Last spring I started a new job, working as a DJ for a Chinese government radio station. As someone who is always up for something new, the opportunity seemed like a chance to turn life on its head and see how the other half of the world lives. I knew very little about modern-day China. My basic impressions had come from hanging out in various Chinatowns around the United States, Wong Kar-wai's film "Chungking Express" and Wham!'s video for "Freedom."
That clip documents the British group's 1985 visit to mainland China, where they were the first Western band allowed to perform at Mao's Workers' Gymnasium. The band recounts that the audience was told they were to remain seated and were advised to not clap or sing along. That wouldn't stop a few brave souls with '80s hair to cut loose as guards looked the other way.
Twenty-four years later, it's May 2009 and I'm at a hip rock club in east Beijing, Mao Livehouse, for the "Day of Reckoning" death metal festival. German veterans Destruction are about to take the stage after a slew of Chinese and Japanese bands have worked the over-capacity room to a sweaty pulp. The band rips into a monster set of thrash classics, whipping the mass of black T-shirt-, denim- and leather-clad, long-haired metalheads into a frenzy. Escaping the chaos, a tiny woman squeaks past me, introducing herself in her best broken English: "People call me Ice, I'm a lawyer. Welcome to Beijing."
China Radio International is one of a handful of government-run organizations that administer news and cultural programming within China's borders. But CRI also reaches across the globe, providing news and information in more than 40 languages via shortwave broadcasts, syndicated programs and websites. It's described as China's attempt at its own BBC, but my experience as a DJ in a workforce of more than 2,000 in Beijing has resembled a surrealist reality show. If the spirit of radio is to produce and communicate shared cultures via the universal means of music, I have found it an exhilarating honor to be captain of the airwaves for a year.
The English-language department at CRI houses Beijing's only bilingual radio station, EZ FM. Together with my counterpart, Lucy Luan, I host the afternoon music talk show "EZ Cafe." Lucy, in her 20s, studied English and music in China and in grad school at Arizona State. For three hours every day, Lucy, whom I call my "guardian angel," and I play our favorite music and discuss daily life, bouncing back and forth between languages -- the yin to each other's yang. I'm the obnoxious, oversexed, know-it-all American to her cuteness-obsessed, formal, proper Chinese girl. She insults me in Mandarin while I loft innuendos over her head like paper cranes.
Lucy has studied and played the guzheng (Chinese zither) since the age of 4. Musically our shared knowledge is miles apart, but we manage to mesh similar interests in bossa nova, singer/songwriters and dance music to create a unified mix, schooling each other along the way. Still, what I hear of Chinese pop I find intolerable, while for Lucy, as with most of her generation, this is what she's grown up with.
A lesson I learn immediately is that we Westerners take our pop-culture dominance for granted. We think the best of the West is universally appreciated, or sought after like a precious forbidden treasure to enlighten the sheltered East. Truth is, Western culture of the past 50 years has a spotty presence even in modern-day, Internet-savvy and bootleg-ridden China. Only since the 1990s has the edgier side of the music world trickled into the underground. In a world where common behaviors, political understandings and national pride trump conceptions of the popular radical, it can be difficult for an American hipster to find his place on the radio dial.
Still, the landscape is covered with curious fascinations and ripe with the beauty of radio randomocity. There's universal admiration for the King of Pop, but also the Bee Gees, John Denver, Beyoncé, Lady GaGa, the Killers and Kanye on EZ FM's airwaves. Wispy pop stars Jay Chou and Li Yuchun, songbird Faye Wong and "Canto-pop" superstar Karen Mok share time with Green Day, Linkin Park, Guns N' Roses and perhaps the most important American musical export in China -- Nirvana.
Ultimately it is the artful juxtaposition of different music that makes EZ Cafe our own sonic playground. Dizzee Rascal's "Bonkers" is our daily theme, and after much repetition Lucy gets turned on to Jimi, Zeppelin, Elliott Smith and some band no one's ever heard of, the Replacements. As we find chemistry, our shared love for singing becomes a weekly competition we call Chinese Idol, a nod to the favorite pastime of Chinese youths, karaoke. Listeners vote via text and our message board, making Lucy the Globetrotters to my Washington Generals. My performance of the '80s novelty "Fish Heads" is my only win.
What's permissible on-air is pretty common sense for most radio DJs. One would assume that in the Red State the bar is conservatively raised, but I am rarely told what to do or not to do, say or not to say. I'm hardly a concern to my superiors even when I purposely try to be. Much of my challenge is navigating the idiosyncrasies of the CRI hierarchy; as a Chinese proverb puts it, "The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water molds itself to the pitcher." If I can't break through to my colleagues in giving them a better understanding and knowledge of the music world, I try to integrate my attitude and sound into the overall pastiche of our station.
