Then - after nine hours in the air and a flight of over 7000km - we arrived in Beijing, a little tired and spent after our night flight, at 11.55am local time. Chinese customs and passport control was quick and efficient, and soon after we stepped out into the baking heat and humidity of a Beijing afternoon and boarded our bus bound for our hotel. Our first impression was of the sheer size of the city (a population of around 22 million people - as many as live in Australia) as our bus drove through the bustling suburbs towards the city centre, passing clusters of high-rise apartments (some modest, others huge and majestic), fancy business complexes and modern skyscrapers.
And so, despite the heat, humidity and (sometimes) high levels of air pollution, it seems that a large part of Beijing's population likes to spend time outdoors - whether it's for work (like the pop-up hairdressers and bike repair shops I saw on the roadside).
Touring like this may look like an exotic holiday with a little music here and there - but it's actually very hard work. Tomorrow, the VocalEnsemble begins a tough programme of five concerts in five days in five different cities far apart. Today - as soon as we checked into our Beijing hotel - was our only free afternoon/evening. So while some of us chose to rest this afternoon, others - when they realised we were only a 30-minute walk from Tiananmen Square - chose to explore.
Tomorrow we are travelling to Jinan - 4000 km south of Beijing - for our first concert.