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Published Saturday, July 04, 2009 in Local

Chinese orchestra's US visit canceled

By Winston Skinner

The Newnan Times-Herald

The scheduled visit of Hangzhou Zhongee Wenlan High School's Traditional Chinese Orchestra has been canceled because of the spread of swine flu.

Associated Press reported that Chinese state media released information regarding a woman diagnosed with the Influenza A(H1N1) virus. The woman died early Wednesday at a hospital in the coastal province of Zhejiang.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the 34-year-old woman -- who had been sickened with the virus -- was found dead in the bathroom of her ward at the No. 1 People's Hospital in the provincial capital of Hangzhou.

The woman had been admitted to the hospital on June 23. The Newnan Cultural Arts Commission had been planning the local activities related to the youth orchestra. Information received by commission member Bette Hickman indicated that woman who died in Hangzhou had been in America shortly before her death.

As of Thursday, "all foreign travel for students of any age was forbidden" by the Chinese government, Hickman said Friday.

While Hickman said she and others involved in the planning for the project are disappointed that the orchestra can't come to Georgia, she said she understands why. "If it were our kids going to China under these circumstances, we would pull the plug, too," she said.

The Zhongee Wenlan Orchestra had been scheduled to perform at the Rialto Theatre in Atlanta, and to perform locally at the Centre for Performing and Visual Arts on July 26. Local families had agreed to serve as hosts for orchestra members and chaperones, and plans for the Chinese youths to spend the morning of July 27 with Coweta teens had also been made.

Staff from the Lion Hearted Academy, a local private school that teaches Chinese, had worked with the cultural arts commission to help host families and Youth Ambassadors prepare for the visit by the young Chinese musicians.

Ren Jichang, principal of Hangzhou Zhongee Wenlan High School, had been working with Hickman, executive director of Global Achievers, to plan the trip. In an e-mail message to her, Ren stated the orchestra had been ready to make the trip with "performance clothes, shoes, the program list" ready and regular practices under way twice each week.

"I am extremely sorry to tell you that we have to put off our visit," Ren wrote. The Zhejiang Provincial Education Department announced that because of the H1N1 virus, "all primary schools and high schools cannot organize ... students to go abroad (or) to have any exchanges," he reported.

Ren indicated parents of orchestra members also had become concerned, particularly after the death of the woman in the Hangzhou hospital.

Ren expressed thanks to everyone in the Newnan area who had been working to prepare for the visit by his students.

"We know the students are heartbroken," Hickman said. "We can only hope the future will mean another visit in due time. We have to make this happen at a later date."

Ren expressed similar thoughts. After "the virus has gone, we still hope we can perform in Atlanta and Newnan, and strengthen the cooperation between our schools and the friends we have made," he wrote to Hickman.

The number of swine flu cases in the United States has reached nearly 34,000, and deaths have risen 34 percent in the past week to 170, federal health officials told AP on Thursday. About four out of five of the deaths to date were adults aged 25 or older, although seven of the most recent deaths were children, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The numbers mark an increase from the 127 deaths and nearly 28,000 confirmed and suspected swine flu cases reported last week.

CDC officials believe those cases -- which sought treatment and underwent testing -- are just the tip of the iceberg. They estimate more than 1 million Americans have been infected with the virus so far, though many probably had only a mild illness. Swine flu is the predominant flu type circulating currently, with 10 states reporting widespread cases. The states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.

The pandemic was first discovered in California in April, but since then a total of more than 77,000 cases have been reported in more than 100 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

President Barack Obama and other top administration officials met Tuesday with six experts on a previous flu outbreak so that -- in his words -- "we can further prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of H1N1 flu."

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