Back online with a summary of the news...part 1

I don't now if anyone is still reading this blog...it got shut down by the Chinese gov't in advance of the June 4 anniversary of Tienanmen and I didn't update it because of continuous problems accessing it as well as mounting problems on the ground here with putting the show together. (It wasn't MY pointed observations about life in China that made the party bosses nervous, to be sure; they came down on ALL blogs.)
So now it's June 16 already, and so much has transpired in the interim that it would take a day to give a faithful reckoning of it all. I'm sitting at the Westin Chaoyang in Beijing; Caron, Inge, and I returned yesterday from 5 great days in Hong Kong and Macao. Outside, the Beijing sky is night-black with thunder clouds, so it's a good opportunity to repack and get organized before the tour starts tomorrow.
My last posting was about my previous short trip to Hong Kong to attend the Chinese Shakespeare festival at Chinese University of HK. I very much enjoyed the occasion, both because it was well-organized and because it provided a respite from the ongoing challenges of putting together "Einstein's Dreams." Joe Graves had put me in touch with one of his former students, Nancy Yang, who graduated from Beida and now is a law student at HK University. Nancy was extremely friendly, picked me up at the airport, and took time off to show me around. One evening, she and I and Colin McPhillamy (the British actor who was my predecessor at Beida and also acted as judge for the festival) went down into the the bowels of Kowloon district and had a memorable three-restaurant evening: Nancy took us first to a "famous noodle restaurant," then a "famous rice restaurant," and then a "famous dessert restaurant" to top it all off. (Imagine each of these as a little family-run hole in the wall with delicious, though sometimes unidentifiable, food).
The Shakespeare competition featured 12 teams from around China, each allotted 20 minutes to play their scene(s). Predictably, this was a mixed bag, but the best scenes were quite imaginatively staged and executed, especially a Henry VI and a Winter's Tale. The winning team (in this case, Nanjing University) gets an all-expenses-paid trip to London. The festival has just been given another 5-year lease on life through a cash injection by its benefactor, whose enthusiasm for Shakespeare stands in fascinating contrast to his background as a shadowy money man. I think I was able to make some good contacts that might pay off for UF as a way to establish a more lasting connection to the festival.