Chinese music and dance at the Garden of the Master of the Nets （网师园）

                    My family recently visited me in China, which was great fun, and I felt compelled to take them to a night of performances at the Garden of the Master of the Nets, a famous garden in Suzhou. During the peak months from spring to autumn they hold performances there every night, which I'd been waiting a while to have the excuse to see. The Garden of the Master of the Nets was a garden made for the entertainment of aristocratic families, but is now open to the public and beautifully preserved. We were treated to a curious mixture of a guided tour and a sort of pick and mix of Chinese music, dance and theatre, each performance lasting about 5-10 minutes. We saw some theatre first, which was, well, interesting-I'll leave it at that. We were then treated to some great dance by a lady in an interesting outfit with very long sleeves, used to accentuate her fluid movement. We were also shown a couple of performances of music, which deserve a bit more of a mention here. The first was a performance by a couple of ladies, one of whom was playing on a san xian 三弦 and one on an er hu 二胡, both stringed instruments, one plucked and one bowed. The san xian looks a bit like a guitar or a lute and sounds fairly similar, albeit with an oriental twang many will find familiar, the er hu (by the way, this is pronounced "are who") is a two stringed instrument played upright, a little like a cello with the stature of a violin. We were later taken to an area that doubles as a shop, thereby being surrounded by Chinese arts and crafts, where a trio of musicians delivered a fabulous performance of san xian, er hu and some sort of zither, perhaps a guqin 古琴 . Unfortunately they were joined for the last song by a lady who brought the traditional cat murder style of Chinese opera to the table. However much I try to convince myself that this kind of singing must have cultural merit I just can't stop thinking of bags full of cats whenever I here it. Maybe it's an acquired taste, each to there own I guess. Finally, we were treated to wonderfully peaceful selection of solo performances by the lake in the middle of the garden, one on some sort of flute-perhaps a ba wu 巴乌, and something a bit like a recorder (perhaps the instrument I mentioned in an earlier post, except I may have been wrong because this is apparently held to the side-perhaps someone can shed some light on this). I really enjoy Chinese instrumental music, it has a really well developed air of subtlety to it and accurately reflects the ancient continuous culture present here, whilst also expressing the precipitation so ever present. Music is always a great way to experience the real emotive power of a place and the evening described was no exception, and all for a tenner. I definitely recommend it if you're ever in Suzhou.

The dancing lady in full spin.

A chap playing one of the aforementioned wind instruments.

Here is a video. Sorry about the lady behind the tree!

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. 

Easing back into the bloggeration

                                    So I've been very busy recently with my family visiting me in China, working a silly amount and attempting not too liquify in the extreme Chinese heat and humidity. What I have been doing however is listening to lots of music, as per usual. I thought I'd ease myself back into blogging a bit by just telling what's been on the headphones recently and a little bit about some of my favourite artists. A new member of staff recently started working at our school, a chap named Ethan from Perth who, it turns out, loves garage and punk music. This pleased me immensely as he introduced me to a shed (or a garage?) full of trashy guitar music. I use trashy in the most complimentary terms possible-I mean that DIY lo-fi sound you get in garage music (not of the UKG variety-rather that of the punky ilk), the sound that says,"we love making this shit and we'll do it even if the extent of our materials are a garage and some fourth hand instruments". The fact is I'm sure a lot of these artists eventually had pretty good equipment, but they held onto that raw sound I love so much. The artists include everything from Blondie to Joy Division to Ian Dury and the Blockheads to X-Ray Specs. "Stop", you might say, "that's not really garage and punk!", well whilst I agree in theory I believe they all have that DIY feel, lending a real inventiveness to their sound and they therefore exude artistic integrity-making their sound however they can for whatever small income it might produce. The band that have most piqued my interest are probably The Deviants, they are incredibly inventive and their music seems to vary from the pretty punky to stuff verging on poetry to the downright experimental. I've also enjoyed MC5, representing Detroit and showing off quite how eclectic one city's music can be, from motown (named after Detroit I believe, it being motor city) to the invention of techno to blues to the hard rocking guitar sound of MC5 themselves, and embryonic punk of a sort, way before the Sex Pistols. They had it: the DIY ethic, the radical political affiliations and the devil may care approach to authority; but never mind that, the main thing is that there music makes you want to bounce around like an ADD afflicted pogo stick. There's lots of other stuff too, but more on that later, probably in more detail. 

