After a really productive blog-month last October (10 posts!), I’ve been kind of a slacker. But with a week off for Spring Festival, I’ve been making up for lost time. Moving on from the current festivities, I now jump back to 2008, December 12.
Since the famous Water Cube (水立方) is not being used for Olympic events anymore, it is hosting a nightly concert featuring a live orchestra and programmed fountains and lights. At ¥200 a seat, it’s probably a bit overpriced to draw much of a crowd. Certainly the night I went it was poorly attended. The name of the show is Water Cube Fantasy (梦幻水立方 Menghuan Shui Lifang). They have a small orchestra on the deck between the diving pool and the swimming pool, and the swimming pool is rigged with a network of pipes and nozzles and lights. While the orchestra played a selection of famous European classical pieces by Strauss, Beethoven, Rossini, and so on, the water was made to dance in time. The “wall of water” effect turned out to be a prominent feature of the show… …as they killed the lights and projected moving pictures onto the liquid screen. The orchestra took a break while a video collage of local scenes and Olympic highlights played.
There were also some taped musical numbers of Chinese “traditional” music. It often seems that the Chinese have an aversion to actual traditional music, so what we heard was modern interpretations of traditional tunes done with synthesizers and drum machines accompanying Chinese instruments.
Here’s a video I took of the ending part of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” to give you a feeling for what it was like.
For a second movie segment, they used the desert horse race from Hidalgo with “Ride of the Valkyries” as a soundtrack. In a particularly interesting artistic choice, to make it fit the length of the music, we got to see the most exciting parts of the race twice. The show lasted only 45 minutes or so.
The last time I visited the Water Cube was before the Olympics, you can compare the pictures from before with this one of the concourse. They’re selling all sorts of Water Cube memorabilia, from T-shirts and hats to expensive jewelry and commemorative coins.
Surviving wintertime in Northern China involves finding ways to deal with the cold temperatures. Certainly Beijing is mild compared to some cities farther north, but it’s plenty cold to make a person dream of palm trees and maitais. One strategy is to actually find ways to make the cold fun. Last year I saw people engaging in a variety of icy pastimes on the frozen lakes of the city, and this year I gave it a try for myself. I went with a friend to Qianhai and rented a thing I suppose you would call an ice bike. It’s kind of like a bicycle made to go on ice. Lots of other people were doing the same thing, including this pair of monks. I was riding a bike just like theirs. It was definitely not made for someone with legs as long as mine. The ice chairs with poles for pushing were also popular, and some people even got together in chains to share the effort.
Ever since I first saw the shopping center in Beijing with the English name The Place, I have been fascinated with the sheer scale of the over-the-top design. Little did I suspect I would eventually be commuting there every day. It’s one of those locations here that if you call it by its English name to a local, they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about, in spite of the prominent signs everywhere. That’s because the Chinese name is 世贸天阶 (Shimaotianjie), which translates to something like World Trade Sky Stairs – in other words, nothing even remotely like the English name. As an aside, it reminds me of a certain classic rock song about a stairway to heaven and the futility of seeking material wealth, but that’s neither here nor there in spite of the ironic appropriateness, since The Place is, if nothing else, a monument to celebrate wealth.
It’s really filled up since I first wrote about it a year and a half ago – most of the empty spaces have been filled, and there are a whole bunch of restaurants on level B1. Of course, the main novelty here is still the Skyscreen. Luckily they’ve got a lot more content available for it. Every evening at 6:00 we hear it start up and the glow from it creeps into our office. We’re on the sixth floor, which puts us exactly even with it, so we can’t see the images from our windows, but when we leave the building, there it is.
Sometimes they just show boring animations of their logo flying around, but they have several interesting CGI pieces, like that outer space one I posted on Youtube. The most frequent one involves an undersea scene.
