert, and it probably wouldn’t do any harm to so-called serious music in the West if people commented on it in such a candid manner. In my experience a few audible snores wouldn’t have done any harm to the many of the choral concerts I have attended.

Performing at Beijing Poly Theater

Shanghai Oriental Art Center.

Contrary to what I had expected, Chinese people will talk to you about any subject, and be critical of things they don’t like. They are deeply worried about pollution, poverty, wages, public services, inequality, education – same as we all are. Their country is at times beautiful, and at other times, as with pollution levels in Wuhan for example, less than beautiful. The food was fantastic on the whole, and I am deeply reticent to eat in a Chinese restaurant again in the West, simply because the Chinese food we eat here is so unlike what we ate there in virtually every way.

The need to absorb new cultural experiences is fundamental to all developed cultures, and I was very proud that Anúna was able to connect with a Chinese audience in so many unexpected ways. In the cities of Beijing and Shanghai there was a notable absence of Irish faces in the audiences, and that is as it should be. Instead we made new friends, and more importantly, found out more about ourselves from this amazing trip than we could have ever expected.

East meets West : Tara McNeill and friends

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