Messiah's Challenge

Several of us went to Handell's Messiah which was performed in the Forbidden City Concert Hall. JPM is a title sponsor and we had very good seats.

A few of us first went to a Japanese restaurant near the Oriental Plaza. CB had been there several times as he lives across the way. I know very little about Japanese food and my Chinese is horrendous.

Usually getting cold water is not hard to do as we know the words for that but I guess we were not specific enough as it looked like AF got warm tap water with an ice cube. We tried again and got it right the second time. We had a similar experience with ordering sake. We got 3 bottles of Asahi beer. It took another 3-5 minutes to explain what we were looking for. We seemed to do ok with the food we order since it had pictures and we pointed.

We decided to take a short taxi ride to the concert hall in two taxis. The doorman had no idea where the concert hall was while we had a general idea. Thankfully we ran into a friend from the Investment Bank quite coincidentally and she gave both the taxi driver and doorman instructions. We took a taxi but they could not let us out on the busy street and we had to go up some side street and find our way. We called our friends to see where they were. BF just decided to follow people into the dark Forbidden City grounds through Zhongshan Park (see attached map) to the venue. What a trip.

The production was excellent. They did 2 parts instead of all 3 (thank goodness because it would have been very late). Little did we know our adventure was just beginning. We could not find or get a taxi to save our lives. It was very bitter cold out and the street blocks in China are huge. Around Tiananmen Square there are traffic barriers, etc and it appeared that taxis are not allowed to pick up anyone. We walked and walked not sure what to do and tried to find a side street which was not too desolate but we could get a taxi. We finally got a taxi home, an adventure we won't forget.