a musical journey! (part 1)

Oct 21. Day 1. Arrived in Shanghai Pudong airport at 7AM. Checked in. Headed straight to Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC) for the MUSIC CHINA 2005. There was a decent rock musical performance when we arrived at the venue. The whole area was divided into few major warehouses, some white canopies as temporary display areas or food stations, and a temporary stage showcasing concent sound equipments. This expo was all about equipments! Any type of equipments : the sound reinforcement and lighting equipments, and musical instruments. Be it contemporary or traditional. Be it million dollars or few RMB. One can definitely find some good or rare buys here. Vince and i also bumped into few fellow malaysian musicians and music store owners. It definitely seemed like a music shoppers' paradise!

There's plenty of music demonstrators and shoppers testing instruments around the booths. The outcome? A massive symphony of polyphonic and polyrhythmic sound commonly known as noise. We saw a lot of XL instruments like the giant size gong, cymbals and erhu which taking picture was forbidden. Few traditional instrumentalists were very good in demonstrating, though the sales persons were generally friendlier, still taking pictures were not welcomed. I managed to snap some shots and ran away before they caught me. *grin*