Postcard from Boracay

Wishing you were here.


I'll be back next week.

Race of Champions begins today

Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. today on CCTV5.




What is Race of Champions? This month's issue of the Beijinger tells all (sorta).

Picture of the day: Beijing's first snowfall

It began on Halloween night and was still going strong this morning. A nice thick accumulation resulted, perfect for making snowballs...




...and of course it completely ruined Halloween night, and now I find out it was probably caused by cloud seeding.

I'm anxiously awaiting the day the other shoe falls and we learn silver iodide causes ozone tears and cancer.

Happy Halloween

I will be going as the horse from GetOnMyHorse.com. If you have a spare minute, you'll want to click on that link.

Costume construction began at 11:30 p.m. last night and continued until 5:30 a.m. I took about a couple hours to wrap things up this afternoon.

Breathing life into China's ancient instruments

If we put a microphone into the bottom half of our vocal cords, in that space before the larynx alters the transit of air into highly evolved sounds recognizable as language, what would we hear?

Literally speaking, not a whole lot besides air; but if this were a riddle, the answer you want may just be an unusual and wonderful wind instrument called the chiba, a stout bamboo flute from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that descended from the ancient xiao.

The 60 or so people who attended Dandeli Art Space’s “Blooming Youth and Ancient Melody” on Saturday were treated to a free performance of the chiba, along with the guqin, a seven-string plucked silk instrument dating back some 3,000 years. Lots has been written before about the latter, and a simple search on either YouTube or YouKu will yield dozens of results. The chiba, however, is a relative unknown.

A young musician who goes by Xing Zhe explained to us that every chiba goes through an exacting selection process. First a specific type of bamboo must be found that can be cut to the appropriate length (usually an eighth of a foot, which translates literally into the name of the instrument). It is then hollowed out and placed in a damp and dark environment for a year, not unlike the fermenting process for fine alcohol. A master will then cut a mouthpiece and play it, sans finger holes, for as long as he deems it takes for the right sound to emerge. Only then will holes be cut, four along the top and one on the bottom, and declared ready for use.

A low-shelf chiba runs for about 4,000 yuan, while high quality ones can go for 10,000 yuan – though who can really put a price on antiques? – which partially explains why there are probably no more than 50 chiba masters in China. The other reason is because the chiba virtually disappeared from this country for 700 years sometime during the Song Dynasty. It continued its evolution as the shakuhachi in Japan, imported there by a Buddhist monk in the 8th century.

Sitting in the same room as a chiba performance is like you’ve ascended 4,000 meters into a holy mountain and plopped yourself next to a meditating arhat. The instrument is capable of eerie, magical noises that are evanescent and transitory yet firmly grounded in our world. The sound is reedy, raspy and muted, about as natural as a spring, like a melodized sigh or exhale. Occasionally you will even hear a squeak or, quite literally, the sound of breath, quite unlike the pachydermal blare of Western-style trumpets and horns – which is to say, not metallic and cold but alive, arising from our lungs.

Because there are only four holes on the chiba, the tiniest finger movement makes a difference; likewise, the simplicity of the design makes it so that the slightest change in breath – in strength, volume or breathing angle – will affect the sound. There is much room for interpretation, and the result can be as artistic as the creator wishes, as hollow as a ditty or infused with melancholy as a pastoral. An old tradition in Japan held that a man and woman would play shakuhachi melodies in a field, at a remove from one another. If the tunes didn’t match, the two could not meet – a harsh penalty, indeed, though somehow appropriate because the instrument is, after all, an extension of the soul.

Upon failure the passionate shepherd, we can only surmise, would fall to writing poetry.

Here is a video of Xing Zhe playing the chiba on Saturday:

Also on Youku.

AND OKAY, JUST A FEW MORE PARAGRAPHS ON THE GUQIN: In any given performance, the seasoned guqin player’s hand will undergo an amazingly complicated series of maneuvers to elicit the desired sounds, a feat that you really get to appreciate when you see it up close. The fingers on the right hand alone have to perform eight designated movements, such as the pluck, flick, vibrato, strum and slide (those may not be the technical terms). Musicians don’t play the guqin so much as coax it, sometimes taking incredible pains to massage a certain effect out of the vibrating strings.

What you get are sounds that are never stagnant: notes always carry with it the sidewinding tail of a mellifluous twang or nictitating echo, with shadows of melodies lingering an extra second after each rest stop.

I should also note that Saturday’s guqin performers, a young couple who were not music majors, asked I not use their names because, in the guy’s words, “we haven’t achieved the level of competence to be considered musicians.” That’s humility for you.

Leftovers from October 1

Via Evan Osnos, a stunning panorama of Beijing during the National Day parade.

Meanwhile, this is how I spent my October 1, and this is my friends and I getting really impressed by helicopters and jets (more so because we were officially being subversive by having our curtains open).

The People's Republic of China main celebration of its founding may have (irony alert!) been closed to the public, but Tiananmen was reopened the following day with parade floats, lots and lots of floats, which, like a light to insects, attracted unholy swarms of people...

Punk music in Beijing, and introducing Autobots, Deploy!

What Bar, located just northwest of Tiananmen and whose name has induced more than a few Abbott and Costello acts, doesn't get lots of press, so like many small bars trying to lure in an extra customer or two, it turns to live music. A couple weeks ago, another one of my friends' bands, Autobots, Deploy!, played at What Bar to a crowd of friends.



What made the night really cool, however, were the punk acts that went on before and after Autobots (most definitely not a punk band). The music was loud, furious and expressive, something you don't often get in China. Video below.