                                  What else have I been listening too? Well, I received a lovely birthday present from my girlfriend Celia of erhu （二胡）music. This instrument usually has two strings and no fingerboard as such and is played like a violin or cello. It is held in the position of a cello, but is about the size of a violin and, like most bowed instruments, if it's played well it is manna for the ears, if it's played badly it sounds like feline mass murder in a bag. You often see old blind men playing it by the road in China, being one of their only possible job prospects besides being a blind masseur, and their performances are at best variable. However, listening to this CD I was inspired, a truly beautiful sound filled my house with it's tremulous delicacy, and the CD also had a good variation between the orchestral and the more folky. According to Wikipedia the erhu was conceived well over a thousand years ago and was made of a combination of materials that could be obtained along the silk road. The strings themselves were in earlier times usually made of wound silk, viewing the instrument, like so many things in China, starts winding you into the immense history of this huge country, pulling you along the old silk road and imagining the wranglings that went on to make these beautiful instruments. At this point I feel myself getting inexorably pulled into a Sebaldian psychogeographical mental ramble, which I would love to further entertain, but unfortunately another cultural aspect of this land now forces me to leave my explorations-the intense work ethic. Thanks for reading, it's good to be back on the blog, I'll be writing more about Chinese music soon.  

An example of The Deviants-although as I said their sound is very varied.

Here is some MC5, a sound a little like Iggy and the Stooges I guess, if you like them check out New York Dolls as well.

Some rather lovely erhu music, with some other Chinese musical accompaniment.

Breakcore

When you see the suffix core in anything musical it produces the assumption that it’s going to be some pretty aurally challenging stuff. Breakcore is no exception to this rule, it’s a fast and furious style of music characterised by frenetic breakbeats. It harks from jungle music, which is a style of dance music that ranges from about 150 to 170 beats per minute and is identifiable through a looped breakbeat that comes from a track called “Amen, Brother” by the 1960s funk and soul band named The Winstons. This roughly eight second loop was sampled and has been looped in many styles of music from hip-hop (see for example “Straight Outta Compton” by NWA) to techno and, of course, jungle. Jungle originally took this break, sped it up and cut it up, this can be heard in many tunes such as “Not 4 U” by Remarc (and many other Remarc classics besides) and the 1991 classic “We are I.E” by Lennie De Ice. Later on digital hardcore creator Alex Empire got hold of this Amen sound and made the move towards the frenzied end of the spectrum when he released “Bass Terror” in 1993 (you might remember this from an earlier post). The idea is roughly the same as jungle, it takes this breakbeat and cuts it up, but it starts getting taken to ever more extreme lengths. The pace gets faster and the cutting gets more complex.

                        It’s worth mentioning that, as with all genres, what I’ve mentioned above is a tendency but not a rule or a law. Breakcore is often characterised by broken Amen breaks, but really it can use any broken up beat that’s been sliced up beyond any kind of degree considered humane by listeners of the less challenging and more mainstream (or, to use a more apt adjective, boring) music. Breakcore started being known as a genre in the late nineties, but much earlier jungle was getting so cut up that had it been faster it would have been almost the same thing. I believe genres can almost always be better understood as spectra than as solid definitions, so looking retrospectively much faster jungle and digital hardcore could be seen somewhere on the breakcore spectrum. Towards the late nineties people like Nasenbluten (Bloody Fist Records) and DJ Scud (Ambush records) started releasing records that were to jungle what hardcore techno and gabber were to “normal” techno. Of Ambush records it says on discogs.com, “it stands as a hopeful flash point in the micro-conservative landscape of electronic dance music”, so essentially it seems to have been an underground reaction to the world of super DJs and commercialisation. This was a continuation of the constant tension in the dance music scene between the DIY culture found at free parties and the financial gain ethic followed by creators of the rave scene in England and later just about everyone who wanted some cash from the massively popular dance music culture of the nineties. One of the positive outcomes of this popularism and commercialisation was the encouragement of a strong and vibrant underground scene as a reaction to it. So came creative music trying to be ever more ground breaking, not just for the sake of creativity, but also as a cultural and political project.

