This interview is about Pale Air’s Dayday: The man, his bar and his band
I first visited Ale Garden for one of the venue’s jam sessions, and later met proprietor Dayday, Shi Xiangtian. Slim of build with a coif of hair and glasses, Dayday wouldn’t look out of place in an office, which is indeed where he spends his days for income. At night, to supplement his earnings and engage his passion for music, he has for the past few years taken on the management of a medium-sized bar and live venue near Fudan University, where I now walk into to partake in Ale Garden’s five-year anniversary.
Dayday is there in his signature glasses, sporting a collared v-neck shirt, and downs a shot of Jim Beam. Within moments he takes the stage with a vital sounding shoegaze band, a wall of sound through almost walls of people. Tonight’s performance again features indie bands Thousand Failures and Yeqiu Quan, just as these groups have performed at previous Ale Garden anniversaries. The place is about half full to start, but gradually fills to capacity of about 40-50 standing. Ale Garden needs to have events, public or private, almost every night, in order to draw the mostly student and recent graduate crowd to the bar.
天天戴着他标志性的眼镜，穿着有领子的V 领衬衫，喝下一个 Jim Beam shot。不一会儿，他就带着一支充满活力的盯鞋乐队登台了。今晚的演出再次由独立乐队千败和野球拳担纲，这两支乐队在之前的艾尔花园周年纪念演出中也有过精彩表演。演出开始时，全场只有一半人，但后来逐渐站满了约 40-50 名观众。艾尔花园几乎每晚都需要举办公共或私人活动，以吸引以学生和新毕业生为主的人群到酒吧来。
Dayday says it all started with a musically-inclined cousin, who played the guitar and piano in addition to traditional Chinese instruments guzheng and erhu. In the summer after high school, Dayday picked up his cousin’s guitar and practiced changing frets and chords while watching TV shows, learning to play Escape Plan’s Ten Thousand Sorrows.
While his college roommate was a fingerstyle virtuoso and he spent some time with Fudan University’s rock club, Dayday attributes his time in Taiwan’s Sun Yat-sen University as being most formative, since he played out the kinks in his style there and “pre-made all the mistakes he could make before getting on stage back in Shanghai.” Covering songs by Jay Chou and Metallica and watching the University’s music club put on the Southern District Rock Festival were fun, but his own performances left much to be desired in terms of tightness and professionalism.
Invigorated by his Taiwan experience, Dayday formed bands in his fourth year of college, including Joint, Red-White Dice, and Before the Mirror which only lasted for a semester each. He graduated with regret for not getting into bands earlier, but this regret propelled him to form shoegaze band Pale Air in 2017, which has continued to the present day. Pale Air being a play on words Pale Ale, a beverage which bassist Li Qingyang has a particular fondness for. The band features Xu Weiyang on drums, guitarist and vocalist Zhang Jiangnan, and guitarist Dayday, and 2017 began a carefree time when the band could “play on effects panels all day long” and “immerse [themselves] in the sea of creation.”
Pale Air got its start in various Fudan venues along with Neo Bar, and is now signed with renowned indie music label Shengjian Records. The band recently released a studio album, their first since beginning the project in 2019, with influences such as Slow Dive, DIIV and Ringo Deathstarr. Prolonged creation of the album came from band members going abroad along with impacts from the pandemic, and succeeded in the end with recordings done in an uncle’s basement and Mark Gardener from Ride’s studio in the UK. Mixing was done by Chi from shoegaze band DoZzz, after the last recorded bits were completed in Dirty Fingers’ studio.
For his part, Dayday wonders if he should get started on something other than Ale Garden, which he originally took on because of health reasons. It’s not hard to see him as the driving force and a leader behind Ale Garden’s success – its WeChat posts get hundreds and even thousands of views now in a steady increase from before – and Dayday has tried his hand at organizing shows as well, with mixed results. His experience speaks to the difficulty of making an income in China’s current independent music scene: “It’s hard enough to think about myself, let alone the wider environment,” he admits, but “life becomes more three-dimensional because of music, it records the present, becoming a part of memory.” Here’s hoping fans can appreciate the effort put into the music and Ale Garden before Dayday (maybe) moves on to something new.
