This past June, I graduated from Webb Institute in New York with a degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Before working for Applied Physical Sciences, an R&D engineering firm, I am road tripping down the west coast in an RV. Enjoy the blog and please post comments if you have anything to add. Thanks for visiting. - Simmy Willemann
During the Spring Festival, only one music store near the Shanghai Music Conservatory was open. It had the floorspace of a typical shop window display with about 20 violins crammed inside. A teacher clapped expressionlessly to a practicing student’s rhythm. The student was excellent for a ten-year-old and practiced five hours a day, according to the teacher. One quirk about this dealer was that all his violins seemed to have excessive resonance built into them. I played this piece four years ago at my last recital with my violin teacher, Esther Slonczewski. The resonance problem can especially be heard every time I hit the A. Again, sorry for the lack of practice.
While my erhu was being touched up in the shop, I practiced on the Shanghai violins hanging on the wall. Most are copies of Stradivari or other famous violins and have extremely unique tones that cannot be described with words. They’re a delight to play. Above, I attempt a piece from a Chinese movie, “In the Mood For Love,” that I saw at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY last summer. I apologize for the playing, but I don’t practice as much as I used to.
I returned to Jinling Lu with Mei’s mother’s surgeon’s son, a ballet dancer with street smarts who had his informed friends from a music academy on the phone while we browsed and haggled for erhus. His friends claimed that erhus without a brand name are dubious and the wood would be likely to warp within a few years. That’s when I abandoned my inclination for the fake peach wood erhu I had found at the other shop. Unfortunately, as ornate as the erhu necks above may be, only the one with the Boa Skin Musical Instrument Registration card can be exported to the United States.
My Erhu Seller
By chance, we found the dealer above, whom I trusted more than anyone else I met on Jinling Lu. At his shop, I chose an erhu produced by Shanghai No.1 Musical Instruments Factory with a good sound for its price and bought it only after hearing the dealer play a beautiful melody on it. I made sure it came with a registration card as well as the necessary government export certificate. The case also came with bow rosin, extra bridges and padding, 2 sets of strings, a tuner keychain, and a VCD that lectures on how the traditional Chinese erhu is the best instrument ever made. There was a little nick on the body, though. If I would have pointed this out to dealers at other shops, they’d state that such things don’t matter and just talk the instrument up or desperately drop the price another 5 Yuan. Instead, this guy polished the nick with a repair kit at the shop and it looked fine.
Sichuan Meal
Lastly, as with all adventures, the search for an erhu ended with a feast. Above are three spicy Sichuan dishes: cold chicken, minced lamb, and some rice derivative. As I ate, I was choking on both the spice in the food and in the air of the restaurant.
Hefang Jie feels like an extraordinarily realistic live museum. While strolling down the old street, you can see artisans showing off their skills to the curious tourists. A glass blower works at a table covered with his creations in the middle of the street. Below, you can enjoy my first attempt at editing a movie for the blog.
Erhus are made from a variety of wood types, red sandalwood being the most prized. The erhus that are now being mass produced in factories with impressive quality seem to be of African ebony, but redwoods are still considered to produce the best sound. Unfortunately, the cheapest redwood erhu I could find on Jinling Lu was at the shop of the dishonest erhu dealer (see Purchasing an Erhu – Part IV). I was conflicted because I took a liking to the ruddy-colored erhu that only cost 350 Yuan (50 USD) after haggling through an interpreter, but didn’t trust the dealer who was eager to sell it as redwood. Other shop owners told me it had to be fake for such a low price. Hearing conflicting opinions was getting tiresome. I asked an old man visiting the shop to play on three differently priced erhus of what looked like the same wood to me, and I could hardly hear a difference. In half Chinese and half English, the dealer’s crony explained to me that there are several different quality woods erhus are made from and pulled out a box of these wood samples from behind the counter. It reminded me of the scene from Three Cups of Tea in which a lumber seller shows Mortensen chunks of Pakistani and English wood that not only have innate discrepancies, but also have but been cut differently to give preference to the English lumber.
