Most of our China travels have been about the food, but I did have one magical musical experience here. It was 2:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday and after our one somewhat disappointing lunch in Chengdu (of course it was the most expensive one), we headed for Renmin Park (The People's Park) for a spell at a tea house we'd been told about. Now Chengdu's reputation is as a city of leisure and of many retirees, but I had no way to imagine what we'd see. Across half the park, thousands of older Chinese were gathered in clusters and groups around myriad musicians. Some were playing and singing old traditional instruments. Some were doing a kind of theatrical karaoke in makeup and costumes that seemed to be from stages in the 1960s. One guy in a Mao hat and black boots was singing what seemed to be military anthems, while a bunch of folks old and young sang along lustily and flapped plastic clappers in approval. But the most charming site was a sizeable brass band that drew a crowd of hundreds. Folks passed out song books while another guy stirred up the crowd with cheers and chants. The band started up and the crowd sang along merrily and loudly to what a guy I met said were standard folk songs. Sometimes he said they do American songs like Oh Suzanna and Christmas songs, irrespective of the season. After a bit, most of the crowd took to dancing to the band's well played waltzes, including scores of ladies wearing period outfits and hair, dancing with each other. I'd never seen such down-to-earth, participatory music making in a public place like that. So wouldn't you know that the government here finds it just a little dangerous. When we sat down to tea, we encountered a guide that we'd been told was easy to find at this tea-house, the famous Mr. Lee. He would lead us to all kinds of finds, but the thing he told us that afternoon was that the mayor had posted notices at the gates of the park outlawing the public performances. The People were having none of it, and they danced on anyway.
After the jump, more personal journal and food tales from Beijing and Chengdu...
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Somebody’s got to do something about Chinese pop music. We just taxied in from the airport to our hotel in Chengdu, and the cabbie, who seemed like a hip enough twentysomething, had an FM radio station on that played a rotation of simpy romantic balladry, twiddling girl-pop and fourth-rate boy band. Of course I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I’m certain that’s a good thing. On TV it’s the same thing – sugary, derivative, synthetic and dated sounding goo. Commentary in the Shanghai and Beijing press like Time Out suggested there were a handful of good and emerging local bands who seemed to favor a punk or metallic sound. I didn’t catch any of that, but I did see some solid jazz in Shanghai and some excellent jazz in Beijing. Shanghai’s jazz joint is called the Cotton Club, with a house band fronted by a white guitarist but livened up by a couple of really excellent Chinese horn players. They played groove-oriented R&B flavored tunes that took a Motown turn when their vocalist, an American black woman who went by “Mama” took the stage. So that was cool, but I was really impressed to stumble upon a jazz bar along the busy lake shore in Beijing. The white pianist was really quite amazing (he was playing Bill Evans’ “Waltz for Debbie” when I came in, which is a sure way to my heart) and he was backed by Chinese guys on bass and drums. The drummer was especially tasty and sounded like he’d listened a lot to the recently departed and ultra-great Max Roach. Their singer, a white American woman, was quite good and mixed standards with stuff she and the band had written. The place was full with a mix of Chinese and Westerners, and folks really tuned into the music. I’d like to take our cab driver there and see what he thought.
Everything after the jump is personal, non-musical travel journal for friends and folks who care. We’re having an amazing time here.
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