(A jam session at Ale Garden) 对于天天来说，他不知道自己是否应该开始做一些其他的事情。如果最初不是因为健康原因选择不工作而接手了艾尔花园，现在的生活又会是怎样的呢？不难看出，他是艾尔花园成功背后的推动者和领导者–现在艾尔花园微信公众号的浏览量已经达到数百甚至数千，比以前稳步上升。他的经历说明了在中国目前的独立音乐场景中赚取收入的难度： 他坦言：”考虑自己已经很困难了，更不用说考虑大环境，但 “因为音乐，生活变得更加立体，音乐作为一种载体记录了当下，成为记忆的一部分。“ 希望乐迷们能在天天（或许）转向新的领域之前，欣赏到他为音乐和艾尔花园所付出的努力。
When guitarist Nick Aliev asked a veteran Shanghai bassist if he wanted to jam to some of Aliev’s songs, he didn’t expect the answer to be yes. That’s how the backbone of Lakipak was founded in pre-pandemic China, with the group is slated to perform four nights at the Shanghai Lincoln Center jazz club starting in late April.
Aliev describes Lakipak as a musical experiment: Put experienced musicians together with the outline or “skeleton” of one of his songs, and pretty soon the mostly classical, jazz and gospel-trained members are going to fill out a bass line here or a hook there on their own. Aliev defines the genre solely as jazz/R&B, but listeners of Lakipak – of which there are thousands on Spotify – probably don’t need to pay much attention to labels to enjoy the show, and neither should you. Six singles so far – with more coming soon – feature a whopping four lead singers, which speaks to the inventiveness of the ensemble and its diverse styles, although Veronica will be the crooner taking the stage come April 30th along with keyboardist Chad Higgenbottom, bassist Francis Akwasi and drummer Pascal Naigom.
“The goal is to surround myself with better musicians than I am,” Aliev laughed, noting that “there must be something in the water in Mauritius,” where bassist Fred is from, given how many good musicians come from there. Aliev’s own music background is a winning combination of classical and metal, and he describes Lakipak as not for the “casual listener,” due to the group’s music having complexity mixed with a little pop simplicity. The trained ear will hear complex breakdowns with countervailing but at times soaring melodies, bringing a fusion genre to bear in a process that Aliev describes as “just do stuff…it’s more valuable to experiment” at this point in the group’s formation than be tied to any particular style or formula.
“目的是要找一些比我厉害的乐手，” 包含毛里求斯来的Fred，又是一个那个国家来的音乐奇才。Aliev 自己是古典音乐和重金属的结合品，使得Lakipak在某种程度上不是随便听的音乐，颇有剧情和复杂度，时而反切时而高昂的旋律值得分析，也很值得听进它们的pop内容。这种制作过程被形容为“just do stuff”。
On Lakipak’s signature “Groovin’,” cozy visual cues from Silk Sonic’s pandemic-inspired in-studio music videos mix with decidedly jazzy chords in an R&B style. Anti-war “Without a Gun” reflects the Eastern European origins of some of Lakipak’s members, while the pandemic also saw some musicians stranded in exotic locales for a time or leaving China entirely, although without too much effect on the ultimate composition of the band.
“Shanghai is still the capital of Eastern music, with the possible exception of Jakarta or Tokyo – definitely for the Chinese scene, which is starting to get into the spotlight with new performances and artists going abroad,” Aliev describes. Many of the new generation of musicians were trained by a previous generation, which goes to show how Shanghai’s music scene in particular is very welcoming, with people being largely non-judgmental and willing to greet and help out newcomers.
If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you will know that we get weird and wonderful sometimes. In celebration of Spring finally arriving, we’re going to do 妓女泪 – “Tears of a Prostitute” – with Tape History recordings of early Songhu (Shanghai) Opera provided in the link below:
Traditional music enters the tape history in a number of ways, with Songhu Opera (沪剧) being only one form of Chinese opera for which tape records exist. Not to be confused with its more widespread cousin, Yue Opera (越剧), Hu – 沪 – is the Chinese character for Shanghai. This particular opera using the Shanghai dialect originated from a folk style of music in the Pudong area, where it became known as 滩簧. In 1927, this style gained definition in local traditional opera presented in stage plays (文明戏), and then officially became Huju in 1941 (thanks Sogou Encyclopedia).