Peachwood
The salesmen compared the timbre of a stick of wood and the instrument to show me that the erhu I had chosen was in fact made from peach wood, the cheapest of the redwoods. Both the translation of the word peach and the matching of the stick’s wood to the instrument’s were dubious. He also claimed that the lighter the scales of the snakeskin are, the better quality the sound will be. This could be true if the color indicates the part of the snake used to cover the soundbox. The salesman then attempted to convince me to buy a more expensive erhu, while the dealer was ready to accept cash for the one I had chosen. While pretending to play on opposite sides, they pressured me into making a fast decision. My reaction, instead, was to promptly get out of there and come back the next day with someone who actually knew about Chinese instruments. “Mingtian!” I yelled, “tomorrow,” after they thought an erhu deal was imminent. I later realized that if I had purchased that erhu, I wouldn’t have been able to export it with me to the States.
The Music Fountain in Hangzhou is located near Hubin Lu, the most modernized street on the lake with shops like Armani and Dulce&Gobbana. Click on the link above to see Chinese tourists watching the fountain rise and fall with the trumpeting of Spanish classical music. The entertainment reminded me of Aldous Huxley’s fictitious scent organ.
I read on Shanghai Expat that Dada, a bar in Pu Xi, had a movie night featuring The Mack, a 1973 American “blaxploitation” film. Expecting a theater, I was surprised to arrive at a low-key bar in an alley with no clearly-marked sign, little lighting, and a great sound system. At the far end of the bar are trendy but comfortable couches facing a movie screen. The bar scene slowly transforms into a movie theater as the music is turned off for the film and everyone relaxes into seats with their beers. Free cups of popcorn are provided on the bar counter throughout the movie and at one point, a bartender came around with free Nestle ice cream drumsticks too.
Meet my favorite erhu dealer, plucking a no-name erhu in the corner, and his somewhat English-speaking crony ready to tell me only what I want to hear about every instrument on the racks. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have not purchased an erhu from them, though I learned the most about the ancient instrument in this shop.
I’ve only visited Oscar’s Pub three times but am already addicted to their Wednesday night open mikes. A slew of diverse players crowded the place tonight, from country musicians to blues makers. The house band, TJP (Tom-Jerry-Paul), is my favorite and had a film crew following them today to make a documentary. Tom, the mandolin player in front of the space heater, is an amazing mandolin player. I’m trying to learn from his soloing technique, but he’s often too fast to follow.
(This is one of many videos that a singer, Echo, took tonight. Uploading here is slow, so please be patient.)
Above is a short video with two guys from Bee Dee’s, another Shanghai bar. Jeff, on the right, owns the bar and they just invited me to play at their open mike on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Cloudy, Vivi, and Mei
Mei stopped by the open mike to listen with two of her college friends, Cloudy and Vivi. I stayed late and had to take a cab home since the metro here cuts out at around 10pm.
The video above is broken into 3 parts because of uploading constraints. – After watching the guqin lesson, I walked into a small shop selling the erhu, guqin, and traditional flutes from different provinces. Upon inquiring about erhu lessons, I was directed to a young girl in a fluffy pink jacket. “She can be your teacher,” her mother persuaded in Mandarin. I wanted to hear her play some of the cheaper erhus I was interested in, but since she was a “professional,” she gave up in frustration every time her mother handed her a cheap one and finally agreed to play a full piece on this more expensive erhu. I then picked up an erhu in the shop and attempted in vain to imitate the twelve-year-old girl (just a guess at her age). Her mother exclaimed that I would learn quickly and brought us to a shop across the street owned by the girl’s father. All of this would have been impossible to understand without Mei Yi Ling’s interpretation.
We started our erhu lesson search by browsing the shops on Jinling Lu. I’ve never seen such an extensive music district before. There are at least 30 separate businesses selling a range of instruments from ancient erhu’s to electric guitars. Most of the shops’ employees are musicians and are happy to let you play their instruments all day.
