Big in China

by Alan Paul

  I was banging the simple two-chord rhythm, with Zhang Yong behind me, laughing and laying down a deep, funky bass line. Our thunderous racket boomed through the otherwise empty park. Everyone inside the small club, including the bartenders and owner Jonathan Ansfield, ran out to stand on the porch and cheer us on. Woodie stood in the middle, a beer in his hand, laughing.

  Two sets of middle-aged German parents and their teen sons occupied the table directly in front of us, one man sucking thoughtfully on a pipe all night, like a caricature of a European professor. Now they had a front-row seat to this madness. The teens jumped up and started screaming, followed by their parents, who joined in a crazy, spastic dance.

  Powell walked off the stage, sat down opposite the pipe smoker, smiled at him, and kept playing. When he finally strolled back to the stage and we brought the song down to a crashing ending, after a twenty-minute guitar solo, the small crowd erupted in a huge ovation.

  We hopped off the stage and I shook hands with the Germans, who thanked us and headed home. It was almost 1:00 a.m. but the band stuck around drinking beer for an hour in the otherwise empty, serene park. We were riding a high from the electric finale to a momentous twelve hours in the life of our little band. Though we didn’t discuss it, we all understood that things were changing: I was now fronting a Chinese band; we were becoming more than a bunch of guys who met up to play music together; and we suddenly sounded like we had the potential to really grow into something.

  It was almost 2:00 a.m. when Dave and I walked out of the park, dragging our gear behind us. We banged on the window of the little shack by the gate to wake up a young guard sleeping on a cot. He jumped up to let us out and we climbed into Dave’s Volvo wagon. His driver, waiting by its side, was a sweet sight at the end of a long day.

  “We’re making some moves,” I told Dave, as we watched the city fly by. The streets of Beijing were filled with cement trucks at this hour, rumbling to and from giant construction sites, which were lit up by banks of floodlights and humming all night.

  “Yes, we are. Now your job is to keep Lu Wei happy.”

  I stumbled inside my house, dumped my guitar and gear bag by the front door, and collapsed into bed. Six hours later, I was on the soccer field coaching first Eli, then Jacob. I didn’t have much voice left and was sucking down coffee to keep me alert. Sweating profusely, I ran up and down the soccer pitch yelling instructions at kids. Last night’s pseudo rock star had been transformed into a schlepping international dad with deep, dark bags under his eyes.

  Chapter 19

  Them Changes

  My day-to-day existence was being transformed, with the band moving from a fun little side project into a far more central place in my life. This all felt normal in Beijing, where growth and change were the only constants and anything felt possible.

  I had even taken up hockey, despite not having skated in twenty years. A dozen of us who had never held a stick before took up the sport after Canadian friends turned some nearby tennis courts into a mini ice rink. We improved rapidly and soon actually considered ourselves hockey players, resenting our group’s official name: “Monday Night Learn to Skate.”

  None of this reinvention felt disorienting. Not in Beijing, where the whole landscape was being transformed. I would have had to spin a cocoon and emerge as a butterfly to match my surroundings’ pace of change. In this atmosphere, sitting still or staying the same would have been the strangest, most radical move of all.

  In that environment, remaking yourself—just hitting the reset button and starting over—seemed like the most natural thing in the world. It was happening all around me: there was the journalist running restaurants and bars; the doctor with a thriving export business; the teacher designing T-shirts; the Italian musician selling antique furniture; the Boston bakery owner hanging his shingle as a sports marketer; and the British banker directing an art museum. Anything felt possible, and the only crime was setting your sights too low.

  The whole sprawling metro area often felt like a giant construction site, literally evolving in front of our eyes, making life in our Rust Belt hometowns seem positively glacial. Even in New York, projects like the World Trade Center site could take years to get off the ground.