Chinese opera with printed lyrics is a fantastic way to learn dialect – Shanghainese in this case – and listeners will find that the music is quite good in most Chinese operatic styles, as their casts have traditionally represented a portion of China’s top musical talent.
Ji Nu Lei is a 1940s-era tale about a mother who becomes a prostitute to support her son after her husband is brutalized by the Japanese; the husband later commits suicide. She is predictably taken advantage of because of her status, but her son is able to finish school (him being out-of-school is seen as another nightmare scenario) and gets married, though he is too ashamed to see his mother. A real tear-jerker through and through, and different from other Chinese opera in its modern dialogue and contemporary settings and costumes.
Only tapes two and three from a three-part series that makes up the full performance are available in the tape history, but it gives you a flavor of this style of opera. The full Tape History is provided via the link below:
Once in a blue moon, a blog about music and sci-fi and dreams and as many topics as this one finds a way to come full circle – if only for a little bit. Speaking of, you can buy a copy of my science fiction Anthology here, and there’s more to come in a newsletter and a novel.
This WeChat write-up in Chinese covers more than what I could myself, a primary source account of underground disco parties that proliferated in small cities and towns during the mid-to-late 1980s China.
These tapes – in Cantonese, Hollywood Star Trax roughly sounds like Hedong, or Hollywood East in Mandarin – were part of a series still available online here and there of Euro and US disco/electronic dance mixes popular during the 1980s.
As the article above states, the “disco” would consist of a beat-up tape recorder, some reflective lighting, four old couches, and the hall monitors would turn a blind eye to moonwalking and other Western-inspired dance moves.
We hear the precursors to Minions in vaguely Spanish or Italian artists, and all the popular music of the era you can cut up and mix onto cassette, which is to say the tapes are novelty items and nostalgic for an era of relative cultural opening, according to the author of the cited piece. I would look for all editions of the Hedong tapes, but the music is catchy insipid rather than inspired.
You can be the judge of that yourself, as the three tapes I did find are on the Tape History. Of note, the songs are arrayed in “kebab style” (“串烧”) quick tracks one after another for continuity in a dance hall setting – or just generally getting hype.
So what’s the deal? Did China become more socially conservative in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union? Or did globalization require an obedient workforce and consumer base, one that China was all too happy to provide given the economic windfall…only to have it run aground decades later when globalization took its biggest hit yet with COVID-19?
所谓的社会保守是为了与国际经济同化的策略吗？同化而不同步，可能吗？
Bonus: The “Warrior” Mengshi tapes followed Hollywood Star Trax and their album art feature some fantastically unoriginal scenes from with equally mushy and effects-driven 80’s tunes. I’ve uploaded the music from these tapes for completeness. Many more of these await on secondary market, if anyone is interested in starting their own collection…
Waidiren’s front man Will Kemp has been here before – the bands, the music, the eccentric underground art events in subterranean digs – which is why Waidiren’s debut EP album is about the third or fourth thing on the agenda as we meet in one of Shanghai’s swanky, tasty yet decidedly nondescript luxury Thai restaurants for “curry shrimp” and Cab-Sauvs.
“It’s whatever this economic death machine we’re building ourselves, it’s the kind of dialogue that I would feel a pat on the back on playing this game on the toilet of my corporate office.”
“这是经济的自讨苦吃，这种对话会让我边上厕所边打手机游戏的时候有一种被认同的感觉。”
Yes, we’ve all felt the shadowpat-on-the-back before, the quiet conviction of quiet quitting, the “I might as well shit on company dime,” the nagging angst that despite what the corporation is wont to say, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Will finds meaning in his work now, which somewhat complicates the whole angst of performance rock itself. He simultaneously helps run KAOS in the Underground, an arts, culture and local crafts showcase that puts on monthly performances and mini-festivals in a well-known underground bar in Shanghai. All from tattoo artists to animal rescuers and budding musical talent make an appearance, so Mr. Kemp finds balance, from corporate to underground administration to music-making and performances, although there haven’t been many of those going on recently.
