Big in China

by Alan Paul

  A few days later, we met for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant near the Lama Temple, Beijing’s largest Tibetan Buddhist site.

  “Chinese people today think that only someone who is a failure would become a monk,” Yechen said, echoing what I had been hearing from Chinese friends. “They think it is opting out of life. But I don’t feel that way.

  “Everyone is concerned about being cheated by someone else, but it doesn’t matter.”

  This was a radical statement, which got to the heart of something I saw all the time in China; everyone lived in constant fear that they were being ripped off. This anxiety was most obvious in market shopping, where people bargained like their lives depended on it, but it also seeped through much of life. I found myself constantly fighting that way of thinking; it was one aspect of going native that I wanted no part of.

  “They should worry about cheating themselves instead, which is the worst crime you can commit,” he said. “If I didn’t do this, I would be cheating myself.”

  He spoke so convincingly and in such a clearheaded manner that I started to feel guilty about my own doubts.

  When I said I was happy for him, but would miss him greatly, he smiled faintly then brushed away my sentiment.

  “There are many good teachers,” he said. “You won’t have a problem finding one.”

  We both took bites of vegetable dumplings before I countered with a simple truth: “Sure. But it won’t be the same.”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  Aware it was the last time we would see each other for a long time, we were speaking more openly than usual. “The problem with most Chinese teachers—with most young Chinese—is they lack an understanding of the deep and real culture here. Let’s be honest, you’re going to forget the language when you go back to America anyhow.”

  After two years, he was acknowledging the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room; I would forget everything I was studying. This cynical thought had pushed me to skip over any word or grammar rule for which I didn’t see an immediate use, but I had never dared express it to Yechen.

  “But the language is a bridge to the culture,” he continued. “And the culture can stay with you forever.”

  Chapter 17

  Bringing It All Back Home

  On our second summer break in the United States we drove more than two thousand miles in a rented minivan. I slept in a dozen beds, including a Spider-Man trundle next to my cousin’s six-year-old son and a pop-up camper in my in-laws’ backyard. It was exhausting, but at every stop we reconnected with parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces—cementing the relationships we swore we would not forsake when we moved to China.

  In Pittsburgh I played a gig with my father’s Dixieland band. He was taking great delight in my burgeoning music career in Beijing, claiming full credit and laughing at how close my apple had fallen to his tree. Sitting next to him faking my way through jazz standards like “All of Me” and “Satin Doll,” I recalled the fear and dread that infused saying good-bye to my dad on my first visit home from China. Sitting and playing music with him sixteen months later was a simple, sublime pleasure.

  One of the most important reconnections we made on that whole journey came in Washington, D.C., during the only three days we spent without any extended family. We were getting back in touch with what it means to be American. After two years studying in the British curriculum, nine-year-old Jacob knew a lot about ancient Rome, Greece, Britain, and China, but his knowledge of American history was lacking. He had stared blankly when we asked him about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln a few months earlier. We largely remedied this shortcoming with a collection of books, but he and seven-year-old Eli needed a deeper understanding.

  A surge of patriotic emotion hit me as soon as we stepped out of a cab in front of the floodlit Washington Monument and looked over at the Capitol. My feelings caught me off guard; I had spent so much time thinking about how the trip would impact the kids that I forgot how living abroad might heighten my own sensitivities and appreciation.

  Being an expat can complicate your feelings about being American. We tend to possess an assumed superiority that I only noticed when it was punctured. I was also jarred by the commercialism that could engulf anything in the United States. Everything from a McDonald’s Happy Meal to a spider exhibit at New York’s Museum of Natural History was a marketing opportunity for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I was overwhelmed by the simple act of walking into a grocery store, blinking under the bright fluorescent lights, and staring at the massive, overstocked aisles.

  Living in a place like China also gives you a much greater appreciation for simple liberties you take for granted growing up in America. I wasn’t quite sure what the children felt in Washington, but they understood where we were.

  Before we entered the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I explained to the kids what it was and said it was like visiting a graveyard and that they should treat it with the same level of respect. I pondered explaining how Vietnam was close to China and that America had been there fighting the spread of a government very similar to that under which our family had now chosen to live, but that just seemed like too much information.

  Seven-year-old Eli walked slowly with a hushed reverence even as the other kids rushed through. Amazed to find our own first names engraved on the wall—“There’s a Jacob! There’s an Alan!”—he asked why people had left flowers and flags and if we had any relatives who died in the war. Then he asked, “Even though we didn’t really know anyone, could we leave a flower for them, too?”

  I told him it was a beautiful idea. He ran out of the memorial, plucked some clovers from the lawn, and returned.

  “What do I do, Dad?”

  “Put them down on the ground and say a prayer for one of the soldiers, or even for all of them on that section.”

  “How do I say a prayer for them?”

  “You say something like, ‘God, please grant peace to these soldiers, who gave their lives for our country, and to their families, who still miss them very much.’ ”

  He meticulously placed a flower into the crack of the wall and shut his eyes for a few seconds.

  When he was done, I gave him a big hug and we walked out together.

