China's urban scene today is a place where baggy jeans, sideways baseball caps and flashing neon lights increasingly advertise the word “hip-hop,” the popular American-born art that's taking on a Chinese identity.
The backing band is playing Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage," but it's clear this isn't the saxophonist's first time around the block. He takes the song's familiar form and makes it something all his own, like a cab driver who knows the destination but chooses to take the scenic route.
I'm in the audience of Beijing's CD Jazz Cafe with no voice recorder, notepad or even a pen. Being a reporter, that's like leaving home with no clothes on.
In a small corner of one of China's most famous Taoist temples, Meng Zhi Lin tunes up his gu qin, a seven-stringed Chinese instrument.
“The tone is very low, so I’ll close the window,” Meng says through our interpreter.
The gu qin is not so much a musical instrument but a tool through which you practice and know the knowledge of heaven, he explains.
Ten years ago Meng Zhi Lin turned his back on modern life and sought isolation in the mountains, abandoning everything except his gu qin.
Walking down a main street in Beijing, amid the pungent smells of stinky tofu and car exhaust, bicycles, scooters, and cars (so many cars), I saw exactly what I was looking for: a large sign that simply read “HIP HOP STORE.”
I want to know why hip-hop came across the world to flourish in China’s cities. I want to know why Chinese people have embraced it.
I’m drinking a beer at a hip new bar downtown, live music flows from buildings up and down the street - a collage of sound set against neon lights on a windy cosmopolitan evening.
I lose myself, thinking for a moment that it’s just another night in Austin until a curious voice snaps me back to reality.
“Zhongwen?”
I look up and see a young Chinese man I noticed earlier, one of a group trying to draw customers into the bar. He wants to know if I speak Chinese.