Will 在工作里找到了意义；这稍微与表演艺术/摇滚乐里的无奈产生了一种矛盾。他是KAOS的主办人，一个邀请音乐人，纹身师和救救小动物的爱好者共同努力的活动。Kemp先生在繁忙的工作和兴趣和音乐里找到平衡。
The band’s EP is a whimsical mix of material from Will’s early music in the UK, where he is originally from, and other more recent fare such as “Wake up in Pudong,” another shadowpat everybody can enjoy. Other songs are about his father, who passed away earlier in Will’s life. The music sounds tight and the songs are catchy, so you’ll have to see them for yourself live to garner the full experience of the bilingual quips and gift of the gab that Will holds the audience’s attention with. Make no mistake, their performances are exciting. However a lack of venues due to obvious reasons and changes in band lineup due to other reasons has made it difficult, but not impossible for Waidiren to find their sweet spot.
Friday night kicked off Bob is Tired’s Yuyingtang doubleheader, two sold-out shows over one weekend to draw their successful China touring of the past months to a close.
– Philip Hsu, Contributing Writer
Bob is Tired opens with a tightness not often seen in live acts, immediately proving that while this pop-punk style of music is not necessarily my cup of tea, there’s something else in the water that is propelling this band to its current success. What starts out with very 五月天 and Jay Chou-inspired numbers devolves deliciously into something I last heard with the Brian Jonestown Mass., which is sort of shoegaze but with kick, and undoubtedly sinister.
On the 3rd song rhythms plummet through guitar and chords, setting up psychedelic smoke plunging into null beats: The beat you think is there, but isn’t, setting up excellent dissonance and pulling the audience into the sound. Be it uptempo or a mellow, underwater pop mood, Bob is Tired puts forth a classic 迷魂/銷魂 sound which takes influences from EDM also.
Bob is Tired’s compositions and technical skill are in many ways a cut above its competition, and the band’s musicality is strong, i.e. the composition of the notes and rhythms to produce a musical nature. However, some themes could be better defined – clear experimentation by the artists produces music which is counterintuitive, but at times too subtle. The band’s range is described as a box of chocolates a la Forrest Gump, but that movie’s most quotable characters and lines are from Jenn-ay and Liutenant Dann (you have to say it with a Southern accent), not from the titular protagonist.
We can see the fruits of in-depth musical exploration and investment from the clear themes and ideas in the band’s song after the chocolate monologue, striking direction and vocalizations which punctuate rhythms closely and distinctly.
With this amount of creative output and technical skill, Bob is Tired does not lack direction or ability, but could develop more concepts in its work. We’re looking forward to seeing them again and hoping they’ll extend their stay in the moment, and in the scene.
The Messy 梅西合唱团, Annaki 安娜其, Purple Jam 酱紫, Neotea Store 新茶士多
– THE BOXX
2021.08.01
Pinkie Hello! Pinkie Roar! – The Boxx Rises
Sunday night saw The Boxx’s first live show at its monumental new location on “Laowai Street.” The performance as a whole was impressive at a quality venue, reminiscent of a skillful watercolor exhibition at a fine gallery. However, as is sometimes the case with watercolors, using too much water when mixing colors can result in blurry results, and live music is no exception. Let’s have a look.
Pre-show, we are treated to videos of Japanese artists Kei Hayashi and YMB, the former channeling Usher and Chris Brown in an empty stadium for J-inspired R&B and Soul, the latter sitting in Tatami environments jamming out home recordings in a more Pop Rock style. This seems to please the crowd at the venue, which is mostly comprised of young women dressed like they are going to a picnic.
Unfortunately, since I can’t speak Japanese, all I hear is ahh ahh yayoo oishi desu ga. Those sunny days sitting by the window in swanky Tokyo apartments as your purebred cat saunters by lush bonsai were to me but so many uncut trips past the sake bar Decibel and the eternal silence of St. Mark’s Square.
Enough, the performance begins. Purple Jam which I guess is like Pearl Jam but Purple, says they are the first band to ever perform at this new space, which is nice because it’s a nice space. At this point there’s like 20 people in the audience but Purple Jam are Purple Pros and rock away with an unreleased song featuring nimble xylophonics overlaid on a J-Jazz base. This deserves credit for originality and gusto, and when the sound system miscooperates in the next song, I actually like the resulting sound better than the somewhat canned but better-known number that they end up going with.
