Program Notes

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In April 2019, I traveled to China for the first time. I was just 24 years old and I was visiting my now wife and her parents at their home in Beijing. It would be a complete understatement to say I was in shock and awe. I had been to France and Italy, where the street signs were confusing, but they used the same characters found in the English language. In these European countries, I could find myself around with minimal trouble and minimal fear. In China, I was terrified for most of the first week of my trip. I couldn’t make any sense of the characters. They were on every street sign and every building and I would have been thoroughly lost without Lin keeping me on a tight leash. It is in this fear that I found room to grow and to adapt my perspective and expand my worldview. The respect I gained for this culture, as well as the empathy I gained for foreign persons visiting the United States, are two of the greatest gifts I have ever received. 

 

This story of fear and change is all to prepare you for a love story of a much more fantastic nature. The Yangtze River is the largest river in China, and the third longest in the world, spanning just under 4000 miles. Despite the river being hundreds of miles away from where we were staying in Beijing, I spent much of my trip daydreaming of an adventure with my love taking place on this river.

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