I've only been cornered by my bosses for serious discussion on how much I am able to drink, before heading out with an entourage of colleagues to northeastern China to interview and dine with officials in Harbin (a "sister city" of Minneapolis) and other small towns and villages. We are welcomed with lavish banquets and toasted with the traditional drink baijiû, a white liquor that looks like vodka and tastes of turpentine. The more seasoned officials and journalists depend on their tolerance and knowledge of the ritual. Being a quick study, I held my own, and as the week went by in a blur, I had the chance to see remote parts of the country and industry in action. It was here that I started to realize the dance necessary when working in the Communist media system -- the real purpose of impressing one another and creating virtual bonds as cogs of the machine we are a part of. All the while too drunk to really care.
But where my professional life is faced with arbitrary roles and standards, I find the real heart and soul of China in the friends I've made among the creative locals and expat youth cultures in the clubs and cafes tucked away in Beijing's historic Hutong alleyways. Virtually every day, artists and performers are constructing and deconstructing thousands of years of tradition, morphing it into new movements everywhere you look. The constant balance of old and new remains miraculously prevalent as artists and musicians combine swept-aside folk elements with modern pop-culture trappings.
In such a transient community, I find myself behind the drums, trading fours with musicians who rotate on and off stages all over the world. Chinese club owners who are hep to the jazz scene set the stage for singers and players from Norway, Japan, France, Russia and Austria, who erase language barriers via their instruments. I discovered a small restaurant that does its own version of Italian food (fruit pizza!), the Park. It turned out the owners were fans of my radio show and they bought a drum set for me to play there. With fellow Minnesotan Chris Corbett, who teaches English in Beijing, we put together a group of musicians and curated weekly performances, mashing up whatever styles of music would tickle our fancy.
It's easy to get swallowed up in Beijing's sprawling, amusement-park landscape of twisting streets and alleys, where construction cranes erecting new buildings virtually outnumber the existing monoliths. Every month you hear a different figure: 14, 16, 18 million people living in Beijing. The sea of people and constant movement of massive crowds can be not only suffocating but also psychologically isolating. You are surrounded by strangers and yet all alone.
Working in the inner sanctum of a government-run radio station, I still have no real idea about our listeners. One day in February, I'm in a mall to meet Lucy and some listeners who had invited us to lunch. We're greeted by a crew of friendly faces, waiting for us with posters they've made using pictures from our website. Over a long table of smoldering Sichuan fish, plum juice and steamed vegetables, we hang out and talk about what they do, and somewhere in the language maze, give one another thanks.
Yang, 20, who's wearing a camouflaged turtleneck sweater, tells me about studying at the military academy in Beijing when he discovered our show. He's getting ready to travel nine hours by train to his hometown of Suzhou, where he'll celebrate Spring Festival with his family. He tells me about music he never knew existed before listening to us. He writes a note in characters about how he likes my honesty and my funny hair. Lucy and I take them on a tour of our neighborhood, taking about a thousand pictures along the way, before saying our goodbyes.
It's the first day of spring -- Chinese New Year, which happens this year on Valentine's Day. Go figure. There is a lovely drumming of firecrackers and car alarms across the city. It's the year of the Tiger, which happens to be my year. I am not sure what that really means, except that everyone tells me I should stock up on red underwear. All I know is that this year I found myself in the most unlikely scenario of living, working and creating in China. I've also learned what the rest of the planet sees when they look at my own country. Politics isn't a big topic around the dinner table in China. This is a country that managed to strip personality from Barack Obama -- most Chinese were pretty nonplussed by his November visit. But I, on the other hand, have been welcomed with open ears.
Music in Beijing
Five impressions on the music scene in China's capital:
- The essential documentary "Beijing Bubbles" depicts Beijing's nascent early-'00s underground rock scene, with legends Hang in the Box, New Pants and Joyside, whose lead singer Bian Yuan is China's answer to Jim Morrison.
- Carsick Cars embarked on a U.S. East Coast tour in 2009 and dropped "You Can Listen, You Can Talk," a masterpiece of post-punk art rock. The trio returns Stateside in March for South by Southwest.
- The week China celebrated 60 years of Communist rule in October was more a bummer than celebration for music fans, as the annual Modern Sky Festival, which was to include Britain's Buzzcocks and Japan's Shonen Knife, would suffer the typical arbitrary government crackdown. All foreign bands' visas were canceled at the last minute, officially "because of reasons."
- My friend (and Minneapolis musician) Robert Skoro told me, "Folk music in China is what American folk musicians wish it was in the U.S." It's true, though this music has had about a 4,000-year head start. What to virgin ears may sound like a dentist conducting some of his finest work, the long melodies and seemingly random percussion in Chinese traditional music can be as hypnotic as they are anxiety-inducing, an all too perfect metaphor for its practitioners.
- KTV (karaoke television) has become the standard pastime for Chinese youth, housed in multilevel 24-hour complexes with video screens and buffet spreads as far as the eye can see. Neon lights mingle with tambourines and soda pop as singers unwind from dawn to dusk. Bargain discounts are given to those who get up early for the 5 a.m. rush to share love for the best of Mandopop classics.
