OT: China Travelogue
Unknown
In November, 2006, I went on a tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China,
to perform concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Shenzhen
Philharmonic Orchestras. I wrote a travelogue about the tour that
some of you may enjoy:
http://timberens.com/funstuff/hongkongshenzhentravelogue.htm
And thanks once again, to Skip Moy, for all of his help in Hong Kong.
Tim
Tim Berens
timb at erinet.com
http://timberens.com
A Website for Guitarists
Check out my CD with Dan Faehnle at:
http://cdbaby.com/timberens3
oasysco
Greg
Kevin Van Sant
<45ad4892...@news.erinet.com> :
>Greetings.
>
>In November, 2006, I went on a tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China,
>to perform concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Shenzhen
>Philharmonic Orchestras. I wrote a travelogue about the tour that
>some of you may enjoy:
>
>http://timberens.com/funstuff/hongkongshenzhentravelogue.htm
>
>And thanks once again, to Skip Moy, for all of his help in Hong Kong.
Tim, I really enjoyed reading that and the pictures too.
_________________________________________
Kevin Van Sant
http://www.kevinvansant.com
CDs, videos, mp3s, gigs, pics, lessons, info.
tom walls
(Tim Berens) wrote:
> Greetings.
>
Really enjoyed it, Tim. Very evocative. Thanks.
tomb...@jhu.edu
> Greetings.
>
> In November, 2006, I went on a tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China,
> to perform concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Shenzhen
> Philharmonic Orchestras. I wrote a travelogue about the tour that
> some of you may enjoy:
>
> http://timberens.com/funstuff/hongkongshenzhentravelogue.htm
>
> And thanks once again, to Skip Moy, for all of his help in Hong Kong.
Sounds like a blast.
Derek
Great stuff.
Nil
> In November, 2006, I went on a tour to Hong Kong and Shenzhen,
> China, to perform concerts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and
> Shenzhen Philharmonic Orchestras. I wrote a travelogue about the
> tour that some of you may enjoy:
>
> http://timberens.com/funstuff/hongkongshenzhentravelogue.htm
That was fun to read, thanks for sharing it with us.
Now, contrast your story with this one that appeared in Guitar Player
about 18 years ago...
=============
Bad Day in the People's Republic
By David Tanenbaum
From Guitar Player Magazine, March 1989
There are no professional guitarists in China because the government
will not recognize this as a legitimate profession. But there is a
fantastic interest among students, the kind many of us felt when we
first started to explore the field and couldn't get our hands on
guitar records and music fast enough. Imagine those feelings, with
only the slowest trickle of anything available and no money to pay
for it, anyway.
Students show up almost in rags, with strings many years old, having
ridden 40 hours on the train for a 20-minute master class lesson.
The questions are endless. Anything you can tell them is a source of
wonder, a new piece in the vast, foreign classical guitar puzzle,
and it brings with it many more questions. The new Guitar
Association of China is, like many American societies, struggling to
grow with limited resources, but of course the problems in China are
much greater. I was invited to China by this Society and by the
Great Wall Performing Arts Company, a division of the Ministry of
Broadcasting (formerly part of the Department of Propaganda).
The negotiations were difficult from the beginning, about two years
before the actual trip. Terms were changed, and promises were
broken. The written invitation, though constantly promised, didn't
arrive until a week before the trip, but even then its contents were
designed to be ambiguous. The idea of payment for services, of each
side agreeing to and sticking with a written contract and of
resorting to a court if things break down, is not a part of Chinese
business dealings. This is something that many Western corporations
and businesses have had a lot of trouble with. An international
agreement is handled just as you might barter for some fruit on the
street, and the bartering continues even after you have bought the
fruit and are walking away.
Thus, three days before the trip I decided to forgo $500 in air-fare
cancellation penalties. I called and said that we should arrange the
tour in the future when everything could be made clear beforehand.
And hysterical phone call returned, telling me it was impossible to
cancel now. Embassies had been invited, television was scheduled,
huge advertising had gone out, many people would be ashamed and
would lose face if it were cancelled (a fundamental consideration
there), and - the one that really got me - students had already
arrived in Beijing from all over China for a nationwide guitar
competition for which I was to be the principal judge. So I went,
and it turned out that those were all lies.
One plays in China, at best, for expenses. I had asked for expenses
for my wife, too, seduced as we were by the idea of a visit to
China. I had agreed to do two concerts, two lectures on the
classical guitar's history, and a master class. When we arrived,
advertisements finally had gone out, but for five concerts, two
lectures, and three master classes. The students, who had come from
all around China (though there was never a competition) were told
that I would reduce the load because I wasn't feeling well. When I
told them that they had in fact been lied to, they immediately
understood. Throughout the trip this counterpoint wound continue:
eager, wide-eyed students; greedy, lying, manipulative officials.
The level of playing was actually technically higher than I had
anticipated, given that there is no professional teaching. Several
students had gotten some Western books and translated them into
Chinese. Often lacking were musical conceptions and basic
fundamentals of music. Frequently one saw a sort of potpourri of
distant influences reflected back in an undisciplined way, but
again, everyone was playing guitar in their spare time. Some players
were quite fluent in jazz or rock, but I never saw any integration
of Western culture with Chinese culture - they played only Western
music and neither the interpretation nor any other mannerisms gave
it away as anything else.
I brought the Guitar Society the gift of a guitar. I had been told
to find the cheapest one I could, as long as it wasn't made in
Japan. The $150.00 instrument that I gave them was the best anyone
had seen, and in return they gave me a Chinese lute called a
p'i-p'a.
