For most of the company, last Monday was like any other travel day this tour, except the flight to Kunming didn’t leave until around 9pm, so everyone got to enjoy another day off in Chengdu. On the contrary, about 20 company members traveled to Changsha instead on three separate flights to participate in a Chinese television show. I was included in the group who did the television show and it was an adventure to say the least.

Our weekend off in Chengdu continued into Monday with different company members partaking in different activities. One popular activity was to visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. That’s a long title! This is the biggest park for Pandas in all of China. I have personally never seen a live Panda Bear before, so I was quite excited for the experience.

With Shanghai being such a busy city of sightseeing and nights out, we were all looking forward to a nice relaxing week. Relaxing, but hectic as we traveled to three different cities this week. We started off in Souzhou.

We arrived in Shanghai with great expectations for what was hoped to be an amazing city full of diversified culture and unbelievable sightseeing. Our expectations were met in every way. Shanghai is one of the coolest cities I have ever visited and our week here was definitely a high point of the tour so far. We didn’t know where to start, there was so much to be done!

With an amazing Christmas week under our belt and a deeper understanding for the Chinese culture, it was time to continue our worldly adventure with two more cities. What was supposed to be a two city week, ended up with us traveling midweek to Zhoushan for one show and then on to Hangzhou.

We had a rather short travel day from Guangzhou to Fuzhou, which is always nice. The roads in China are not what you would call the best in the world, so the shorter the bus journey the better. What adds to it is the culture of honking the car horn. In China, it is polite to honk your horn while approaching a corner or intersection, so prepare yourself for an abundance of beeps if you travel over here.

Our first travel day of tour went very smoothly. We only had a two hour bus ride to Guangzhou and we were all excited to see our new home for the week. We were a bit spoiled with the warm weather in Shenzhen and even though it was only two hours away, Guangzhou was a tad bit on the colder side. It rained for a couple of days here and there was not too much sun; but we were still able to check out the local sites. Since this is week two, we have started to get used to the culture a bit more and have realized some more cultural differences.

Welcome to China with the brand new Bann Company. Riverdance will tour 12 cities in China including Beijing and Shanghai from December 2009 to February 2010. We begin the tour with 6 shows in Shenzhen.

This week we visit Denver, where we spent Thanksgiving and went to a football game.

In Texas we visit College Station and Orange where we see Texas A & M University and have our Lamb Punch Party!