For more about punk in China, see here and here.

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Traveling in Dalian

Last month I spent a day walking around Dalian and came away impressed. I ended up writing a short travel article for City Weekend, which, at this point, may or may not see the light of day. I don't think they'll mind me posting it here:

Beijing is to gates and bridges as Dalian is to squares and plazas, or “guangchang,” hundreds of them that together tell the story of the city’s history.

Most visitors to this port of 6 million people will begin at Xinghai Square, or “Sea of Stars,” which is the biggest municipal square in Asia and well worth a visit. But for something less touristy, go to Zhongshan Square at the city center, a giant roundabout with 10 off-shooting avenues surrounded by some of the most impressive concession-era architecture this side of Shanghai. You’ll think you’ve been warped to a different time and place.

Dalian’s strategic location by the sea invited foreign empires at a time when it was chic to invade China, first the Russians in 1898 and then the Japanese in 1905. The Russians, enamored with French architecture, modeled Dalian after Paris, which explains all the traffic circles and why Zhongshan gives off vibes of the Arc de Triomphe. Ogival towers and Gothic buildings of large stones and narrow windows add to the mystique.

The Japanese, also under the influence of European culture, added several more buildings in classical European style to Zhongshan Square, including Yamato Hotel in 1914, now called Hotel Dalian, which is where to stay if you want to be immersed in history (4 Zhongshan Square, (411) 8263-3111). The rotary’s center island is dressed up with trees, park benches and pigeons, and at night it comes alive as locals of all ages gather to socialize and dance. Peering out from the center, you’ll see buildings of different shapes and styles standing sentinel on either side of the streets, leaving the horizon unobstructed – faintly reminiscent of looking down Chicago’s Michigan Ave.

Dalian is atypical of Chinese cities, as it’s fashionable yet understated, modern and clean. If you must get your tourist fix, hike coastal Binhai Road, visit Forest Zoo or either of the two water amusement parks. Otherwise, stroll through Dalian’s charming parks and outdoor markets or relax on the beach and soon you’ll see why the China Expat Association calls Dalian the most livable city in China.

I must point out that the most incredible part of the city, from my vantage point, was an outdoor market tucked behind Russian Square in the northern part of the city. It's not on any maps and may or may not have a name, but it's absolutely incredible, a labyrinth of stalls selling a veritable hodgepodge of goods, from noodles to DVDs, meat kabobs and eggplants to socks and phone cards, small cooked pigeons to sea intestines eviscerated in front of your face. Like so:



Had I visited the market a few hours before I did, I would have had the pleasure of seeing a lamb slaughtered on a three-wheel wagon. Mmmm.

Dalian, a hub of commerce and leisure, receives more than 10 million visitors a year, despite not having any one recognizable draw like Harbin's ice sculptures, Qingdao's beer or Hangzhou's lake. Relatively young (est. 1898), there are no ancient temples, allusive rivers or misty mountains. Yet thanks to former mayor Bo Xilai (who hasn't been doing as well in Chongqing), who made the city a model of cleanliness, Dalian constantly hosts festivals and conferences, like Summer Davos, held by the World Economic Forum in September, and the International Fashion Festival (videos from which will be up on this blog later this week).

The two water amusement parks are both tourist traps (though Forest Zoo is actually really nice) and the beaches are average at best, but Dalian is a city that doesn't need any big attractions. Go see the city for what it is, and see how tempted you'll be to remain.

The Redbucks at Paddy O'Shea's

Since its first performance on February 27, when the band was known by a different name (several different names, actually), The Redbucks have slowly made their up in the Beijing music scene, playing at spots like Ginkgo's on Andingmen, Jiangjinjiu near the Drum and Bell, 2 Kolegas near Chaoyang Park, MAO Livehouse just north of Nanluoguxiang and, in the video below, Paddy O'Shea's, an Irish bar on Dongzhimen Outer St., on September 25. (There was also a show at a racetrack in South Beijing, organized by a Hanggai contact that's somehow connected to -- and here it gets a bit fuzzy -- the new U.S. ambassador to China's daughter, who apparently is a Redbucks fan. The band members are hoping they might play in front of President Obama when he finally visits.)

If you haven't heard them yet, take it from me: it's a good time whenever they take the stage.



Here's their official bio:

Hailing from America’s East, West, North and South, the Redbucks are Beijing's most notorious and rowdy group of American Bluegrass musicians. Whether these ruckus-raising ramblers are singing about love and lust or moonshine and misdemeanor, there will always be something to dance, drink or sing to – and often all the above.

Later this year: gig with bango legend Bela Fleck? Stay tuned...

In utopia

Witopia, actually.

Tonight I installed a virtual proxy network called Witopia, which allows me to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, of which I have only nasty, terrible, downright offensive things to say and therefore will not, for now. For $60 a year, my ISP gets routed through places like -- and I get to choose -- D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Manchester and Hong Kong. In other words, I can access everything from YouTube to Danwei to Slutload.com. I'm not gonna link to that last one -- you can figure out the URL for yourself. No more tying "Korean sofa" into Baidu! (It's now on the second page, btw.)

Witopia works like a charm. My Internet isn't noticeably slower or anything. The installation is complicated enough to keep China's censors chasing (the simplicity of Hotspot probably was its demise) yet easy enough that it doesn't require more than 10 minutes, max. A great deal (and seeing as how quickly the expat community here gobbles up popular proxies and VPNs, there're lots more testimonials if you need them).