SAE Institute Rotterdam's EMP Head lecturer Wick van den Belt with his CREW on tour through China

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10th June 2010

We are proud to announce that our EMP Head lecturer Wick van den Belt was invited to tour China with his Hip Hop CREW "Zegevier". Among the performances was the Dutch Culture Centre during the World Expo in Shaghai and a Shaolin Warrior School in Deng Feng.

Following is an impression of the trip:

Zegevier China Tour

''The last two weeks I have spent touring with my band 'Zegevier' in China.
We've had a great time while meeting many new people and we have been experiencing the culture to the fullest while travelling between several cities. I have done a show earlier this year in Beijing at the Angel club already, so was a little prepared for China.

The tour started in Beijing, where we had the first two shows. Mako Livehouse & Dos Collegas were the first two venues. After spending the first three days in Beijing we took a flight to HangZhou, where the next performances were. Here we played at a local bar where the place got rocked; these people obviously never whitnessed something like us and the vibe was awesome in Hangzhou! After the show we left to go to Shanghai at night, where we had to play the day after at the Dutch Culture Centre, which is the 2nd building used by Holland on the world Expo.

Our show actually got cancelled by the chinese police, during one of the last songs, because the show continued longer than the contract said. So therefore we unfortunately couldn't end the show together with Shalla, the band we were touring with. The next day we played at the MAO livehouse in Shanghai. The show was nice and we could finish the show as we used to : together with shalla and just end up in a cool jamsession.
The day after we had to leave to DengFeng, which is a small city near ZhengZhou. Here we had a great time visiting the Shaolin Orphanage, the shaolin valley, shaolin temple and a shaolin warrior school.

After getting police escorts, we first visited the shaolin kung-fu school where we got a demonstration by the shaolin showteam. This was really impressive, and really showed what the human body is capable of, when trained properly. Accompanied by Shan Li, who as a German kid moved to China to live amongst the Shaolin Monks, trained in the Shaolin Warrior school and lives there for over 13 years now, we visited alot of things in DengFeng. Shan Li was a great person to meet, his life is dedicated to Buddhism and he does alot of work for the orphans He toured the whole trip along with us and was the main connection for the last events we visited. And though he is a buddhist, his passion for hiphop has never gone and along the tour he performed with us with his beatboxing and rap.

Together with Shan Li we visited the shaolin temple, he toured us around and showed us for example his room. Also we acoustically jammed in the temple in presence of one of the high ranked monks, which was a cool experience.

After that we visited the kids in the shaolin orphanage which was one of the best experiences of the whole trip. Together with the orphans we made music, danced and had a great afternoon.
We had to perform at the shaolin warrior school, but due to the weather it got canceled and postponed a day. The next day we we're able to play and we're proud to say we we're the first rock/hiphop act ever to perform here! There were 12.000 kids watching the show, accompanied by several tv-stations and local politicians, so this was the perfect ending of the tour.

The whole trip was the perfect oppertunity to make photo's, which is one of my hobbies, and was really inspiring for us as a group. We filmed a documentary about the trip, experiences, shows, culture and places we've visited, which will be edited soon. Also, within two months we're going into the studio to record an album, and the trip to China will most likely have a positive influence on it! And also future plans in China are most certain for us!"

For more information, photos, and videos check out:

http://www.wickhop.nl/
http://www.zegevier.nl/z4/
http://wickhop1.hyves.nl/album/51226042/Zegevier_China_tour_Mei_2010/Kl5J852v/