I ended up playing three concerts in Beijing on the last three
nights. The first was recorded for radio, the second for a
television audience of 10 million. Between each piece a costumed
woman came out to announce the next piece. There was instant
recognition and even applause at the mention of any of the classical
Top 40 - Recuerdos, Leyenda, Villa-Lobos, etc. Concert etiquette was
unbelievable. During pieces people talked and walked around - once
two guys got into an argument over a seat in the front row while I
was playing! In the middle of a Bach suite, I saw, out of the corner
of my eye, that someone had put a tape recorder on the stage. Soon I
heard the tape end and thought, "Thank God," but then the guy stood
right up, noisily dragged the machine over to the edge of the stage,
turned over the tape, pushed the record button, and shoved the
recorder back toward me. During intermission, I told the stage
managers that the machine had to go. To my relief, it was gone when
I walked back onstage. Two minutes later, however, the guy stood up
and put it back. At the next break, a stage hand removed it.
The appreciation level is amazing. Signing autographs is one thing,
signing shirts and hands another, but signing the face of guitars,
in ink, before the finish is put on, is another thing still. It was
during one of these autograph sessions, after the last concert that
the worst happened with the officials: I was informed that they had
decided, now that I had performed all of my agreed-upon duties, NOT
to pay my hotel and food bill of over $1500, and that the hotel had
been told not to let me leave without paying.
I went directly to speak with the officials - the head of the Guitar
Association and the manager of the Ministry of Broadcasting - but
they actually looked me in the eye and said, "That's right, we're
not paying this bill."
I simply snapped. I shouted, stomped, and ended up breaking a
floor-to- ceiling, wall-to-wall backstage mirror. Then I left. As
the car was driving away, many students surrounded the car. They
were all applauding and shouting, "Were different; we're not like
them. Thank you for doing it; things will be different."
The tour had been arranged by an old friend, Jane, who has an
import- export business with China and has wanted me to play there
for a decade. Now Jane, already shaken by having been in the middle
of the difficulties for so long, was detained at the concert hall.
An hour later she called and her voice was shaking.
"They're holding me here," she said. "The police are outside, and
you have to understand that they can bribe the police to do whatever
they want them to. You broke Chinese government property, and for a
Chinese citizen that meant an automatic three weeks in jail. Now
they're heading over to your hotel, and they insist that you pay
2,500 yuan for the mirror. But they're also now saying that whey
will pay for the hotel bill: I think that is because you brought
things out into the open, and they lost face in front of the
students. Also, I heard them talk of taking your guitar as their
private retribution, so hide it or leave it in a hotel safe. I'll
get there as soon as I can."
There was nowhere to hide the guitar - the hotel wouldn't take it,
and a couple I had met didn't want any part of this. I tried to call
the U.S. Embassy, but the hotel kept giving me a number that didn't
work. So I locked the guitar in the room and went to meet the
officials in the lobby.
They soon showed up and were followed by Jane and a friend she had
called. Immediately two languages were flying around the room at
high speed, and I realized that, because I was a foreigner, I had
been able to bring the corruption out into the open without
immediate retribution. Yelling and breaking the mirror, though not
premeditated, had worked, because it had exposed to everyone what
they already knew was going on. Furthermore, I had told them I would
publicize this in the West, and now I told them of my attempts to
call the embassy, and their fear of these possibilities was visible.
I ended up paying for the mirror. Since they couldn't take credit
cards and I didn't have $800 cash (2,500 yuan at the official
exchange rate), we all waited an hour while Jane's friend went out
to the black market at 2:00 a.m. and got the 2,500 yuan for $350.
In exchange for this payment, the chief administrative officer of
the Great Wall Performing Arts Company, in front of numerous
witnesses, signed a letter stating that he would pay the hotel and
food bill. We all said good night, and as he was leaving, this
official actually asked me if I would like to return to China to
teach for six months, and expresses a desire to visit America, as if
this had been a normal way of conducting cultural exchange matters
all along.
I have learned that as soon as I left China, the Great Wall
Performing Arts Company informed the Guitar Association, a much
lower organization with negligible resources, that they would have
to pay this bill. In order to raise the funds, the president of the
Guitar Association is travelling around China lecturing on the
history of the classical guitar, reproducing the tapes of my
lectures that he had studied. (China, of course, doesn't recognize
international copyright laws. There are bookstores there that
foreigners are forbidden to enter, that sell only illegally
reproduced photo copies of foreign copyrighted material, bound into
books and sold cheaply. I saw one of these books - it contained
Segovia's Sor studies, Villa-Lobos' complete works and various
Segovia editions of Turina, Torroba, and Ponce, and sold for about
one dollar.)
Exchange between China and the West is in its infancy, both in the
business and cultural arena. I know of two American guitarists who
went to China at the invitation of individual musician friends.
Although they played for free and paid their own expenses, they
encountered none of the problems I had in going through the official
channels.
There is so much potential for increased understanding, and so many
cultural riches to be exchanged, but the first step has to be the
establishment of ground rules and a common understanding of
procedures. Seeing this country was an entirely new experience, and
working with the students was moving and memorable. This article was
written in the spirit of bringing some of the existing problems to
light so that they may be resolved and the cultural exchange
possibilities with the guitar pursued.
ott...@hotmail.com
Bg
Derek
bit. The company I work for has an arm that takes various types of
performing groups all over the world, including China. We had a group
of karate students, family and instructors go over there for training
a couple of years back. Nothing like this at all happened. Everyone
was eager to please.
Ever since China was awarded the 2008 Olympics, they have worked very
hard to put on a good face for the West. I am sure stuff like what
happened to Tanenbaum still happens some, but the good news is, they
are slowly changing.