                        So, breakcore was staunchly hardcore and stood as a reaction to the commercialisation of the entire dance music scene, it was some pretty serious and ground breaking stuff. Creative seriousness also came from better known producers from the intelligent dance music scene (IDM), most people who have had any interest in modern dance music will have heard of Aphex Twin and Rephlex Records. “Come To Daddy”, with its highly disturbing video, is perhaps not quite breakcore, but again it’s certainly on the same spectrum, it has an experimental edge and is characterised by frenetic breaks. Around this time Squarepusher was also releasing material like “Come On My Selector”, another frenzied attack of cut up breaks. The scene continued to churn out material, and I first got interested in it through the London squat party scene and the underground parties of a sound system called Headfuk. Headfuk were a collective of artists and musicians who were interested in pushing the boundaries of non-commercial dance and had their own record label (Headfuk records). They mainly released breakcore and hardcore techno, notably artists such as Ronin and Ely Muff. A lot of their music was more on the hardcore techno side of things, but there’s definitely a strong thread of breakcore madness there, and they are firmly and even ideologically rooted in DIY culture, the music flowed from a creative ethic rather than a financial one. Ely Muff is interesting because although he is largely known as a hardcore techno producer his music is characterised by cutting up of beats, something very familiar from breakcore and hardcore techno (and, earlier, digital hardcore). Later on other sound systems and collectives followed similar ethics, like Pitchless industries and Ill Fm.

                        So, there was a large creative movement existent on the underground scene, still vibrant and alive in the 21^st century. Many artists are at least affected by breakcore-see Broken Note, Badsekta, Phuq, etc, etc, etc. There’s also the less serious side of breakcore, which is very rooted in the mash up style of production, mixing and blending things like metal, familiar reggae and ragga tracks and jungle. It is of no less creative value, but certainly has a different mood. There are artists like Arron Spectre and DJ Scotch Egg (the latter being known for throwing his snack name sake into the audience), there music is sometimes less cut up and less experimental, but is very danceable and often very well produced. There are many modern permutations of the style, following the same creative ethic. Artists such as Counterstrike and Panacea have injected the breakcore ethic into straight up drum and bass, creating a style known as tear out, an extremely frenzied version of drum and bass/jungle, but that is produced in such a way that it mixes well with drum and bass DJ sets. There are also many tracks that are more danceable but follow a similar ethic, such record labels as Big Kat and Aural Carnage are great proponents of this. Injected back into the dubstep style we see the formulation of such things as drumstep, less frenetic but continuing to create and distort existing paradigms, giving nerdy genre describers like me new challenges. Breakcore has moved on to continue to sow the seeds of its ethic in the fields of many different genres, giving many interesting new and ground breaking forms of dance music. Though many of the artists I've mentioned might not be classically considered to be breakcore, I believe the scene is characterised by a scene and a wish to cut up breaks to create a fresh experimental sound, and I believe all of these artists comfortably sit on this wide spectrum somewhere. 

                        There are of course too many artists and tracks for me to name, but here’s a few more of my old favourites, who are not necessarily breakcore per se, but exist on that spectrum: Bong-Ra-“Ragganaut”, Hanin Elias-“Nizza”, Christoph de Babylon, Nasenbluten-“No Sex”, Ely Muff-“We're The Musicians”, Bazooka-“Bassdrum Korrekt”, and possibly more later when I have some more time!     

DJ Scud-"Mash The Place Up"

Bong-Ra-"Ragganaut"

Hanin Elias (of Atari Teenage Riot)-"Nizza"

Aphex Twin-"Come To Daddy"

A Short Interlude from Food and Music

 A Warm Spring Morning or Up a Hill and Down Again

Foreword:   I decided to take a short break from my usual blog content today, since I wrote a little report of one of my favourite activities recently. That is mindlessly going up and down hills on foot-a remarkably calming interval between fairly stressful and thought filled days at work. I’ve been reading a book based in 16^th century England recently, so this probably affected my writing a bit.

