On January 1, I head to China for a three-week tour with Jenny and the Hog Drovers, my student old-time band from Warren Wilson College. I am exited about traveling and performing with these young musicians, and I anticipate that it will be an amazing experience for all of us. On this cultural exchange, supported by the US Embassy in Beijing, we will meet and collaborate with a group of Chinese musicians known as Manhu (Fierce Tigers). These traditional musicians, from the Yi ethnic group, live in the Yunnan Province in the south of China, a mountainous region not unlike Appalachia. We will meet up with these folks at the Linden Centre, a conference center and hotel near Dali (in Yunnan), and after performing there, we will travel to their home at Shihin (south of Kunming). We will perform at a cultural center there, and then the next day, we will fly to Beijing. In Beijing we will perform at the American Center of US Embassy as well as the National Center for the Performing Arts (the Chinese equivalent of the Kennedy Center). After that we take the bullet train to Shanghai, where we will perform at the Shanghai Concert Hall and the American Center at US Consulate. We fly back to the US on January 20.