Salon Wanderlust | Jazz swings into Beijing

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
Have you ever traveled somewhere that you absolutely hated? Share the wheres and whys of it in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

Among the hooligans
By Ethan Zindler
World Cup scenes: Threat and theft among the hooligans in Lens, France
(06/30/98)
Among the Colombians
By Matthew Yeomans
A Welshman watches the Colombia-England World Cup match from a Colombian bar in New York
(06/30/98)
Irredeemably wealthy in Patagonia
By Mark Schatzker
A bittersweet idyll in paradise
(06/29/98)
Mondo Weirdo
Hooked on Thaipusam: An astonishing religious rite in Malaysia
(06/26/98)
Mondo Weirdo
Going natural
Wanderlust asks: What's your favorite nude beach?
(06/26/98)

Browse the
Wanderlust Feature archives

JAZZ SWINGS INTO BEIJING . | . PAGE 1, 2, 3
I embark on long meandering walks every day, past dozens of new high-rises, cranes perched on top, being built with Western capital, through the tiny back alleys of ramshackle shanty towns where tourists are rare, along locust tree-lined roads where bicycle repairmen set up shop with their tool boxes and tire-patching kits, through dusty parks where white-jacketed barbers snip hair and old men hang their pet birds in bamboo cages. Close to embassy row, I see more foreigners. An old woman with a broomstick and a tiny child slung on her back begs for money beneath the yellow arches of one of several McDonald's in the city. Just past the Beijing Friendship Store, where you can buy everything from jade rings to Chinese medicine balls, the spit-spotted sidewalks are filled with entrepreneurs openly hawking flimsy-looking erhus, the traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument, and the red book of Mao's sayings.
Then there's the music. Even though the Ministry of Culture seems to tolerate the jazz festival, pop music of any Western stripe remains underground out on the streets of Beijing. Several people approach me and whisper, "CD? CD-ROM? CD?" in a clandestine manner reminiscent of the way dope dealers on Telegraph Avenue near People's Park in Berkeley used to push their stashes.
I joke with Jon Jang about how much he's paying me to "manage" him this week. An excellent pianist and composer, Jang has become a friend over the past decade. He's the guy who clued me in on the existence of the Beijing festival and helped me figure out the best way to get here. We take a cab to the Summer Palace and then after walking around the peaceful grounds flag a bright yellow cab to Tiananmen Square to meet up with other members of his sextet. We head to the site of the Chinese government's bloody clampdown on free speech, the 1989 event that Jang, a third-generation Chinese American, staunchly critiqued in his poignant 1993 CD, "Tiananmen!"
"Do the authorities know about that album?" I ask Jang, who is making his first performance in his ancestral homeland. He says he conveniently excised mention of it in the bio he submitted for his visa. Even so, he's not too worried about the Chinese government, although he acknowledges that the festival plug could be pulled at any time. "Instrumental music isn't considered to be as threatening as overt protest music," he says. "You just can't flaunt your point of view while performing. Still, to get clearance to play we had to submit a video and a CD to the Ministry of Culture. We were warned by festival organizers to make sure there was no nudity in the video or political sloganeering in the music."
Van Kan notes that there are also rules prohibiting artists from moving into the audience during a performance, but he considers government scrutiny a minor obstacle. However, he says, official approval doesn't come from the Ministry of Culture until shortly before the festival opens, which means that for the time being the Beijing Jazz Festival will not be advertised to the world as a jazz vacation destination. "We're doing this more for the Chinese anyway," he says, then adds diplomatically, "We'll see how it all progresses." As for the jazz press, Udo Hoffmann says inviting journalists is even trickier because of government restrictions. "We're not prepared for an influx of jazz critics. At this time, we're doing the festival as a commitment to expose the Beijing community to jazz."
Times are changing in China. It's inevitable. After dozens of years under the authoritarian government's rule of force, the clampdown is slowly eroding as an increasing number of Chinese people, especially the youth, are coming to an understanding of what it means to cherish that which cannot be forced.