Tonight I saw one that I didn’t get any pictures of. There were ghostly human figures floating above a landscape of barren mountains, and then it zoomed down to green hills with trees, and we fly along until buildings appear, and then we’re flying among skyscrapers. There were some pretty cool images of flying cars in between the towers (a little like Coruscant in the Star Wars movies). Eventually the view pulls back and you can see it’s an entire planet covered with buildings – in fact it looks a lot like a Dyson Sphere, and as the camera pulls back, there’s also a Ringworld. Somebody is keeping up on their sci-fi imagery.
Anyway, The Place is a very strange place. Like shopping centers all over the world, it is gearing up for the Christmas season. Now, Chinese people don’t really celebrate Christmas, and gift-buying is mostly relegated to the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), so it’s not like the stores are really pushing anything more than the normal consumerist excess. But Western marketing is a very powerful force, and it seems they can’t resist the temptation to join in even if it makes no difference in sales.
A couple weeks ago they started erecting a giant tree-shaped scaffolding in the middle of the courtyard. Then they covered it with green. They have since added giant decorations to it, but I haven’t seen it lit up yet. And they built an ice skating rink.
Not only that, but they’ve got a camera set up somewhere and they show pictures of the skaters and the mall on a portion of the Skyscreen. The weather here is now cold enough that most days, the ice is not in much danger of melting, and before long, they’ll probably be safe all day without even running the massive refrigeration unit.
And yes, ice skating is well-known in China. I have a friend who grew up in the northern province of Liaoning, and she tells me that when she was in grade school and the pond next to her school froze over, the kids would spend their lunch breaks skating.
The decorations are not limited to the outside. I mentioned the restaurants. Here is one of them. I don’t even know where to begin deciphering this image I took with my phone… though I suppose the real deeper meaning is that there is no deeper meaning. It’s just the result of people unfamiliar with foreign imagery putting together what they think is a Christmas display. But…a saxophone?
Way back at the beginning of last month I went to the Modern Sky Music Festival. In my previous post about it, I promised I would get around to telling about my two favorite bands there, 33 Dao (No. 33 Island) and Cold Fairyland (Lengku Xianjing). It’s about time I got around to fulfilling that promise.
After coming to China, these were two of the earliest bands I really liked, and they’re both from Shanghai. Cold Fairyland showed up in my internet searches as a promising “progressive” band mixing traditional Chinese music with jazz and rock. I listened to the sample tracks on their website and liked what I heard. I’ve since picked up copies of five of their albums, some of which steer a little close to New Age territory for my taste, but on the whole the combination of pipa and cello with guitar, bass and drums is fascinating. The name comes from the Chinese translation of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s novel Sekai no owari to Haadoboirudo Wandaarando (Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World in English), which I might add is a great book.
A long time ago I read a review of 33 Dao’s album, and it was one of those reviews where although it wasn’t completely positive, I could tell it was something I’d like. I bought a copy at the first opportunity and fell in love with its eccentric, artistic pop music. To my knowledge haven’t played in Beijing before, so I was very excited when I saw them listed on the festival schedule. Given how much of their album utilizes studio effects and non-musical sounds, I was very curious to see what they would be like live.
They came on after Ourself Beside Me’s abbreviated set. They’re a five piece, mostly lined up with two guitars, bass, keyboard, and drums, three of whom sing. One of the guitarists switched to bass for a while, leaving the bass player free to just sing. As it turned out, the music worked quite well stripped of the studio manipulations. Most of the album’s female vocals were handled by bassist (Wu Shanmin if she’s the same one from the album credits), and leader/guitarist Zhang Zhendong was the male singer. Keyboard player Zhang Ling also sang from time to time. Guitarist Li Dong and drummer Yuan Chaozhen didn’t sing. I get the impression they do not play live very frequently (I do watch Shanghai music listings, and almost never see them mentioned), and I have to admit they weren’t very exciting visually. Luckily the music made up for that shortcoming. Their music is full of odd contrasts, with song sections resembling carnival music, and others like twisted rock, and they handled it all very well. I think everything they played was taken from the album, with no new material. All in all, quite a wonderful experience.