  When we arrived in Beijing two years earlier, our compound sat on the edge of urban sprawl, with the countryside lapping up against the walls. Now, many humble local businesses had been replaced by higher-end establishments; fields had become shops, compounds, and highways; and the formerly dusty, dingy Jing Shun Lu was lined with trees, bushes, and flowers after a beautification spurred by the Olympics. I saw sections of the road transformed from morning to evening.

  When a friend mentioned that a major construction project had begun on a quiet country road lined with fields and man-made fishing holes, I jumped on my bike and pedaled over. The field was filled with earthmovers, cranes, huge drilling machines, and dozens of workers. The farmers who usually dried their corn there in the fall were nowhere to be seen. Pylons were rising for an elevated highway that would transform the area, with flyways and a massive concrete structure cutting through what was now a village, many small businesses, light industry, and farmland. Dust already covered everything, and blocks of businesses, homes, and factories had been reduced to piles of bricks, which were being carted away by mule-drawn carriages.

  I wondered about the displaced people and mourned the loss of the country vibe—I liked the feeling of living on the frontier. But I refused to talk about how things used to be; I’d only been there two years myself. Everyone’s view of “normal” starts the moment they arrive, and the one thing that wasn’t going to change in Beijing was the constant change.

  Wanting to document all this in a column, I spent a day driving around with a translator, asking people what they thought about the new highway. Inside the Kite Market, some vendors said the highway would bring more customers, but most insisted that it wouldn’t affect them—though the construction was literally casting a shadow on them. They all spoke with an odd mix of fatalism and optimism I couldn’t relate to. They believed that they couldn’t do much about whatever was happening and it would probably be for the best anyhow.

  I returned days later with Hou Ayi to buy produce and was rocked by how things had changed in the week since I visited to record the rapid pace of change. Half of the parking lots and all the vendors who had worked in them were gone. I looked at the paving bricks being carted away on mule carts and wondered what had happened to the vendors I was so used to seeing.

  Where was the lady who sold me the little turtle for Anna? The butcher selling pigs’ hearts? The peasant fruit vendors who had asked how much of a fine I had to pay for having three kids in America, and couldn’t understand why I didn’t have at least five if the government didn’t stop me? None of them were anywhere to be seen, and the remaining vendors claimed to have no idea where they had gone.

  We were playing as many gigs as we could. I had long since forgotten my pledge to only perform twice a month. That now felt like a rationalization for not being able to get more shows. I started bugging Woodie to find us a local spot to play, and on a cool Friday night, we debuted at Jianghu Jiuba, a small courtyard bar nestled deep in a downtown hutong that was virtually impossible to find.

  You entered Jianghu through a small stone entryway, covered in the colder months with a heavy blanket, and walked down a short hallway into a charming courtyard, filled with a few picnic tables. A bar nestled against the back wall. To the left was a small room with a foosball game and a few tables usually occupied by young, hip Chinese who were playing cards, strumming acoustic guitars, sipping tea or beer, and smoking like chimneys. To the right of the courtyard, through a French door, was a rectangular room that could squeeze in fifty people. A tiny stage sat in front. There were no toilets; to relieve yourself, you had to walk about twenty yards down the dark hutong to public facilities. The owner was Woodie’s former b
andmate, a happy-go-lucky hippie saxophonist from Guizhou named Tianxiao.

  I was in love with the place the first time I walked in. Because it was run largely by and for musicians, the small room had a great sound system that carried the music throughout the whole place. On the way home, Dave and I were in agreement: it had been a magical night. When I met Woodie, I had hoped he would introduce me to the music scene, but I never could have guessed that he would pull me into its very core.

  In the morning, I told Becky about the place and how half the crowd was musicians who got up to jam. A cup of black coffee sat in front of me on our kitchen table next to Becky’s glass of water and a half-eaten banana.

  “I would have been happy just to have found that place,” I said. “Being the band that all those guys were listening to and jamming with was almost too much. I had to struggle to just focus on playing.”