At Tiananmen Square, the benevolent yet severe countenance of Mao Tse-tung oversees the historic meeting place and political rallying site. But at the opposite end of Tiananmen, there's the cheery, finger-licking-good face of Colonel Sanders perched atop one of several Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food joints proliferating throughout the city. It's as if there was a staring contest between Mao and the Colonel -- and the chairman blinked first, an act of surrender that opened the floodgates and allowed the Western economic and cultural tides to begin lapping onto the shores of China's major cities.
Indeed, profit-driven marketing has been making inroads here. In fact, the jazz festival has broken new ground by securing corporate sponsors such as Volkswagen and Bacardi. Commonplace in the West, this has been a first for a Chinese cultural event. But the biggest impact of U.S.-style commercialism comes via the television airwaves. In my hotel I tune into China's Channel V, the MTV-like video station that not only airs sexy clips of stateside singers like Sheryl Crow and Blossom but also promotes a number of Hong Kong-based Madonna wannabes. It's tame, G-rated fluff by U.S. standards, but in China, with its puritanical values, the cleavage, salacious pouts, bare midriffs and tons of sexual innuendo are no doubt frowned upon as scandalous by Chinese authorities.
I also watch CNN quite a bit, which gives plenty of coverage to Chinese dissident Wei Jingsten, the former Beijing electrician who was released from jail shortly before I traveled to China. While I am in Beijing, Wei holds his first news conference in the United States, which CNN covers. Incarcerated as a political dissenter, Wei says, "I've waited decades to exercise my right of democracy." Sidney Jones of the group Human Rights Watch comments in the same report, "Governments, even China's, can be made to bend."
Channel surfing is an eye-opener on how much Western culture permeates Chinese TV. There in its schlock and gore is big-time wrestling, plus dubbed Mighty Mouse cartoons, Chinese soap operas, Japanese films with Mandarin and English subtitles and black-and-white episodes of the '60s spy series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." with Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo fighting communist devils lurking in the shadows. And what about that half-hour infomercial touting the National Basketball Association: exciting "I Love This Game" highlight clips of alley-oop dunks, behind-the-back passes, killer-crossover dribbles and in-your-face struts and taunts.
It must seem like a dream world to those few Chinese viewers who have the money to own a television set and the even fewer with cable access. But the NBA footage makes me think of what happens not far from my hotel every morning at 10. A bell clangs at the middle school, and its playground, which I can see from my window, fills with a mass of children doing their daily exercises. The teacher barks out the instructions, and recorded march music blares out over the loudspeaker system. The kids obediently respond with shouts and squats, performed with military precision. This lasts for 15 minutes, then most of the students return to their classes. A small group of boys, either in a physical education class or at recess, remain on the playground, where they bounce basketballs and shoot hoop.
Freed from the strict mandates of the exercise drills, these young guys seem to come alive as they catch a b-ball groove and dribble-shoot-rebound with a casual fluidity. They play a game, improvising moves, fakes and passes. I can't help but think how much basketball reminds me of jazz.
Back at the festival, after her potent display of vocal improvisation, Betty Carter gives new fans flocking to her for autographs some jazz basics. While being interviewed by a Beijing television station, Carter says, "Jazz means that you can speak your mind musically and be accepted for doing it. You can do anything you want, change the tempo, put a new meter on a tune, anything. You don't have to conform to what other people expect you to do." It's jazz talk, but it sure sounds like a lesson in liberty too.
SALON | July 1, 1998
San Francisco music critic and journalist Dan Ouellette writes about jazz, blues and beyond for Down Beat, Stereophile and the San Francisco Chronicle. His work has also appeared in the New Yorker, Escape and Vibe. In his spare time, he's writing a book on the culture of the Volkswagen Beetle for Angel City Press.


