Does this make me a mall rat?

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?

Memories of the sky

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!

Back in the U.S.A.

In a departure from the normal topic of China, this time I’ll share a few pictures from my recent trip back to the US. I took the direct flight from Beijing to Seattle on Hainan Airlines, which saves a lot of time compared to even the Air Canada route via Vancouver.

The first few days I was home, the weather was reasonable. Here’s a clear day view from our front deck.
I promise if you look really closely you can see a bit of water between the trees. That’s something you can’t get in Beijing (and I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether I mean the water or the blue sky).

This is a cat named Baby.
She is not a skinny cat.
No, the cat in the picture above her is not her, but another cat with a strong resemblance.

When she gets a chance, she likes to hang out in the yard.
Speaking of the yard, there were a few dahlia stragglers still in bloom.
And speaking of cats, here’s the other one, generally called Pele.
Here’s one of the parts of the house in Seattle that I miss:

Another highlight of the trip was seeing Sam Phillips at the Triple Door. This is a really nice club in Seattle where they unfortunately keep the lighting really low.
She is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, with a wonderful expressive voice.
She’s a pretty good guitarist too, and plays both acoustic and electric. And in case you’re wondering, that other instrument is a Stroh violin.

Her drummer also used uncommon instruments.
Here he’s holding a drum in one hand and hitting it against his leg while he plays a cymbal with his other hand. He also had a tambourine strapped to his ankle and a table full of various objects to hit and shake.

One of the fun things she did was for the song “Animals on Wheels.”
She was accompanied by a piano recorded on a microcassette which she held up to the microphone.

And all too soon, the stay in Seattle was over (though I’ll admit to being tired of the rain), and it was time to return to Beijing.

Here’s a rugged part of Siberia we flew over.
Here in Beijing, winter has definitely started its inquiries, and will soon be moving in. After a couple of cold nights, I got my heat turned on, so all is fine now at home.

While I was away, those of my coworkers who are still with the company moved into a temporary office space at The Place, which I’ve written about before:
At the moment, we’re all on folding tables crammed into one room.
That picture was taken with my BlueBerry, so excuse the quality.

Sometime next month our permanent office should be ready. It’s also at The Place, in one of the other towers.