I hung onto my spot against the security barrier, braving the nearby chain smokers and the annoying drunk kids to keep my good viewpoint for Cold Fairyland. I knew I didn’t have to worry about their music coming off well live, since I have their live album.
This was one of the best live music experiences of my time in China so far. Their music is so interesting, with diverse elements combined in interesting ways, and so well executed, that I was enraptured the whole time. Leader Lin Di was at center stage with her pipa. She’s an excellent player, both flashy and melodic, taking from both tradition and her own sensibilities. She occasionally put it down and stood to sing. Cellist Zhou Shenan provided a low-end counterpoint to the pipa and guitar with her nifty electric instrument. On the studio albums, most of the keyboards are played by Lin Di, but for this live show there was an added player. Guitarist Song Jianfeng often trades lead lines with the pipa. They played a selection of tunes from several of their albums. I spoke briefly with Lin Di after the set and she said that their regular drummer had been unable to make the trip, so they played a shorter than usual set. And here’s a short video I took of them performing “Liaoluan (Puzzle)”:
That was a great experience, and I really look forward to seeing them live again, hopefully with a full length set!
However, when I got up the next morning, I couldn’t get the water temperature even up to lukewarm after letting it run for 20 minutes or so. Out of desperation I managed a quick shampoo, but left it at that before I froze to death.
We visited the breakfast buffet at Tianyuankui, which was a good mixture of Chinese and Western style morning foods, along with pretty good coffee, something I’d been doing without so far on the trip.
After eating, we hit a few of the smaller attractions along Nan Dajie that were covered by our tickets. I believe these brick platforms were used for seating even in many offices. During the winter time they were heated with coals from beneath. I suppose the bed in my room at the Catholic was originally designed to work that way. Most of the places we visited this morning were commercial enterprises, whether banks, merchants or whatever, and most of them featured living quarters for staff, including this fancy bed for a manager. Close up of the woodwork. This is the second courtyard back from the street. The first one had ordinary business and communication offices. If I remember right, the rooms to either side here were for accounting and sales managers, and in the back was where the boss lived and entertained important clients and government officials. More rooms filled with antiques and historical descriptions in Chinese. By this point we were going through things pretty quickly. There’s only so much of this you can take in at a time.
At the very back was an area where the company’s guards lived and trained with their weapons and martial arts skills. Here’s a bank vault, Pingyao Gucheng style. And here’s the staff kitchen of one of the compounds. At one of the compounds, there was a suite upstairs where the boss’s wife and mistress lived a life of luxury, devoting themselves to music and womanly things while the men worked below. And here’s something I liked that wasn’t antique at all. Then we came to the largest of the commercial compounds, which once housed the Rishengchang Draft Bank, considered the first real bank in China. The buildings now house what is called the Chinese Draft Bank Museum. This was the best of the business attractions in the town, but we’d seen so many smaller ones that we were kind of overloaded on them by this point. Back out on the street on the way to the next exhibit, I spotted another member of the city’s feline population taking a nap. Outside the city’s main gate is the UNESCO World Heritage notice sign. After a quick look around outside... ... we went up to the upper level. Of course they were ready to defend themselves. I’ve read that a section of the south wall collapsed in 2004 and had to be rebuilt. There was originally a moat around the city, but it’s all dry now.
From the top of the wall you can see the layouts of the houses inside the old city. This one looks to be very well maintained and quite cozy with its courtyard. This one is not in such good condition, but the residents seem quite comfortable.
After finishing with the main gate, we found a taxi to take us to the bus station to arrange for the next leg of our trip. After arriving at the bus station, some locals advised us that we’d be better off checking on the train again, since there were no bus routes directly to Datong. So the driver took us to the train station. We managed to get some tickets as far as Taiyuan, which is the same place we’d have to change buses, but it takes less time and costs a quarter of the price. Go figure. The downside is they were wu zuo class tickets, which means without seat. Basically standing room. But it was the only option, so for ¥7 each we took it.