	T A B L E_T A L K Have you ever traveled somewhere that you absolutely hated? Share the wheres and whys of it in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Among the hooligans By Ethan Zindler World Cup scenes: Threat and theft among the hooligans in Lens, France (06/30/98) Among the Colombians By Matthew Yeomans A Welshman watches the Colombia-England World Cup match from a Colombian bar in New York (06/30/98) Irredeemably wealthy in Patagonia By Mark Schatzker A bittersweet idyll in paradise (06/29/98) Mondo Weirdo Hooked on Thaipusam: An astonishing religious rite in Malaysia (06/26/98) Mondo Weirdo Going natural Wanderlust asks: What's your favorite nude beach? (06/26/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		JAZZ SWINGS INTO BEIJING . \| . PAGE 1, 2, 3 I embark on long meandering walks every day, past dozens of new high-rises, cranes perched on top, being built with Western capital, through the tiny back alleys of ramshackle shanty towns where tourists are rare, along locust tree-lined roads where bicycle repairmen set up shop with their tool boxes and tire-patching kits, through dusty parks where white-jacketed barbers snip hair and old men hang their pet birds in bamboo cages. Close to embassy row, I see more foreigners. An old woman with a broomstick and a tiny child slung on her back begs for money beneath the yellow arches of one of several McDonald's in the city. Just past the Beijing Friendship Store, where you can buy everything from jade rings to Chinese medicine balls, the spit-spotted sidewalks are filled with entrepreneurs openly hawking flimsy-looking erhus, the traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument, and the red book of Mao's sayings. Then there's the music. Even though the Ministry of Culture seems to tolerate the jazz festival, pop music of any Western stripe remains underground out on the streets of Beijing. Several people approach me and whisper, "CD? CD-ROM? CD?" in a clandestine manner reminiscent of the way dope dealers on Telegraph Avenue near People's Park in Berkeley used to push their stashes. I joke with Jon Jang about how much he's paying me to "manage" him this week. An excellent pianist and composer, Jang has become a friend over the past decade. He's the guy who clued me in on the existence of the Beijing festival and helped me figure out the best way to get here. We take a cab to the Summer Palace and then after walking around the peaceful grounds flag a bright yellow cab to Tiananmen Square to meet up with other members of his sextet. We head to the site of the Chinese government's bloody clampdown on free speech, the 1989 event that Jang, a third-generation Chinese American, staunchly critiqued in his poignant 1993 CD, "Tiananmen!" "Do the authorities know about that album?" I ask Jang, who is making his first performance in his ancestral homeland. He says he conveniently excised mention of it in the bio he submitted for his visa. Even so, he's not too worried about the Chinese government, although he acknowledges that the festival plug could be pulled at any time. "Instrumental music isn't considered to be as threatening as overt protest music," he says. "You just can't flaunt your point of view while performing. Still, to get clearance to play we had to submit a video and a CD to the Ministry of Culture. We were warned by festival organizers to make sure there was no nudity in the video or political sloganeering in the music." Van Kan notes that there are also rules prohibiting artists from moving into the audience during a performance, but he considers government scrutiny a minor obstacle. However, he says, official approval doesn't come from the Ministry of Culture until shortly before the festival opens, which means that for the time being the Beijing Jazz Festival will not be advertised to the world as a jazz vacation destination. "We're doing this more for the Chinese anyway," he says, then adds diplomatically, "We'll see how it all progresses." As for the jazz press, Udo Hoffmann says inviting journalists is even trickier because of government restrictions. "We're not prepared for an influx of jazz critics. At this time, we're doing the festival as a commitment to expose the Beijing community to jazz." Times are changing in China. It's inevitable. After dozens of years under the authoritarian government's rule of force, the clampdown is slowly eroding as an increasing number of Chinese people, especially the youth, are coming to an understanding of what it means to cherish that which cannot be forced. At Tiananmen Square, the benevolent yet severe countenance of Mao Tse-tung oversees the historic meeting place and political rallying site. But at the opposite end of Tiananmen, there's the cheery, finger-licking-good face of Colonel Sanders perched atop one of several Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food joints proliferating throughout the city. It's as if there was a staring contest between Mao and the Colonel -- and the chairman blinked first, an act of surrender that opened the floodgates and allowed the Western economic and cultural tides to begin lapping onto the shores of China's major cities. Indeed, profit-driven marketing has been making inroads here. In fact, the jazz festival has broken new ground by securing corporate sponsors such as Volkswagen and Bacardi. Commonplace in the West, this has been a first for a Chinese cultural event. But the biggest impact of U.S.-style commercialism comes via the television airwaves. In my hotel I tune into China's Channel V, the MTV-like video station that not only airs sexy clips of stateside singers like Sheryl Crow and Blossom but also promotes a number of Hong Kong-based Madonna wannabes. It's tame, G-rated fluff by U.S. standards, but in China, with its puritanical values, the cleavage, salacious pouts, bare midriffs and tons of sexual innuendo are no doubt frowned upon as scandalous by Chinese authorities. I also watch CNN quite a bit, which gives plenty of coverage to Chinese dissident Wei Jingsten, the former Beijing electrician who was released from jail shortly before I traveled to China. While I am in Beijing, Wei holds his first news conference in the United States, which CNN covers. Incarcerated as a political dissenter, Wei says, "I've waited decades to exercise my right of democracy." Sidney Jones of the group Human Rights Watch comments in the same report, "Governments, even China's, can be made to bend." Channel surfing is an eye-opener on how much Western culture permeates Chinese TV. There in its schlock and gore is big-time wrestling, plus dubbed Mighty Mouse cartoons, Chinese soap operas, Japanese films with Mandarin and English subtitles and black-and-white episodes of the '60s spy series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." with Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo fighting communist devils lurking in the shadows. And what about that half-hour infomercial touting the National Basketball Association: exciting "I Love This Game" highlight clips of alley-oop dunks, behind-the-back passes, killer-crossover dribbles and in-your-face struts and taunts. It must seem like a dream world to those few Chinese viewers who have the money to own a television set and the even fewer with cable access. But the NBA footage makes me think of what happens not far from my hotel every morning at 10. A bell clangs at the middle school, and its playground, which I can see from my window, fills with a mass of children doing their daily exercises. The teacher barks out the instructions, and recorded march music blares out over the loudspeaker system. The kids obediently respond with shouts and squats, performed with military precision. This lasts for 15 minutes, then most of the students return to their classes. A small group of boys, either in a physical education class or at recess, remain on the playground, where they bounce basketballs and shoot hoop. Freed from the strict mandates of the exercise drills, these young guys seem to come alive as they catch a b-ball groove and dribble-shoot-rebound with a casual fluidity. They play a game, improvising moves, fakes and passes. I can't help but think how much basketball reminds me of jazz. Back at the festival, after her potent display of vocal improvisation, Betty Carter gives new fans flocking to her for autographs some jazz basics. While being interviewed by a Beijing television station, Carter says, "Jazz means that you can speak your mind musically and be accepted for doing it. You can do anything you want, change the tempo, put a new meter on a tune, anything. You don't have to conform to what other people expect you to do." It's jazz talk, but it sure sounds like a lesson in liberty too. SALON \| July 1, 1998 San Francisco music critic and journalist Dan Ouellette writes about jazz, blues and beyond for Down Beat, Stereophile and the San Francisco Chronicle. His work has also appeared in the New Yorker, Escape and Vibe. In his spare time, he's writing a book on the culture of the Volkswagen Beetle for Angel City Press.