I think I am supposed to be happy listening to these songs. They are slightly shorter than, well, the length with which songs are usually played with, but this is not a bad approach to condense songs in a live setting to maintain intensity. By their 3rd song Purple Jam show signs of life as a strong rhythm section pulls the piece through with solid vocals supporting. You can really start to hear the warmth and intensity of the song, even though it’s “soft.” We hear depth and meaning in songwriting: Lyrics with a message, to sink into you, to be content just spending time and life with one’s partner, reveal Purple Jam’s range and depth, which convert well between individual songs in their performance.
Most of the time only the bassist is looking at the lead singer or anyone else in the band to keep tempo, which may be helped if the performers walk around the stage more, to generate space in the body which follows into the voice and the overall musicality. The lead singer even remarks that one of his songs makes him want to move around like a rapper, which is the correct instinct here.
An obligatory funk number occurs; the sound is well-blended and enjoyable but doesn’t hold the syncopated descension that traditional funk usually evokes. As the lights come on to shine on the gaudy sheen of cosplay outfits present in the audience, I have to say that Purple Jam did a much better job (Jam?) than people maybe realize. Cohesive playing and surprising, subtle depth coalesce into a warmly charismatic performance which could be potentially elevated in any number of ways – but no rush. We’ll hear more of them yet.
The eyes deceive when I hear the disco balls spinning and Neo Tea Shop takes the stage. “Deceive,” for I have never been to Miami, let alone during the 1980s, yet for the second time now it appears as though the tenor of that time, with Funk, have Resurfaced in Retro. I am not so Hong Kong either, but I only surmise that certain styles have spent themselves across the coursing paths of uninterrupted time to deliver unto us such Siren Songs.
Neo Tea lead singer describes the band’s music as sleepwalking, evoking and reflecting the night, which would be much better served if the band’s rhythms didn’t become plodding at times. Mishaps with sound and smoke unrelated to performers reveal that the technical nature of music is a practiced art, and unfortunately nearly every act experienced such an inspired learning tonight.
After the smoke comes a “Weiweian” slow dance measure, which was very stylish: I distinctly had a vision of prom night, although maybe more middle school dance for this one, those terrible pink dresses and how they just did not have my size tux, but at the end of the day, it’s not about what you were wearing, but who was wearing you on their sleeve. The chaperones may enforce the arm’s-length slow dance, but you can still look quite lightly into your partner’s eyes, then longer, then deeper and longer still until a smile crosses both of your lips and you laugh like the teenagers you are and run to your giggling and similarly awkward friends in the corner. Lovely.
I’m starting to get a feel for this style of music, which seems to be DEPAPEPE influenced by J-Rock; a light air but not sure if Final Fantasy 8 or the sound the Asahi machine makes when you need to replace the keg. By that, I mean FF7 is considered the classic and Kirin is the superior beer, but all games and beer have merit, as long as you are invested enough in your choices. So it is probably not a great look to pull an iconic theme out of a very well-known Coldplay song as your hit song, as subsequently the light air has a chance of becoming just air. Then again, I come from the country that is proud of making Budweiser, so maybe I should just shut up. Overall, I thought this was a good act, and I will remember that Weiweian song for quite some time.
Now it’s always a good sign when you’re just minding your own business and whoops, wave of sound just sweeps off you a bit like those unwanted children of riptides off the Jersey Shore. Songwriting becomes key to stringing vocals and rhythm together and My Word, Annaki are moving, moving onstage, onSTAGE! It’s Alive, Alive!
See, this is the nice part where the drums and guitar both go crazy. Vocals not pushing or shouty but keep intensity, unfortunately a rather unique vocal quality is a bit lost in motion here and would definitely deserve to be brought out more. This drummer is a monster and everyone is working hard to keep up – Nothing a few cardio sessions at your friendly neighborhood Super-Z-Orange-ropes flying-circuit-Circuit-stretchy-stretch-stretch-yogalates can’t improve!
Distortion in the music marks the part where the UFO saucers start flying and death rays beam onto those people waving the signs on the rooftop of Capitol Records. I’m loving it but there’s still only 2 people dancing (well 3 if you include me) and the reason is because some folks in the band – not gonna name any names – are not keeping time.
