North West of the Forbidden City
Having checked out the Gulou or Drum Tower from the 15th century Ming period [though not the original building] north of the Forbidden City [the original time keeping device], I wandered around the hutong on the hunt for some cricket culture. Not much luck – some say it is too warm at the moment. I did hear two crickets in one house that were certainly pets, which were singing together. I made a recording of them. Interesting to record in a public thoroughfare. Most people were mildly curious and even quite interested when I gestured to the sounds and showed images of crickets. One man told me the crickets are known as ‘guo guo’ – a local name maybe, couldn’t find it in the dictionary. Hope to find insect markets at some point. I have found out about a cricket fighting association which I will look into but am really interested in the singing not the fighting.
Came across a lot more of the hutong destruction on this walk [and completely lost my sense of direction]. Some hutong are still inhabited amongst all the rubble, with radios playing and sounds of cooking indoors. Twice I was told not to take photos.
Dong Yue Temple and Museum of Folk Customs
Went to the Museum of Folk Customs behind Dong Yue Temple with Laurens and Yam, and also met Christophe and Ise [filmmakers from Paris] and two of their students from Tianjin. Lots of interesting cricket paraphernalia although not much info in English or Chinese. Amazing gourds the acoustics of which are perfected for amplifying the cricket singing inside. Also fighting arenas and pocket cricket containers. These finely crafted wooden cricket containers were so like mobile phones or ipods in terms of size and portability it was uncanny. Nathaniel Mann in the UK passed on an undergrad essay he wrote drawing comparisons between ipods and singing pet crickets and he was certainly on to something. Other items which interested me were the pigeon whistles. These create a particular tone [or maybe song] as a result of the wind passing through them when the pigeons fly.
Meeting up for a meal tonight in Sanlitun with other resident artists – Laurens Tan and Julie Bartholomew [both from Australia], Yam Lau from Canada and Denise once more. Tomorrow Laurens and I are going to check out the Toy Museum aka the Beijing Museum of Folk Customs along Chaoyangmenwai Dajie where Julie says she has seen cricket cages on display.
Along Tuenjiehu Lu, the main street near my flat, sometimes large sometimes small groups of old and young men play mahjong. There seem to be regular pick ups of street hawkers by the cops here too. Today I saw a group of tree fellers cycling the parts of the tree away on their tricycles-come-carts – four of them, each carrying a large weighty stump of tree and branches. A lot of work is still done manually, without the use of large machines. In a tourist office in Sanlitun, I asked about sightseeing tour information – but none to be had! No bus map either. In a local hotel, quite small, no English was spoken, and the only tour information was in Chinese. I am getting more reluctant to use the taxi drivers here as they do not know locations much out of their own experience – maps and written instructions in Chinese are of little help, so you have to rely on your wits. Sometimes you simply have to get out of the taxi and hope the next driver knows more, or phone a friend on your mobile who speaks Chinese and ask them to help….
People tend to stare around here at Tuanjiehu but I find a big smile and Ni Hao goes a long way and people grin back. I am quite surprised that this is happening in the capital city. Some people even push their kids towards me so they can photograph us together – and some kids rightly protest!
The other day got to 798, a huge and active place full of lots of galleries, towards the north west of the city – on the way to Bei Gao and all the artists’ villages out that way. Met Eileen Zhang and Tiger [who had helped me set up ADSL for the mac in the flat] at 798/Red Gate. The show there is Jiang Weitao’s abstract paintings – interesting work that he names ‘Art Documents’. In the catalogue Tally Beck, the manager of 798/Red Gate, discusses Chinese and Western abstract traditions, which is very interesting [my background is as an abstract painter]. Chinese abstraction emerges from the “philosophical link between Chinese calligraphy, painting and poetry. This trinity of expression, known as san jue, or the ‘three perfect things’ is a concept acknowledged…as one of the keys to understanding Chinese artists’ approach to abstraction” [Tally Beck – The Harmonic Abstraction of Jiang Weitao – catalogue essay].
Also found the Long March Space, which has some great acoustics and is a great looking space. Did a number of recordings here – the cicadas were top volume – deafening. At least two types singing. Before I got any further I bumped into Denise with Qu Zi Jian, an engineer here for a few days from down south near Hong Kong, and Sun Yu Ming, an artist who has settled here in Beijing to promote his career. Denise has some Chinese and Qu Zi Jian has some English, but Sun Yu Ming and I do not have either so we had some laughs communicating via drawing in my sketch book, not to mention the obligatory Tsing Tao beer.
Also got to the Natural History Museum the other day, in the pursuit of local cicadas and crickets. Kind of disappointing really, though a fair few specimens, hard to tell if they were local. Will try to contact an entomologist via this institution who could identify the species in my recordings. Came across my first experience of the wholesale destruction of parts of Beijing that we hear about – it was quite horrific. I was looking for Qianmen Dajie, a shopping street south of Tian’anmen Square and all that was left was rubble surrounded by billboards – shocking! I followed the crowd past this and found some hutong still in existence but surrounded by rubble on each side with the constant tap tap tapping of the manual destruction of all the buildings around. What happens to the people whose businesses are destroyed? Presumably they are ‘relocated’ but I can’t imagine there is a lot of compensation handed out.
