Music in the bushes

                       I recently notices an odd phenomenon near my house, the Chinese practice of playing music in the bushes. I was wandering down to the exercise yard by the Grand Canal near my house (the largest man made waterway in the world, as it has been since it's completion around 600AD) when I noticed a strange thing-a man standing in the bushes, facing a large wall and furtively tootling on a trumpet. Well, as furtively as it is possible to play the trumpet, which is not very. I stopped and listened to it for a while, it was enjoyable to stand in the spring sunshine listening to the powerful brass reverberations. It was a little like the wall was his audience and he was in some way in a private meditation with this concert dedicated to the inanimate. Recently, I was walking through my apartment block park when I heart the dulcet tones of a flute or a recorder. It turned out to be a man serenading the world at large on a Chinese instrument resembling a clarinet, although it didn't sound like it was reeded, something like a recorder. I believe it may have been a bawu ( 巴乌 ), although according to Wikipedia this is an instrument with a single metal reed, so perhaps I was wrong. In any case, it sounded rather lovely. This also reminds me of when I lived in Hangzhou and whilst cycling across one of West Lake's beautiful causeways I saw a man praising West Lake with beautiful operatic dedications. It was such a wonderful sight and sound to behold that I stopped, dismounted, listened and applauded at the end, at which point the gentleman in question understandably looked rather pleased with himself. 
                           This all just reminds me of one of the reasons I love China: it's little eccentricities. People love to perform publicly here, playing music in the streets and dancing in groups here and there at different times of the day. They do it for no material gain or because they are being watched, seemingly just for the pure love of the actions themselves. It's a great thing to behold and a lovely reflection of one of the pleasing elements of this often endearingly eccentric place.