  But even in D.C., with my own nationalism running high, I had moments that made me question where home really was. At the National Zoo panda exhibit, there was a slide show of the bears’ Sichuan home, which we had visited just months earlier. Looking at the pictures of smiling Chinese peasants, mist-shrouded hills, and dilapidated general stores, I felt homesickness for China.

  We had a gig scheduled a week after my return to Beijing —at the Orchard on my forty-first birthday. Woodie had not responded to my repeated e-mails asking him to line up a new drummer. Lacking a mobile e-mail device, I jumped online to check my messages as soon as we arrived at a new destination. I read Woodie’s response with my laptop perched on my knee on the back porch of a rented house at the Jersey Shore, the one spot where I could receive pirated wi-fi.

  Found a drummer who should be good. Want to get together to discuss the band when you return.

  That sounded ominous. He and Zhang Yong had begun playing in a hard rock band with a charismatic singer, and I assumed that had taken flight while I was away. I was sure he was ready to move on, but replied simply:

  Great on the drummer. Look forward to talking.

  With a strong sense that we might not have much life left as a band, I tried to look at the bright side: we had gotten further than I thought possible. If it ended there, so be it.

  Chapter 18

  Bit by Bit (Little by Little)

  I used to think that jet lag was a crock. I had always believed in getting on a plane, setting my watch to the time in the destination city, and not looking back. I refused to even consider what time it was somewhere I wasn’t and truly believed that anyone�
��s internal clock could be reset with a combination of sheer will and proper beverage management—a strategic, properly timed intake of coffee, beer, and water.

  But that was before I found myself trying to put together a massive Playmobil castle at 3:00 a.m. with kids crawling all over me. I still believed that any adult could power through anything, but it was impossible to watch how jet lag flipped my children on their heads and argue against it being a serious blow to the body.

  Our first night back in Beijing, Jacob woke up at midnight, climbed into our bed, and flopped around for half an hour before I dragged myself up and launched a computer game for him. I drifted back to sleep before hearing Anna talking to her older brother. When I got back up, I found Jacob alone and asked where Anna was.

  “Upstairs,” he said, not taking his eyes off the computer screen, where he was slaying aliens. “Eli’s taking care of her.”

  I nodded, mumbled, and got back in bed. Then I realized that my seven-year-old was in charge of my four-year-old and trudged up to the third floor to have a look.

  “Hi, Dad,” Eli exclaimed. “Now that you’re up, you can put my castle together!”

  I started reading the instructions of this thing, which we had dragged all the way back from Pittsburgh, before realizing that it wasn’t yet 4:00 a.m. and I badly needed some coffee. I thought of the six pounds of Peet’s I brought back, and headed downstairs to brew a pot, wordlessly acknowledging that my night’s sleep was over.

  It took over a week to fully conquer this beast, so I was still foggy headed when I rode downtown for an afternoon rehearsal, where I would meet our new drummer and have that dreaded meeting with Woodie.

  We met in a basement studio in the subterranean depths underneath a KFC. The place was accessed by walking through a dingy garage and down a stinky hallway that led to a filthy bathroom. The studio was run by the members of a band who were in it for free rehearsal space.

  I walked into the clean little room and a stocky, barrel-chested guy with a big smile jumped up from behind the drum kit to say hello. Woodie introduced me to Lu Wei, who had a neatly trimmed beard but no mustache and was wearing a baseball hat pulled down low over hip rectangular glasses.

  Zhang Yong waved and smiled without standing up from his stool, his trusty Fender bass perched on his lap. Woodie gave me a tiny handshake. Hellos and good-byes with Chinese friends were often awkward because they tended to come and go without much fanfare. Handshakes were rare and hugs were definitely out. But the awkwardness only lasted two minutes—until we started playing.

  A drummer exerts tremendous control over a band’s flow, and Lu Wei was on a different plane than anyone else we had played with. It was like having Magic Johnson stroll onto your basketball team and take over point guard duties; everyone else started running a little harder. After a spirited two-hour rehearsal, Woodie and I said bye to Lu Wei and Zhang Yong and walked upstairs to the sparkling clean KFC. We got Cokes and sat down amid a sea of uniformed schoolkids stopping in for an afternoon snack on their way home.

  I was torn between enthusiasm about what we had just done and anxiety about what he would say.

  “So what do you want to talk about?” I sipped from my drink.

  “I was watching some videos of our gigs while you were gone,” Woodie said.

  Uh-oh.

  “And I think we can be really good—if you’re willing to practice regularly and work on original music. What do you think?”

  I thought I was going to fall off my chair, but I played it cool. “I think I’d like that very much.”

  We had two gigs the following Saturday. In the afternoon, we played on a large stage inside a hotel courtyard in the hip, fast-gentrifying Nan Luo Gu Xiang hutong as part of Beijing’s first modern street festival. We were asked to submit, for government approval, copies of all the lyrics we would be singing, but Woodie told me not to worry about what I handed over, confident it would all just be shoved into a file and forgotten. “Give them a lot of stuff about love,” he advised.

