Last night the American contingent of Kaifeng's small yet boisterous foreign community ventured out with Zhaokun, our new Chinese friend, to Zhengzhou for a taste of the local rock scene. He is a senior here at the school and studies Sport Education and Culture, which sounds fancy but really means a major in P.E. (The first time I heard that there was a P.E. major here I was certainly puzzled.)
Competition for any slot in University is tight and the University system here does not allow for just anyone to study anything they wish. Depending on your entrance exam score you are given choice of the possible majors left. Highest scorers choosing first. Which means that the students who test well end up filling up the "hot" majors like English, Business, and Computer Science. While the lower scorers are left with P.E., History, and the "boring ones". Of course this system is far from perfect and many students regardless of their test scores end up choosing a major for which they admittedly are unsuited. I have spoken with many a top scorer who said they chose English because it was hot and not because they have some particular interest or aptitude in it. (Often English classes here are filled with students who can read English very well but whose spoken is quite limited or non-existent. And then I will meet many a poor student with wonderfully clear spoken English who doesn't test well and ended up a business or accounting major despite the fact that they hate math and don't do it very well at all.)
Needless to say though Zhaokun plays soccer and will have a major in P.E. That is not his life; his life is rock and roll. He and some friends run a small music/ clothing shop (sort of a hipster boutique) called the Music Factory just down the street from the south gate of our campus and my apartment. Yesterday at 4 or so Zhaokun found us a taxi bus to take us to Zhengzhou the big sister city 45-60 minutes due west of Kaifeng.
While Kaifeng is a smallish charming Chinese city (Kaifeng rates as "smallish" with a mere 700,000 people!) Zhengzhou the provincial capital clocks in at probably just under 3 million (for now...). It is a huge, growing, pulsing Chinese metropolis with plans to stretch out its long tendrils of high-rise apartments and traffic clogged streets towards Kaifeng (still 40 some miles away) until the two meet and grow together. ("aiya!" as the Chinese say in moments of surprise and stupefaction; and "aiya!" is what I say whenever I think about homely little Kaifeng in the tight embrace of Zhengzhou and the future).
Anyway for the time being Zhengzhou is still keeping itself at a polite and respectful distance. And until Zhengzhou comes to us we must hire a taxi-bus to take us there. Of course once we reach the outskirts our driver, a woman in her early 40s who has been mercilessly abusing the taxi-bus's transmission the whole way stops and lets us out to continue on our own. This is often the case when hiring taxis between the two cities; people in Zhengzhou don't know where anything is in Kaifeng and vice versa. So we pile into two regular taxis for the ride through town. We stop at a small street market to grab some light dinner: Chinese egg wraps and grilled things on sticks -all very tasty and cheap of course. We then headed to the venue, a bar/club called "7-Live House" where we waited for the starting time and drank weak, yet moderately priced Chinese beer. At 7:30, half hour before the show was to commence we were all herded out to buy tickets at the door as we all herded back in. The first band was fairly quiet and young, they seemed like a high school garage band and later Zhaokun confirmed our suspicions when he informed us that three of the girls in the band were still in high school. The crowd was youngish maybe 60% male, most of whom were dressed quite fashionably in tight black jeans and black t-shirts or in black leather jackets. Converse Allstars were worn by many a Zhengzhou scenester (somethings are truly universal).
The main band was called "Brain Failure" Chinese name: 脑浊 (nao3zhuo2: now-jwoah). They were a punk band that played a lot of reggae and funk as well. I was mostly just interested in being there and taking it in. Live music, let alone rock or popular music is very hard to come by in Kaifeng. For a city bigger than Boston, Kaifeng has only one bar/ club that I know of and it isn't worth going to at all unless you are curious about what a Kaifeng person's interpretation of a dance club is (which would be a weird one). Needless to say it was great to see so many people out and enjoying music of any kind. Let alone showing off their moshing abilities, trendy clothing, and ultra-hip affectations.