  Becky laughed. Just back from a run, she was coated in sweat and stretching her calves. We could hear the boys watching Star Wars in the family room across the hall and Anna pushing a toy shopping cart through the hallway with a friend who had slept over.

  “That’s great,” she said. “It sounds like a really cool place. I’ll come next time you play there.”

  “That would be great.”

  I took a sip of coffee and stumbled on my next sentence. “Um, tonight . . . I . . . tonight . . .”

  “Are you playing there again tonight? We are going to a family dinner to welcome some new journalists to town.”

  “No, I’m not playing there, but I did agree to, um . . . two different gigs. I’m sorry. I can still go to the dinner and leave from there.”

  I was ready to take my lumps. I had crossed a line by booking three gigs in two days, violating the unspoken protocol that weekends were sacred family time, and I had done it without any discussion. That’s why I had such a hard time spitting it out.

  My parents knew all about the dangers of spousal abandonment that playing in a band posed, and they had both warned me to be careful, but I was too caught up to pay much heed. When a new restaurant offered Woodie $300 for a duo acoustic performance, I was seduced by the fact that anyone wanted to hire us for this kind of show and agreed, even though I didn’t really want to do it. Later in the night, I had committed to performing again with the jazz band for Danny Pearl World Music Night, the same event that had lit my musical fuse a year earlier.

  Becky took a drink of her water, put the glass down in the sink, and turned back to face me. She did not hide her annoyance, but she was gentle. For years I had held down the familial fort no matter where her job took her, how late she came home, or how early she left. We both understood I was making some withdrawals now.

  “I know how fun this is and how much it means to you, and you guys really sound a lot better than I thought possible,” she said. “But please remember that you can say no.”

  Chapter 20

  I Will Dare

  Saying no proved to be difficult. Tianxiao asked us to play every Friday night as the Jianghu Jiuba house band, and I wanted to do it because the place fascinated and energized me. Playing in front of a Chinese crowd liberated my singing, as the self-consciousness of being a white man singing the blues receded. I felt like a true folk musician sharing my American heritage—like I had a legit claim to the music. Dave also loved playing here, and the crowd was deeply appreciative of his soulful playing.

  Dave was a couple of years older than I, with an impressive head of salt-and-pepper hair. We both laughed when Woodie told us after one show at Jianghu that one of his friends said, “The old guy has a lot of soul.”

  Unfortunately, we had to turn Tianxiao down because the club only paid us cab fare of about 100 RMB ($14) per person, and Zhang Yong had a regular money gig playing cover songs at a five-star hotel. I was touched that he was willing to ever give it up to play with us.

  Curious to hear what Zhang Yong sounded like in such a different context, I dragged a friend along to hear him at the glistening hotel in Beijing’s new financial district, which had risen atop the rubble of a working-class neighborhood. The band played four nights a week on a large raised stage behind a gleaming bar. They were performing with polish and a lack of boredom that was impressive since there were only a handful of people in the bar, all of them couples composed of cute young Chinese women and big-bellied, middle-aged Western men. The place seemed to exist solely to provide a place for these mismatched pairs to have a drink before heading to their rooms.

  The music was far more appealing. Everyone, including Zhang Yong, took turns singing songs by Coldplay, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Steve Miller in perfect English, though none could speak the language. That was fascinating, but the biggest revelation was that Zhang Yong was a great singer, though he had never opened his mouth onstage with us.

  On my way out of the hotel, I waited for the elevator with a European businessman about my age and his young companion. I looked at the floor and up at the ceiling as they cuddled and giggled. When my car came first, I stepped in and turned back, locking eyes with the man. He held my gaze, and neither of us betrayed our thoughts before the door closed and carried me away. This was a side of expat life in China that I often heard about but had really never experienced firsthand, having avoided the bars that catered to this crowd. This was a line I would never cross, and I found these Mr. Big Shots strolling around with Chinese girls on their arm quite absurd.

  We really need more rehearsal. Please tell me what day this week we can meet.