  Our opening acts were a trio of elderly traditional Chinese musicians and an ancient man who told jokes and sang folk songs, accompanying himself on a one-stringed instrument. Much to my kids’ delight, he only had one tooth.

  One of the promoters, a wiry Frenchman, approached as we were about to go onstage. “Look at that,” he said, turning to point to the large local crowd milling around the courtyard entrance. “Can you try to draw them closer?”

  I asked Woodie to handle that in Chinese, but he declined. “You ask them first, in English. They’ll like that,” he said. “If they’re still back there after one song, I’ll ask.”

  As we played our opening chords, I motioned with my arm, and said, “Ni hao. Please come closer. We want to see you.” Everyone pushed forward and rushed to the lip of the stage, where my kids were sitting. I tried to channel the adrenaline that surged through me into the music.

  This was the first time we had played for a mostly Chinese audience, the first time we had played in daylight, and one of the few times my kids had been there. I was happy for them to see me onstage and to take in this whole scene. A handful of Chinese teenagers stood right in front looking at me in awe, like I was a rock star. I shut my eyes behind dark sunglasses and tried to really let go.

  Afterward, Dave left with his family, saying he would see us in a few hours. Becky and I took the kids down the hutong for a soda, a slice of fresh watermelon, and a bag of freshly popped popcorn—sweet instead of salty, the norm in China. They seemed to enjoy watching us play, and I loved having them there, but they weren’t particularly wowed by the experience.

  I walked them out to our car, kissed everyone good-bye, and headed back to meet up with Woodie, Lu Wei, and Zhang Yong in a cool little hutong bar, where they were settled into overstuffed couches, beer mugs in their hands. It was our first time hanging out without instruments in our hands. With Yechen gone, I thought, maybe these guys were going to be my new guides to China. It would be a very different tour.

  Three Chinese hippies began playing music on the street: a bear of a man with a dreadlocked beard tied into a point and hanging down to his belly button strummed a ukulele; a short dreadlocked guy pounded a conga drum; and a wispy little fellow alternated between a uke and a small plastic keyboard with a mouthpiece attached. He was wearing the brightly colored clothes common in the villages we had visited in Guizhou and nodded yes when I asked if he was Miao. Woodie played harmonica for a few songs, then I grabbed my guitar. A large crowd gathered as I played along, then led the band through three songs.

  When I walked back inside, Lu Wei and Zhang Yong said something I didn’t understand, then broke up laughing.

  “They said that you made those guys sound like Alan music,” Woodie translated. “It sounded better than they thought it would.”

  Our little group kept expanding, as cousins, girlfriends and friends arrived. With Dave gone, I was the lone Westerner, and it struck me that this feeling of being a distinct minority is what living in China should feel like every day.

  I wanted to take everyone out to dinner to thank them for playing for free that afternoon, but I only had 160 RMB (about $22) and we were nowhere near an ATM. Our party of nine walked down the hutong and entered a little restaurant that was pure old Beijing. Woodie took the menu and ordered spicy tofu, gong bao chicken, fried noodles, sautéed potatoes, and some other comfort foods, as well as a round of giant bottles of Tsingtao. The food was simple and delicious.

  When the bill was dropped on the table, I picked it up and did a double take. The total was 79 RMB, about $11—just over $1 per person. I was able to take everyone out after all. The same night, Becky had dinner with friends at one of the city’s hippest new restaurants, a massive glass structure designed by a French artist, where they paid $40 per entrée for limp, uninspired Western cuisine. The extreme contrast between our meals summed up a lot about lif
e in Beijing, where many different economies and worlds existed side by side.

  At the Stone Boat, Woodie told me that his friend Powell Young, the “Chinese king of shred guitar,” was there. “Shred” is a form of extremely fast, pyrotechnic guitar playing that peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The demanding style retained a dedicated core of devotees, and I had spent plenty of time writing about it for Guitar World. The idea of having the king of Chinese shred join us seemed both hilarious and awesome. I told Woodie to pick a song and call him up.

  “He plays really wild and fast.”

  “Can’t he control himself and fit in?”

  “I don’t think so. When he’s onstage, he’s in the spotlight. That’s the only way he knows.”

  “Just go for it when the moment seems right.”

  We were loose and comfortable from an afternoon of hanging out together and confident because we had just played. By the time we took the stage for our second set, at about 11:30, the large crowd on the outer patio had cleared and only about twenty-five people remained, most of them Woodie’s friends.

  As we launched into the tribal rhythm of our final song, “Not Fade Away,” a Buddy Holly tune fueled by a furious Bo Diddley beat, Woodie locked eyes with Powell and gestured for him. As Dave played a honking solo, Powell, who was sitting inside drinking with a gang of friends, ran up and took the guitar out of Woodie’s hands.

  Powell began playing a solo that grew increasingly fevered and outlandish. His right, picking hand flew up the neck to join his left hand, and he let fly a barrage of tapped notes, a difficult technique that allows you to play with eye-popping speed. Lu Wei started going wild, playing extravagant drum fills while pushing the rhythm and driving Powell deeper into frenzy.