The father of Chinese rock is a man named Cui Jian, who became famous in the late 70′s and remains an emminence grise in the world of Chinese rock, jazz, and indie music. The title above is a song of his. A song of his that I like more, called “The Last Gun,” rolls forward, slowly pulling up a rumbling swath of sound that is both powerless in a terribly Chinese way, and with the eruption of trumpets, ironically celebratory. It’s a song that probably wouldn’t work as well for me if I hadn’t listened to it while staring out the window of a train crackling down snowy rails from Harbin at flat brown fields, dead trees, and a cold sea sky.
Beijing, as is often overlooked, is the home of Chinese independent music, which is to say every kind of music that isn’t Mandopop, Cantopop, or classical. The scene’s a small village of people living in some few clubs and popping out for tours when they can — everyone knows everyone else, and the fans and players live almost side by side. I imagine that music might have been like this in New York or London in the 60′s and 70′s, but now CBGB, The Knitting Factory et al are more myth than real. A lot of life here, and a lot of movement. In music like in everything else.
I started class again on the 21st, and now I’m in the thick of it. I live in an apartment now, with an American and a Chinese roommate. There’s an elevator operator until 11:30 every night, and a “sun room” for drying clothes, even though it’s below 0˚C every day. I read articles about the economy, migrant workers, and the psychological effects of globalization for homework, and plan to write my term paper on Li Bai, the most famous poet in Chinese history. It may not be terribly original, but man if I don’t want to really learn something about Chinese lit in Chinese. But then again, doing a more modern Chinese intellectual like Hu Shi or Chen Duxiu might be even more interesting (I’m pointedly not considering Lu Xun because my friend Scott’s already doing him). Must decide!
Hi everyone!