By then it was lunch time, so we asked the driver to take us back into the old town. It was a pretty wild ride, and I took a little video:
He really wanted us to eat at a particular restaurant (I suspect they give him a kickback for any customers he brings in) but we really wanted to go back to Tianyuankui one last time. The driver waited for us outside while we had our meal.
As we were passing under Shilou, we saw that we could actually go up into it with our General Tickets, so we did. This made a total of 13 attractions we saw for our ¥120. The view from there was pretty nice, but there was not much to see inside. Then it was back to the taxi and a winding trip through the back streets (since the main streets are restricted to traffic).
After that it got kind of unpleasant. When we got to the train station, my companions said they actually wanted to go back to the beef warehouse to buy some more. He argued a while, then turned around and took us back to the north gate, which was not where they asked to go. Not only that, but he drove at a crawl the entire way. When we got there, he stopped and said we could buy our beef at the store there. He got out his tools and started tinkering with his vehicle. We went into the store and they didn’t have the same selection, plus it was getting a little late to make our train, so we tried to find another taxi to the station. That took what seemed ten minutes of arguing about prices (there are no set rates for these things in Pingyao). We finally found a driver who agreed to our price, and off we went.
We rushed onto our train and managed to squeeze into a few seats in one of the cars for the trip to Taiyuan. It’s only about a hundred kilometers, but the train stopped at a bunch of little towns, and the trip took about three hours. Once we got to Taiyuan, we rushed to the ticket counters to see what we could do to get to Datong. Taiyuan is a bustling, noisy, more-or-less-modern city full of traffic, and was quite a shock after quiet lazy little Pingyao. We managed to secure more wuzuo tickets for the overnight train leaving around 11pm. We crossed the street to KFC for dinner and discussed our strategy for trying to get beds for the trip. We ended up deciding we didn’t really want to invent some kind of untrue sob story, and would just find the conductor and ask nicely.
After eating, we went to the station’s waiting room, which was packed. We plopped ourselves down right in front of the gate where we would go out (there were no seats available). Every time I looked out at the room, I noticed a dozen or so people staring at me. I guess they don’t see a lot of foreigners here, especially not waiting for a train with them.
When the time came, it was a wild rush to the platform, then the search for the conductor. He said there were no bunks available, but eventually offered to let us sit at a table in the dining car as long as we would buy a ¥20 dinner. We agreed and off we went. I did not take a picture of this meal. It consisted of a scoop of shredded cabbage with a dash of soy sauce, a few pieces of tasteless sausage, and two slices of plain white bread. I ordered a beer to go with it. Luckily we had a fair supply of road food along with us. For this privilege we had paid ¥26 each, for a Pingyao-Datong trip total of under US$8, even adding in the cost of food. As uncomfortable as the dining car was for eating, it was much worse for trying to sleep. And they left the lights on all night. it occurred to me that one of the easiest jobs in the world must be cook on an overnight train in China. You fix about 40 simple plates, all identical, and then sit around talking for seven hours, since no one ever orders anything.
The name of the show is Water Cube Fantasy (梦幻水立方 Menghuan Shui Lifang).
They have a small orchestra on the deck between the diving pool and the swimming pool, and the swimming pool is rigged with a network of pipes and nozzles and lights.
While the orchestra played a selection of famous European classical pieces by Strauss, Beethoven, Rossini, and so on, the water was made to dance in time.
The “wall of water” effect turned out to be a prominent feature of the show…
…as they killed the lights and projected moving pictures onto the liquid screen.
The orchestra took a break while a video collage of local scenes and Olympic highlights played.
The show lasted only 45 minutes or so.
They’re selling all sorts of Water Cube memorabilia, from T-shirts and hats to expensive jewelry and commemorative coins.