Me at First Erhu Shop
Since the idea of renting instruments seems foreign in Shanghai, we set off to buy a suitable erhu . Above, I’m trying an erhu at the first shop. The bow is stuck between the two strings, D and A, the same as the middle strings of a violin. The instrument consists of a resonating box with a snakeskin cover, a bridge, a stem, and tuning pegs for the strings. For an apparently simple instrument, it is extremely difficult to play. In fact, I would consider it harder for a beginner to pick up than the violin. The angle at which you hold the bow with your right hand is key. Though at first I could not discern the difference between cheap and expensive erhus, I soon became well acquainted with the features that distinguish these wooden string instruments.
At a shop I visited, this girl was playing the guqin (goo-jin), an ancient Chinese instrument claimed to have 3000 years of history. Note the mother sitting patiently through the lesson, eagerly watching for progress. My impression is that many parents will get their children classical music lessons solely to play the famous Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto. Every Chinese person is expected to know the story behind this beautiful piece, which is analogous to the Western tale of Romeo and Juliet.
Coming Soon
Movie of My Playing a Chinese Film Piece on a Shanghai Factory Violin
Like every adventure, this musical weekend started with a feast. I met up at Baby Doll with Mei, my coworker, and her cousin, Mei Yi Ling.
Baby Doll
Studded leather booths with red lanterns broadcast the restaurant’s peculiar fusion of Chinese food with Western presentation. Pictured above are papaya and chicken soup (lovely combination), goose liver, and the house specialty, Baby Doll (not sure what went into this one).
Baby Doll
When this red splattering arrived, I was afraid that I may have to sit through the meal facing a fetus, but it was fish. Both the look and taste didn’t appeal to me.
Fruit Tea
After the green tea was brewed, the waiter poured it into a glass teapot filled with apple, kiwi, and orange slices. Hot fruit tea was the delicious result.
Baby Doll
Iced kumquat juice at the far end supplemented the hot beverage. Mei’s hand rests on a dish with the consistency of lasagna but made of tofu with a little bit of cheese. The large plate in the foreground holds a giant sushi roll with fake crab and fruit at the center.
Fresh Sugar Cane Juice
Mei’s cousin and I then set off to find erhu lessons. I learned that his firm consults for electrical power companies. As a result, he gets to travel to different provinces to give training presentations on risk. On our way to the music shops, we had some sugarcane juice from a street vendor. The machine attached to the back of a bicycle grinds the cane stalks on spot.
Stefan, the Webbie who worked here last Winter, highly recommended Oscar’s Pub, an expatriate joint with live bluegrass, folk, and rock and an open-mike on Wednesday nights. He used to play with the house band and all the musicians there still remember him well. The house band started up at 9:30 pm with a singer/guitarist, bongo drummer, and mandolin player. The lead guy is American and asked if I was a singer when he noticed I was keenly watching them play. I was pretty happy to finally see live music in Shanghai, let alone good acoustic music. When I replied that I play fiddle but didn’t have one with me, I got a pretty positive response and the guy said he wanted to talk to me at break. Shortly, I found myself being introduced to a bunch of musicians scattered around the bar and then led upstairs to try out the mandolin player’s violin from Beijing. It played pretty well and I was so excited to finally be playing with others for the first time in ages that music was pouring out wildly from my fingers and they loved it. Shanghai has been an overwhelmingly inspiring place for writing and music and I had so many tunes to express at last on the violin. Though I’m classically trained, playing improvisational music is my favorite, both alone and with others. I practiced at the top of the staircase, playing blues outside the bathrooms in the two-story pub. The guy’s bathroom was crowded and I incidentally served as the waiting music. The cleaning woman was my biggest fan. She just walked right up to me and stared at me and my fingers for about five minutes with the biggest smile on her face. It was also amusing when people forgot they had to go to the toilet.