  Woodie’s text was adamant and his message was clear: we had a lot to work on. When we spoke, he said that he had been embarrassed by our Jianghu debut, which shocked me. Evidently, my magical night had been his sloppy, unformed performance in front of musician friends. In two weeks we would debut at Yugong Yishan, Beijing’s most prominent rock club, and he insisted that we work some things out.

  We returned to the same basement studio, and Woodie was ready with new arrangements that turned my simple, lazy takes on blues standards into real songs. We had dramatic new beginnings and endings, pauses, stop rhythms, a capella sections, and harmony choruses.

  Buoyed by how quickly this all came together, I showed the guys a half-formed song I had written sitting at a picnic table at Hong Kong Disney waiting for my kids to exit Space Mountain for the tenth time. When a chorus popped into my head, I grabbed a pen and jotted lyrics down on the side of a park map, then sang a few lines into my phone.

  Back home I hammered out the shell of “I Don’t Care,” a song featuring a cool turnaround riff I struggled to play. Zhang Yong quickly simplified and improved it, and Lu Wei added tricky drum fills at the end of every verse. Just like that, my simple sketch had grown into a compelling funk blues. I had written dozens of half songs over the years, but had never had the push to complete them.

  If our rehearsals could remain this productive, maybe we’d actually live up to the lofty slogan I had written for new posters a friend had designed for us: “Beijing’s premier blues and jam band.”

  Yugong Yishan was a huge step up from where we had been performing. The club held about six hundred and had a large stage and sound system and an impressive light show. As soon as we took the stage and hit our first chords, my nervousness receded and I fell into the groove, which carried me through two solid sets. Afterward Dave and I slapped each other on the back, but Woodie had disappeared.

  I found him twenty minutes later, wrapping up cables and unplugging his gear.

  “We did it.” I bent down and unplugged my amp.

  “Yeah, it was really good.” Woodie’s tone belied his words, so I wasn’t surprised by what he said next. “But something was missing, too, and I don’t know what.”

  “Everything sounds a lot better with the rehearsal, but we also lost some of the spontaneity and excitement that people responded to,” I said.

  I felt certain this was a developmental stage a
nd that we could regain the spark by just playing more shows. But I could tell that he didn’t really know what I meant, so I tried to clarify.

  “We tightened everything up and now we have to loosen it back up.”

  I inherently understood that tight but loose was the key to everything, but it was a difficult concept to explain. I was just going to have to show Woodie and the other guys what I meant.

  I met my Chinese bandmates for dinner at a Uighur restaurant around the corner from Jianghu Jiuba, the little club I loved. The Uighurs are ethnically Turkic people from China’s Xinjiang Province in the far west, bordering Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and other Central Asian nations. Their hearty, uniquely spiced cuisine also sits on the border of the Mideast and China. We ordered several dozen chuar—spiced barbecue meat on a stick—and shared wide, flat handmade noodles topped with a tangy tomato sauce and a huge plate of spicy chicken stew, which sat atop a giant disc of thick, crusty bread. We plowed through the stew, which had huge chunks of nutlike spices floating in it, and broke off the bread, dripping with the delicious broth. I ordered a few large bottles of Tsingtao but Woodie asked for a Coke.

  “I stopped drinking,” he said. “My doctor said I had a health problem and had to stop.

  “That’s why I have been unhappy the last few shows. It’s the first time I have played without a drink and it’s hard. I hear every mistake and obsess about each one. It feels like a job instead of a party and I get so upset that I can’t enjoy myself.”

  “I think it will get easier,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

  Zhang Yong and Lu Wei were eating away, seemingly oblivious to what we were discussing, as I wondered what else I didn’t know about my friend. I assumed that the doctor’s story was a cover and that Woodie was telling me he was an alcoholic. What he said about struggling to play sober mirrored what many musicians, including Bonnie Raitt, had told me in interviews for Guitar World. I followed up with them, probing for more information and a deeper explanation, but I took a different approach with Woodie.