I did something I have been meaning to do for a while now and that is to check out the ex-pat scene, as I have avoided it up till now. I had the idea that it would reveal something about Westerners engaging with China. I headed to the rich side of town and walked around till I found a nestle of Western style bars full of ex-pats getting drunk on a Saturday night in Xiamen. Surveying the tables on the street and peering inside my heart sank as, in truth, I was also looking for a place to have a quiet beer. They seemed one more disappointing than the next. I found it difficult to imagine myself in any so, circling around, I made my way back and at the last I noticed they had a small screen outside showing the cricket. Pausing to look at the score one of the bargirls brushed past and said cheerily “come inside we have a big screen to watch it on.” I followed. It was a dive of a sports bar with a pool table and perhaps 10 to 15 people inside, mostly older Western men and a few younger Chinese women, most of whom were staff. I got talking to a Scot at the bar who introduced himself as Callum.
Callum was three days into a drinking binge precipitated from loosing his job as a sales manager in Xiamen. He was pouring Jack Damiels direct from the bottle, his bottle I suppose, which stood upon the bar. Between some texting and petty attention given to Cindy a Chinese woman who looked profoundly bored and probably hired, he held forth on the Chinese, who he “actually liked”, Hong Kong police who he did not and he must have asked at least 20 times “are you gay?” He could not believe I wasn’t. I tried explaining that it made no difference to me what people are and that him calling me gay was like being called a Scorpio when you are Pisces. That, he judged, was a very gay answer. He then enlisted help from his drinking buddy Ragi an Icelander in his late 20s. He joined in the gay/not gay debate and was of the same opinion as Callum. They would then change the topic only to 5 minutes later return to the burning question “so are you gay really?”
I also got talking also to the bargirl who asked what I was doing in Xiamen. She spoke good English but when I said the word ‘artist’ she did not understand as it was not in her vocabulary. It wouldn’t be a word that was often needed working here. Finally, I witnessed the most pathetic game of pool I think I have even seen. Jim a 50something Englishman of few words was playing one of the bargirls. Jim was truly terrible at pool, an embarrassment to watch. Ragi had a word in the bargirl’s ear however and advised her to let Jim win. She did her level best to let him win and her strategy was so obvious that there was not even any attempt at pretence. Despite this, the game still went to the black as she unintentionally potted balls.
All in all it was more backward that a backward red neck bar in the UK. It was a living breathing caricature. I don’t think I have had the persistent ‘are you gay?’ routine since I was in my early 20s. I thought the world had moved on but this placed seemed to be stuck in time. I also have to consider that these guys are far more typical examples of Westerners than I probably am. These were the types of guys that probably define what a Westerner in China is to Chinese people. I’m afraid that if that is true it is not such a flattering picture and I have heard it said that there is a sentiment held by some here that the Westerners in China are the unsuccessful ones who could not succeed back home. Callum did nothing to dispel this notion I’m afraid and, if you are reading this Callum, I repeat I AM NOT GAY.
I went to Taiwan yesterday in order to get a stamp in my passport. Thankfully this administratively inspired journey was neither lengthy nor costly as there is a fast ferry to an island that is administered by Taiwan but which is no more than an hour from Xiamen. It was a rather odd little island that may have held some interest and touristic value but which I was visiting, together with another one of the CEAC artists, for purely practical purposes.
The evening drew me to Datong Lu in the old city centre where I had the pleasure of meeting a rather unique and charismatic older Englishman who I had first met after the performance last week. I have met very few British people so on one level it can be relaxing to share something in that way but far more than that was hearing his stories of a life lived as if it were an artwork or performance.
It was interesting for me to hear how he thought the Chinese people he worked with viewed the British. For starters the perception they have, he said, was seriously out of date, still trading on 19th Century literature. IT was also coloured by the 19th Century wars the British fought against China which gave a lasting resentment and at the same time respect for the power and achievement of so small a country. If that is the case then I guess it is about time this idea was updated.
Datong Lu I should add is fast becoming one of my favourite parts of the city. The small winding streets around it and the mix of trade and pleasure on a budget make it quite unlike anything I know in the UK. I have been walking around the side streets recently and noticed how they capture better the sense I have of how people live than the facades that speak more to aspirations.
Today has been a good day from a business point of view. I finally heard back from Air France Customer Care and they offered me a full refund. That was the most I could realistically hope for and I am pleasantly surprised that they met my request as I tend to expect the worst with large corporations. But there we go, a minor victory! They even said they have been in touch with their management in Dublin which, if it is true, means Linda got a telling off.
I also had some good news about another performance I will give of The Customer Is Always Wrong. It will be in Cambridge at the start of May in The Junction’s Sampled Festival.
Last night’s dinner made for some interesting conversation. One of the guests was an American artist who was in Xiamen for a few days to arrange the manufacture of a sculpture of his. I was aware that there is quite an industry here around painting reproductions of classical art but I was less aware of the contemporary art world’s relationship to Southern China. It seems as if there is a significant amount of artwork manufactured to order in this area as there is a skilled and inexpensive labour force, cheap materials and an established network used to this sort of work. I wonder when, if ever, people will start making performances within a similar economic logic? I don’t quite see that happening just yet though we did joke about this in the performance of Ivana’s, While We Were Holding It Together.
Finally I did some writing and now have 5 maxims and I have correspondingly rearranged my actions to accord with them. The five are:
Nature fills an empty space
If you want to go shopping go to the market
The customer is always wrong
Everybody has a family
The tourist sees things twice
I managed to get hold of a big fish yesterday, not the plastic sort you might sea in a fish restaurant that I had envisaged, this was a soft one with more detail than is normal. I am not entirely sure what I will do with it but intuitively I know that I require a significant fish for this performance and I am not much into using real ones. I worked for one night in a fishmarket when I was 17 as a Summer job weighing the slippery creatures and that one night was enough for me. I went back to the agency and they gave me a job in a warehouse the next day. The slime, smell and scales are not for me, I just want the idea of a fish.
I rushed out a new maxim that can work with the Backstreet Boys connecting them to my other concerns. ‘Everybody’ in Chinese is a word composed of the two characters ‘big & family’. The fact that the Backstreet Boys are American, I barely knew of them before coming to China and I have never liked them makes this big family of Westerners a rather strained family. “Everybody is the concern of everybody” is what I arrived at. It can mean total surveillance but it can also mean complete indifference as everybody is nobody in particular. Watching them perform there is something slightly off, as they are thirty somethings playing at being a teen boyband. I will have to start learning a few steps and then inserting fish into it…
Finally here are the rabbit ears!
I was thinking a bit more about the syncronised dancing routines and how the order of them is in contrast to the chaos of the street. This led me back to Backstreet Boys and so I was watching videos of them live in concert including a shaky home made recording of the concert in Beijing that I witnessed last year. Here is the link
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTU5NjMyMzg0.html
The song ‘Everybody’ seems to be a vehicle for many of the ideas I am thinking about so I have been looking at ways I could incorporate it in some way into my world. I am attracted to the naff grandiosity of the music but I should not let it find its way into the performance without holding its weight and advancing something else. I think I like the ‘everybody’ theme because it poses the question, who is everybody? When this term is used there are usually some who this term is addressed to and some who it is not directed towards.
Related to this I was also thinking that when I speak I may use the term ‘WE’ when I talk about the British and a plural YOU in places (in Chinese second person singular and plural do not sound the same as they do in English). One way or another, I should determine how I frame the public through my actions as that conditions my relationship to them.