                                It was a warm spring morning when I awoke, a mite earlier than perhaps one might hope on a day of rest, but no matter, more day to be enjoyed then. It was with not a slight disappointment that I discovered my honey bee was still in the throes of an irksome malady. I did my best to rouse her from her malaise with some Chinese medicine and a cup of steaming and indeed most energising and delicately piquant lemon and ginger tea. However, it was to no avail, this low weather was not to be cleared with such ease. Had I considered the significant lack of will for the pungent aroma and wakeful bite of her usual steaming mug of coffee, I would have realised slightly earlier the thickness of the clouds over her health.

                                Upon the discovery of this unfortunate state of affairs she settled back into her bed and made a comforting nest of pillows, blankets and a game of the Sims, a game that mirrors reality in a most post-modern sense; one builds one’s own family and house as a paradigm of suburban reality. I felt I could not with good disposition miss such a spring day, hence I set off for Mudu 木渎. Being so familiar with not owning a bike in this city I struck out for the well-ordered coolness of the underground. I strolled up Bin He Lu 滨河路, the hot sun enveloping me in its penetrating rays. I dodged between the murderous traffic and past the liang mian 凉面 man concocting his cold witches’ brew of noodles and other Chines accoutrements in a metal bowl, thronged by a small crowd of hungry onlookers. Then I escaped, plunging into the dark tunnels to catch the train to the hills.

                                Out I came, into the unforgiving midday sun, as hot as mid-July back in my green and pleasant land, and dodged some more killers of metal and rubber. I surmounted the noisy belching bus and headed towards Lingyan Shan 灵岩山, whereupon I was greeted by the usual Chinese attempts to employ as many of its fine citizens as possible-some stalls, a ticket office and a separate man taking tickets, and almost terrifyingly sprightly old man of a pleasingly helpful disposition. He informed me that I should under no circumstances dispose of my ticket, but should store it in safely in my pocket of some other relevant safe area. I was then allowed to enjoy a rather small and empty little garden for 20 yuan and, after something of a short stroll, came to an exit gate where I was informed that the reason I should keep my ticket was to re-enter the tiny area of vague prettiness upon my return from the hill-which one can in fact enter gratis from around the corner.

                                As I began my walk up the hill, through an emerald tunnel of spring greens illuminated by vernal rays, I ruminated upon what Celia should least prefer: a congested head of mucal concrete or this sweaty stomp up a large hill-the latter I decided. Up, up I went, past crowds of laowai 老外 braying locals, panting and perspiring-for it was seldom that I felt I could run in the sticky polluted air of Suzhou 苏州 . At the top I came upon a temple with a much more reasonable 1 yuan entry fee. I willingly passed the happy old monk a 10p note and headed in.

                                It was a calming place, somewhat weather beaten in a charming sort of way. Inside there was a yard, a fine looking pagoda (closed to climbers) and a few gardens. In the garden at the back I was greeted by a wonderfully apt cultural display. No, not someone spitting on the ground and slurping soup, more the displays you hope for. There was a small group of about five practitioners of martial arts, practicing to a soundtrack of Chinese flutes, they were all clad in silken garments, loosely fitting to suit their flowing acrobatic arts. One man was clearly the master, and his fluid dance was a triumphant example of true human endeavour to behold. After some time observing this spectacle I felt it was the moment to continue my wander. As I reached the bald head of the shan 山 I walked through the usual rabble of hawkers one finds in these places, stopped at the top, took a few pictures of the surrounding verdancy and headed down. On my way down I was distracted by a delightful Ugwei (turtle) artfully constructed of dried plant matter that I felt I had to buy to bring some sweetness to my honey bee’s day. I purchased it and continued my lope down the hill. As I left the chattering mob I was suddenly left alone and, filled with vernal joy, I broke into song. However, not for long, as I once again to run the gauntlet of the laowaing masses.

