Challenge 9: ACCOMPLISHED!
Challenge 9: Street perform and raise 100 yuan (RMB) for charity.
The tragedy of the recent landslides in China’s Gansu Province has been in everyone’s thoughts here over the past few days. Over 1000 people lost their lives and many more are still missing. With hundreds of thousands of people now homeless, the area needs all the help and support it can get so we couldn’t think of a better charity for our street performing challenge.We accumulated equipment from very kind local shop keepers – when we explained what were doing, they all offered to buy back the items after we’d finished – and sought out the best locations. Armed with a guitar and a pink plastic bucket as a drum, we started singing. Soon, two newspaper reporters had been called to interview us and take photos.We performed for 2 hours in the morning in the centre of town, drawing a small but steady crowd with a mixture of Chinese and English songs. When Albert gave his fingers a break from the guitar, Adrian continued the show with a 5 minute juggling act. A good amount of money was raised from the morning, although none was donated during the duration of the juggling.Our 4 hour evening show in the busy town square was an even bigger success. One of the newspaper reporters, Miss Deng, turned up to help promote us, and other new friends, such as the staff from the guitar shop, also came by to offer support. The performance ended at 10pm with a local guy asking to perform “Hotel California” to a good sized crowd who had stayed on late in the park to sing along.The extent of the successful day was not made apparent until the following morning when we went with Miss Deng to donate the money to the Red Cross. In total the people of Gaung’An had donated a staggering 1,349.6 Yuan (that’s about an average month’s salary here). This figure not only far exceeded our target but will make a real difference to the lives of some of the landslide victims.And just to complete the story, page 5 of Monday’s Guang’An newspaper contained a 1,400 word article titled, “Two Foreigners Perform to Raise Money for Zhouqu, Gansu”. (Click here to see the article.)