Will Smith has perfect timing, which is why we buy his reaction to (fake CGI) aliens coming out of spaceships he shot down all by himself in an F/A-18 that can’t even fly at those altitudes at that speed for more than 20 minutes, let alone traverse the entire Grand Canyon after suffering a brutal defeat in LA which is in California, not Nevada; they are 800 km apart.
Just go with it and say if you had perfect timing, you, too, could save the world from bad music while somehow still acting surprised about Area 51, even though we know the aliens came for the cattle and not us. Ok, what I mean is, timing allows the audience to suspend their (dis)beliefs, and in complex acts especially this is a pretty hard line that needs to be walked. With Annaki’s massive energy, talented sound, strong songwriting, a female lead singer bringing this amount of spunk and overall quite well-put-together package and image, now comes the work to “draw the eyes on the dragon,” to channel chaos further into being.
Something about adult games which I guess is like 50 Shades of Grey follows, but I do like the darker vibes, which diverge into grrrrlrock. Sorry, I do not know what the correct spelling of this word is. I’m seeing twenty one pilots now; I also want to see The Black Keys. Shoegaze influences blend into pop rock a la FIR, but the musical Stratosphere consists of both firmament and pluckering it with greater decision and crispness, the feeling of a single silver jetliner crossing an endless blue sky; I already see the chemtrails, now please also provide the 747.
Experimentation with electronic sound and synth new wave directs towards new directions in Annaki’s repertoire, a real festival crowd-pleaser which to me shows a band very much in sync with itself and understanding the essence of what makes a good song. Now it remains to be a matter of maturing this essence, allowing it to pervade throughout the rest of the band’s work, and throughout a single performance.
Rounding out the four-band set is The Messy, which has one of the best “Spines” – in this instance, driving and tight rhythm between 3-piece guitar, bass, drums, and dual vocalists – I’ve heard in a while. The drummer is also on point although makes me wonder what additional directions this band could find with less restraint.Catchy funk bass lines and guitar riffs draw the audience in and Messy’s Spine keeps it, but after Yelang Disco, everything now sounds like Yelang Disco. Standing mics might be a limitation here, you can see both moving and rhythm freed up when the two lead vocalists walk around the stage with their instruments jamming, which can’t happen with a stationary mic setup. Overall Messy are tight but not constrained, adding cool new wave synth when warranted, which could be improved by developing better focus and themes in the musical notes employed. The vocal sound mix also needed some attention, at least to get it up to the level of KKBox when your uncle starts belting out Deng Li Jun and Auntie lah, just want to go home lah.
Messy play well together and sound awesome, I just have a hard time finding where a style of music traditionally played in smoky bars where mature ladies with deep voices down tequila shots now enters the Chinese mainstream. Franz Ferdinand influences appear with a vengeance, but I think where Penicillin captured quite well the angst of Britpop or post-punk, lyrically and musically songs describing common themes could stand with breaking up or playing a little with emotions, tones, timbre, levels.
To expand on my watercolors metaphor, tonight’s performance was like attending a very enjoyable art gallery exhibition of talented watercolor paintings, but at times so much water was used in mixing the paints such that the individual pieces and paintings became blurry. Not that the blurriness necessarily reduced the enjoyment, but that I became someone who wanted to see the objects or subjects of the paintings more clearly, and yet could not distinctly do so, and then started to wonder why many of the paintings looked quite similar. At times I could indeed see that a piece represented a portrait of a woman, for example, or a landscape or an emotion, but I could not determine from the piece or its introduction alone who that woman is, or what they or those emotions or landscapes mean to the artists who painted them
As a jam or complete piece, and definitely in an entire performance, the audience needs to be challenged aurally to stay engaged, and at times despite real technical skill and quite impeccable teamwork put on play with Messy, I was becoming a bit lost as to which song was which. A re-watch of Saturday Night Fever may be in the cards here, with particular attention to the exact arrangement of John Travolta’s chest hair and the part where the Bee Gees sing, and I quote: “Ahh-Ahh-Ahh-ahh Stayin’ Aliveeee~iveeee~ivvvveeee.”
Having listened to all of the bands featured tonight on the streaming before coming to the show, I had a good feeling about the performance, and it turned out to be as much as I had hoped for, and even better. The venue is actually quite nice as size and surrounding amenities – it seems especially suited to a major rap or hip-hop act – and the staff are professional and involved. Hopefully, more people will be dancing next time around and I am not now banned from the premises for having one too many watermelon juices. Stayin’ Aliveeee~
This is part of the back-to-back posts on China adventures!