                                I remembered the little spot of calm, and was suddenly quite satisfied with my purchase as I was blanketed with a deep calm, far from the braying. I strolled for a little while more, allowing my feet to relax upon the welcome flatness. I came to the bottom of the garden, whereupon a little teahouse presented itself from behind the ornamental features. Therein I had a short discussion with the proprietor about her old teas and new teas from this year. I then settled down with a new green tea from this year and, for the first time in many moons, put pen to paper. I sincerely hope that this is but the first of many such fulfilling occasions.    

A less gluttonous blog

Just a quick one so say if you'd like a less gluttonous report of my experiences in China you can have a look at my Celia's (my girlfriend) blog here: http://celiathetravellingbee.blogspot.com/
There's also archived blog material about last year in Hangzhou.

Dongbei Cuisine （东北餐）

                                Another hard week at work done and we were all hungry teachers and needed some sustenance, we were all fading fast. Luckily we had all organised to go to a north-eastern Chinese restaurant that one of my workmates knew. Off we went, up Bin He lu for the ten minute walk to the restaurant, whose name escapes me right now, although I’m sure I’ll go there again at some point, so check back for an update if you happen to be in Suzhou. The restaurant had a family feel, it was medium sized and the space was shared by the family that lived there, we had a sweet chubby cheeked little baby keeping us company on the adjacent table.

                                In any case, we sat down and perused the biblical picture menu. You need to be pretty good at choosing things when you’re eating in China because the menu is inevitably about half an inch thick and full of things you want. This is partly because they are almost always picture menus (pleasing for us westerners) and partly just because they seem to love food in China more than anywhere else I’ve been in the world. Perhaps you’re starting to see why I like living here. Dongbei is the area of China bordering Russia in the north east, think of places like Changchun (长春) and Harbin (哈尔滨), think of temperatures like -30C in the winter. The food here is of a hearty, meaty and often more wheat laden character; it involves lots of dumplings, hunks of meat and, to my absolute delight, stews. It’s very different from the sweet, fragrant Chinese fare we are used to in England, some of it is actually a lot more like northern European food. We ordered a lot of things, (hen duo dongxi-很多东西) of which I can remember a reasonable selection. The most notable dish was a simple dish of beef joints that Cliff (my Bahaman workmate in China-more confusing globalisation) suggested, seemingly knowing quite a bit about 东北餐. Now I don’t mean a joint as in a roasting joint, oh no. In China they bring you a pile of bone joints with plastic gloves so that you can gnaw them like a famished beast. As you can imagine I was in some sort of gluttonous ecstasy at this point.

                              After this we were presented with a dish of spicy wild mushrooms that were fried in plenty of oil, a prodigious quantity of chopped chillies nestling therein. There was a steaming plate of curious lemon chicken cutlets fried in batter, some incredibly spicy (chou la-抽啦) fried cabbage and enough dumplings （jiaozi-饺子）to feed a small army or a few hungry teachers. A dish of real note was the beef stew-lumps of beef with no bones, which is somewhat of a rarity in China, and potatoes in a delicious beefy stock, this dish is enough to make anyone who misses northern European food well up with pure joy. Finally they brought us a fried rice dish with a twist-it had bacon in it, well any savoury dish (and some sweet ones) is improved by bacon, so I was most approving. As a side order we had a pile of sweet corn fritters and some delicious thick pancakes. These sweet corn fritters seem to be available in almost all Chinese eateries of a certain stature, and this time they came covered in a dusting of sugar and sprinkles of the hundreds and thousands type. I know that sounds strange, but it works really well with the sweetness of the corn and the oily batter.  

                                                It is no inconsiderable compliment to the quantity of food served that I could not finish it. Yes, I was defeated by this meal, I was incredibly satisfied and, as I write this the next morning, I’m still not very hungry. The whole thing came to 320RMB (about £34), but thanks to some financial wrangling by our Chinese workmate Tiana we got it for 300RMB, or 50RMB each (so about £5.50). I asked her about how she got the discount and she told me she said we didn’t need a stamp (they always stamp receipts here), so I came to the conclusion we were probably involved in the kind of shady tax evasion that helps cash businesses thrive the world over. But who was I to argue? They had just stuffed me to the gills with delightfully hearty Dongbei food for a bargain price. All that remained was to go home and enjoy my food lull.