Competition for any slot in University is tight and the University system here does not allow for just anyone to study anything they wish. Depending on your entrance exam score you are given choice of the possible majors left. Highest scorers choosing first. Which means that the students who test well end up filling up the "hot" majors like English, Business, and Computer Science. While the lower scorers are left with P.E., History, and the "boring ones". Of course this system is far from perfect and many students regardless of their test scores end up choosing a major for which they admittedly are unsuited. I have spoken with many a top scorer who said they chose English because it was hot and not because they have some particular interest or aptitude in it. (Often English classes here are filled with students who can read English very well but whose spoken is quite limited or non-existent. And then I will meet many a poor student with wonderfully clear spoken English who doesn't test well and ended up a business or accounting major despite the fact that they hate math and don't do it very well at all.)
Needless to say though Zhaokun plays soccer and will have a major in P.E. That is not his life; his life is rock and roll. He and some friends run a small music/ clothing shop (sort of a hipster boutique) called the Music Factory just down the street from the south gate of our campus and my apartment. Yesterday at 4 or so Zhaokun found us a taxi bus to take us to Zhengzhou the big sister city 45-60 minutes due west of Kaifeng.
While Kaifeng is a smallish charming Chinese city (Kaifeng rates as "smallish" with a mere 700,000 people!) Zhengzhou the provincial capital clocks in at probably just under 3 million (for now...). It is a huge, growing, pulsing Chinese metropolis with plans to stretch out its long tendrils of high-rise apartments and traffic clogged streets towards Kaifeng (still 40 some miles away) until the two meet and grow together. ("aiya!" as the Chinese say in moments of surprise and stupefaction; and "aiya!" is what I say whenever I think about homely little Kaifeng in the tight embrace of Zhengzhou and the future).
Anyway for the time being Zhengzhou is still keeping itself at a polite and respectful distance. And until Zhengzhou comes to us we must hire a taxi-bus to take us there. Of course once we reach the outskirts our driver, a woman in her early 40s who has been mercilessly abusing the taxi-bus's transmission the whole way stops and lets us out to continue on our own. This is often the case when hiring taxis between the two cities; people in Zhengzhou don't know where anything is in Kaifeng and vice versa. So we pile into two regular taxis for the ride through town. We stop at a small street market to grab some light dinner: Chinese egg wraps and grilled things on sticks -all very tasty and cheap of course. We then headed to the venue, a bar/club called "7-Live House" where we waited for the starting time and drank weak, yet moderately priced Chinese beer. At 7:30, half hour before the show was to commence we were all herded out to buy tickets at the door as we all herded back in. The first band was fairly quiet and young, they seemed like a high school garage band and later Zhaokun confirmed our suspicions when he informed us that three of the girls in the band were still in high school. The crowd was youngish maybe 60% male, most of whom were dressed quite fashionably in tight black jeans and black t-shirts or in black leather jackets. Converse Allstars were worn by many a Zhengzhou scenester (somethings are truly universal).
The main band was called "Brain Failure" Chinese name: 脑浊 (nao3zhuo2: now-jwoah). They were a punk band that played a lot of reggae and funk as well. I was mostly just interested in being there and taking it in. Live music, let alone rock or popular music is very hard to come by in Kaifeng. For a city bigger than Boston, Kaifeng has only one bar/ club that I know of and it isn't worth going to at all unless you are curious about what a Kaifeng person's interpretation of a dance club is (which would be a weird one). Needless to say it was great to see so many people out and enjoying music of any kind. Let alone showing off their moshing abilities, trendy clothing, and ultra-hip affectations.
And here are some pictures for amusement and further study:
Here is the band preforming in front of many adoring giddy fans.
Here is the lead guitarist with his wonderful long goatee.I support all bearded Chinese people with my whole heart.
And here we are after the show in the "VIP" area, how a scraggly generally unkempt crew like our is let into somewhere like this. I don't know. But surely there was some oversight on the management's part. Actually I'm sure it had everything to do with Zhaokun (seen 2nd from the right) who is much cooler than all of us combined.
1 comment:
Glad to see you blogging again. This story takes me back to the days of driving to random suburbs to catch battles of the bands to hear unholy high-schooler music.
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