The weekend before I represented my company at a forensics conference in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is a huge city about two hours away from Shanghai by plane, so I flew out from the airport closer to the city in Shanghai (Hongqiao).
Air travel in China has gotten a lot better since the days of “rude inflight behavior” that was quickly quashed by the government.
The ride to the hotel from the Wuhan airport was very long, and featured row after row of tall, dark apartment buildings. It felt a little bit dystopian, Ghost in the Shell-like.
The Hetian hotel itself was nice – Hetian means field of lotuses – and the accommodations were pleasant. They did have creepy pandas at the entrance and rip-off Peppa Pig statues though. Why are there always creepy animal statues everywhere in China? Is it just creepy because they are putting cutesy things in non-family spots?
Anyway, allow me to introduce a little about part of what I’m doing in China. Over the course of civil litigation in the United States, there is a Discovery phase where the litigants have to surrender (almost) all of their records related to the case. The scope of discovery is determined by a judge or simply by management if they are doing an internal investigation.
Right?
So our job is to go and collect as instructed by lawyers all the documents and data related to the scope of discovery, including emails, Word, Excel or Powerpoint documents, mobile data like text and instant messages, other specialty data types, sometimes social media, scanned and paper documents, everything. Obviously this can get to be a lot of data.
“Greatly nurture and actualize the core values of socialism”
Then we process and load that data into a database where lawyers and (our) investigators can review the documents in a page-by-page format.
Military Olympics in WuhanWuhan University
In my next post, I’ll go over some details of the conference.
I realize that the Shanghai Edition of this blog is my most popular feature, so I am pushing out back-to-back posts about more of my experiences in China.
Two weekends ago I travelled to Hangzhou to support a colleague running the Hangzhou marathon. I did not run the marathon myself. Hangzhou is a very developed city about an hour southwest from Shanghai on the high-speed rail (HSR). It is most famous for its picturesque West Lake and for being where Alibaba’s main headquarters is located.
Not my picture
Booking the HSR ticket was a pain as you need to connect your real-name authenticated identity with a Chinese railway app called 12306 to book a train ticket (no such requirements for plane tickets, I guess it’s impossible for people to enter or leave the country otherwise). But I ended up having to go to the train station itself a day or two before to stand in line for tickets, and “tying” my passport (i.e. real name) to 12306 in person at the train station service center.
The other alternative is to buy tickets at special ticket counters throughout the city, but none were close to where I live or work. Then there is a special lane for foreigners when you go through the gates at the station.
Shanghai or Hangzhou station
Saturday evening I arrived at a Holiday Inn, which was an experience in of itself. These hotels aren’t exactly luxury ones in the US, but they are in China. Because of my status as a Spire Elite member with Intercontinental Hotels (a distinction I earned while staying at the Crowne Plaza in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay for more than a month for work) around only $80 a night I was upgraded to a very nice room and given 2 drink vouchers. I also got a 15% discount on the food I ordered for dinner.
What?? You’re lucky to get bottled water in the US! There must be so much competition between the hotels leading to such niceties. The wine with the drink vouchers was quite good Chilean (?) wine and the Hainanese Chicken Rice was good too. At a Holiday Inn. I forgot to take pictures, you can look it up yourselves!
The next morning, the marathon itself began and ended near West Like, but we never got to see the lake because it was so crowded in the vicinity of the finish line (the Huanglong sports stadium). Below is a picture of the stadium. It was pretty interesting because the inner ring of the stadium, not in the stadium itself, was filled with restaurants. Everywhere around the stadium were restaurants.
We arrived around 11 AM and the marathon ended around 1 pm. Apparently this marathon is a lot easier to get spots in than the Shanghai marathon, which gives spots mainly to foreign runners.
My other colleague and I watched the finishing runners from a vantage point and ended up cheering on our colleague as she approached the finish line. After it was done we went to a local restaurant and toured a creative colony (? essentially a lot of creative industries and cafes in the same area).