I then got to play with a few expats, accompanying them with chords and harmony and soloing when they’d nod off to me. Since the bar was crowded, only a few people close to us were really listening at first. I then turned up the mike a little, got a drunk Irish guy who said he could play bongos to try to accompany me with whatever he could, and started playing a show-offish Irish fiddle piece. It starts slow and people started clapping, which got attention. I then slowly sped up until I was doing double speed. By the time I got to triple speed (I was really excited to be playing last night and felt almost like I was at my best), the bar was practically silent and then exploded with cheers. By the time I played with the house band, I was well warmed up and alternatively soloed with the guitarist and mandolin player, who is amazing and just got back from studying music in the States. I also played a butchered version of the Devil Went Down to Georgia with a guitarist who sang the lyrics, replacing both “Johnny” and “Devil” with “Simmy” and “Georgia” with “Shanghai.” It’ll be hard to top those two pieces, but the music is fun and I have a lot to learn from these guys.
Thank you to Stefan for this amazing recommendation. You’re a hard act to follow, but I look forward to heading back to Oscar’s on Friday and Saturday to play with the house band.
Ken and Aili, friends of a friend of my Aunt Anne’s, introduced me to the budding art community in Shanghai. Formerly an industrial area, the district is home to several art galleries and workshops. The artist featured above created his red and gray paintings out of tessellations of women and babies to glorify the purest forms of life.
Gallery 1
Some of the art was political. Mao’s distinctive outline can be seen in red at the far end.
Gallery 1
Most of the paintings had Chinese themes and were aimed at capturing peaceful laughter. This European one stuck out from the rest enough that you could feel her expression, as if a live human were hidden among the paintings.
Gallery 2
Aside from a very graphic gay-lesbian gallery that we briefly entered, this gallery was the most nude. Pictured above are naked coal workers whose figures are meant to disturb the viewer.
Gallery 2
Almost all the paintings featured men either being dehumanized by their labor or injured by their machines.
Gallery 3
Upon seeing this piece of artwork, the friend we were traveling with exclaimed in Mandarin, “when you buy this expensive painting, you pay for just this, this, and this,” while leaping and pointing to the two blotches of ink and one strand of real hair adhered to the canvas.
Gallery 4
The style of this gallery utilized steel and small mechanical parts to make creatures. Large metal insects clung like real ones to the windows.
Front Doorstep of the Art District
Just outside of the gallery, a man was trying to pull a tree down with his foot braced against a wooden pole and a fellow worker hacking at the tree base with a pick axe. Even in the removed art district, it was impossible to escape the ongoing construction.
Roots?
This large stump was leaning against one of the studios. If you looked closely …
Roots + Art
you could make out the carving at the center.
Graffiti
Even the graffiti outside was beautiful and fit well into the artistic setting and old industrial buildings.
Gallery 5
This gallery consisted of an open space with hanging transparencies of randomly placed English and Chinese news web shots.
Over the babbling market sounds, you can hear an old man selling his wooden flutes out of small rickshaw cart parked on the corner of a crowded Old Town intersection.
Jinling Lu, my favorite road, is lined with music shops. Below, a man plays the erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument also known as the Chinese violin.
Music Shop, Jinling Lu
Jackie, the manager of a restaurant on Jinling Lu that I happened to stop at the day after the place opened, showed me the way to this store and served as my interpreter. I was amazed at the quality of their Shanghainese factory-made violins. After playing for a few minutes, I asked them if anyone there could give me lessons. There was actually an elementary Suzuki student practicing with an old teacher in the back. They told me that I didn’t need lessons, so I asked them how I could learn Chinese Classical music. I was disappointed that they could only recommend bookstores for sheet music.
I then picked up the erhu, which was very difficult to play, especially considering there are only 2 strings. The angle at which you hold the body and bow is key. I’ve been inquiring about erhu lessons and hope to buy one to bring back to the States.
Videos:
My apologies that the erhu cannot be heard too clearly over the background music of the practicing Suzuki violin student. Book 3 of the method, I think?