Hard to believe China has such a place, but there you go. Most of Southeast China is considered the cultural center of the country. On the other hand, the traffic is notorious for being very bad, so we spent a lot of time in DiDi rideshares.
There were a lot more people than this makes it look like
Actually I have been to West Lake and Hangzhou before, since I have family in the area – My grandfather on my dad’s side has a sister who lives in the vicinity, and I visited her and other extended family members around when I was in middle school. They lived a hour or more drive away from Hangzhou in nice villas now that they made some money off of owning a factory. They also had a small lake where we took a speedboat ride (grandpa’s sister included) and I remember playing ping-pong with some extended family as well. Needless to say, times have changed since those folks were growing up.
These are the family that my grandfather could not return to in China after 1949, as he had gone to Taiwan prior to the Nationalist Government escaping there from the mainland. He did not see them again until the 1980s.
Ads running outside of the subway train (on the walls)
There is one more tidbit about the Hangzhou trip that is interesting: I booked the wrong ticket going back so had to quickly get another one at the ticket window in East Hangzhou station. But they could not provide any more tickets on the same train going back, they only had tickets for the next train. Fine, I thought. But my colleague ended up actually booking a ticket for me on the original train through CTrip, one of the travel booking apps I covered in my other post, by “competing” for an online ticket for that train. You compete by inviting friends to support your “competition” for that ticket as they click into a link and “push” you forward in the app. We won the ticket, so away I went.
As the dust settles and the “new car smell” begins to fade after
my arrival in China nearly two months ago, the reality of living here for two
or more years starts to set in.
I think this is a good thing, as it allows me to focus on my
work and my writing.
On the other hand, the end of the honeymoon period came
about rather quickly and with some unnecessary consternation. It is easy for me
to live in Shanghai, but to enjoy it is a different story.
I have come to frequent a jazz bar in the neighborhood where
I live and work called Wooden Box. It is pretty much that, a single-story wood-enclosed
structure with a small area for live performances. The first night I went there
the remnants of a typhoon were blowing through the city, so the light rain and
the wind contrasted with the warmth and jazz within the venue. I even went up
and sang a rendition of the song Night and Day a la Frank Sinatra to a crowd of
about five people. The intimate venue allowed me to speak with and interact with
the musicians as well.
The jazz bassist Danny spoke of how it was becoming
difficult for foreign musicians to stay in the country due to tightening
restrictions on visas. For whatever reason, we also discussed where everyone
was on 9/11 (Danny was working as a legal proofreader in New York at the time).
Another evening I was there, some Chinese (probably)
musicians were performing bluegrass music. Yes, American bluegrass music. It made
me think of a bluegrass festival I went to with my grandparents in North
Carolina when I was young. As these things go, it made me a little sad, since
the world and America my grandparents lived in is no longer in existence, and I
really don’t know what to make of its replacement.
Jazz and bluegrass, bluegrass like what I heard on public radio when I was living in North Carolina, those haunting winter nights. Who put the record on every Friday? Someone has to keep the light on for the arts when the onslaught of now threatens to extinguish them. The songs my grandparents used to listen to, so many of them from the 30s, 40s, 50s, are gone with them. Someday, I too will grow so old that I won’t know any of the songs on TV, on the radio, on the internet, whatever will be the form of communication then. Telepathy for all I (and Elon Musk) know.
It’s a scary thought, which is part of the reason why I try to listen to new songs to keep up with whatever’s going on in music right now. But sometimes I still find some interesting bits, like an Apple Music album called 1930s Radio Show Classics. Live from the Hotel Lincoln, in New York City, is Artie Shaw and his Orchestra. Right now I’m listening to a song called Night Over Shanghai, about “pale yellow faces and sad old eyes.” Ha!
Actually, I doubt they will ever stop playing Beatles or Jimi Hendrix songs in my lifetime, so I might be safe there. And the artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift will want to maintain their dominance for years to come (Note: I am not a fan of either). But in 2017 I remember watching the MTV awards, again with my grandfather, and there were quite a few artists and acts that I couldn’t recognize at all, until Jared Leto showed up with tribute to Chester Bennington of Linkin Park (the band’s lead singer who had committed suicide). Finally, some people I knew.
Where am I going with this…music, jazz, getting older, music will always be my refuge. But it’s what happens when the music ends, that’s the problem.
