Update 2012/05/29: It’s that time folks––the contest is now officially closed. But don’t go away just yet, check back in the coming days to see if you made it to the top slots! Our 10 finalists are in store for some great prizes, but in the meantime, thanks to everyone who took time to send us their work. You rock!
BY: LIZ TUNG (董怡)
This past weekend, 2 Kolegas – one of Beijing’s oldest, continually operational rock venues – celebrated its seventh anniversary with a two-night blowout featuring such legendary house bands as Buyi, Nucleus, Skarving and Wu and the Side Effects.
There’s a good reason to celebrate. In Beijing, where construction has been known to steamroll entire neighborhoods and fickle landlords are always raising rents, it’s tough for noisy, low-earning establishments (i.e. rock clubs) to stay put for long. But 2K (also known as 两个好朋友) has lasted largely thanks to two factors: 1) location and 2) its owners.
If you’ve never had the fortune of venturing into 2K, now’s the time to do it – 2K is, hands down, the best place to see a show during good weather. The venue is hidden away deep inside the grounds of a drive-in movie theater (汽车电影院) over on Liangmaqiao. You wander through an archway and up a curving road festooned with Christmas lights and flanked by trees until you hit a secret courtyard of restaurants. Back to the left is 2K, which on most summer weekends is overflowing with music and drunken revelers. While it may not be as big as venues like Mao Livehouse or Yugong Yishan, 2K boasts a cozy, intimate interior and (best of all during warm weather) an enclosed courtyard, where music lovers can holler their lungs out without fear of censure from the neighbors.
Just as crucial to the bar’s success are co-owners Liu Miao and Gao Feng, a couple of jolly music-lovers and makers who started the venue together as a means of supporting both the music scene and themselves. I recently talked with Liu Miao, who plays in Nucleus and Lidong, about his early years in Beijing, the Ningxia-based music community that centers around 2K and the genesis of his now seven-year-old bar.
A last-minute venue switch appeared to have no impact on the crowds of body-painted dancers who thronged Crab Island for Acupuncture Records’ fourth annual INTRO party on Saturday, May 26.
Copious sunshine, local DJ powerhouses and a solid roster of international acts kept the party going, but as it is every year at INTRO, the audience stole the show. Guys dressed as girls, girls as guys, both dressed as critters, and we even spotted what we can only guess was a space cowboy from the future. Anything and everything went, just as long as your clothes were as loud as the music.
See more photos here
BY: LAO HUANG
Though the character may look simple, this is one book you don’t want to judge by its cover. 书 (shū) first appeared as an Oracle Bone inscription meaning “to write.” The character 聿 was drawn to resemble a hand holding a pen, and was pronounced yè. As characters multiplied, it became necessary to indicate pronunciation, which Bronze inscriptions did by adding a 者underneath 聿. The character was now pronounceable for readers but not efficient for writers, who had to draw all those extra strokes. Clerical script later simplified things by replacing 者 with 曰 to create 書.
书 made the move to its current form with the emergence of cursive writing. In an effort write more quickly, scribes began omitting strokes and drawing approximate outlines of characters. This gave birth to cursive script, which transformed 書 to the easy-to-write 书. But writers didn’t stop there. The character’s original meaning, “to write” took some serious semantic twists and turns, and a treasure trove of words emerged.
BY: CASSANDRA KIRK
Beijing can be hard on the heels, which isn’t exactly endearing for those of us who like to shop. With all the good buys scattered miles apart, it seems impossible to get a solid day of shopping in (or even a few hours) without turning back on yourself, landing in awful traffic and getting sore feet in the process. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands and settle for cheap bargains at the clothing market, but let’s not abandon Beijing’s vintage, high street and high fashion just yet.
With the weather at it’s best for bike riding, we give The Beijing Bicycle Shopping Route. Follow this guide, and you’ll be sure to get the most out of your allotted shopping time, and come home with a one-of-a-kind piece or pieces sure to satisfy the shopaholic in all of us.
BY: EVE SUN (孙惠子)
If you live in Beijing, or are just passing through, chances are that you’ve tried the lukewarm beers of the Great Leap Brewery. Whether or not you’re a fan, there’s an undeniable charm to the idea of a hutong microbrewery tucked away behind the Forbidden City. A few winding alleys away, however, in the hutong home of a micro-micro amateur brewer by the name of Hardy Simes, a small batch of homemade beer sits modestly on his kitchen table. For Hardy, an ordinary plastic water cooler serves as a makeshift fermenter, nursing in its belly a rich mahogany-colored mixture of water, mashed barley grains, hops, and that all-important ingredient in the transformation of grain into alcohol: yeast.
Last weekend, I joined Hardy Simes for the bottling of his latest batch of homemade beer. Hardy, who has been living in Beijing for about five years, began home brewing in his courtyard by accident, having inherited a set of equipment from a fellow beer enthusiast a year ago.
Over the course of an hour, Hardy introduced me to the ingredients and equipment of his home brew. Beer begins with barley, and so did we.
The deadline for The World of Chinese’s Photo Contest is May 28, 2012, so now is the time to send in your best shots of music in China. The theme is as open to interpretation as can be, the only requirement is that your photo was taken in China.
Read all about the entry requirements and fantastic prizes here, then send your submissions to twocmag2011@gmail.com.
BY: JOE DORAN （杜乔）
In a previous article, we looked at the modest but noteworthy relationship between Ancient Rome and Han China and, naturally, asked the question that everyone was wondering: who would win in a fight?
But it was a question that could never truly be answered because, for better or worse, these two great empires never met on the field of battle.
However, if you’re still itching for another ‘what if?’, then perhaps the events that unfolded in Central Asia in 751CE will satiate your curiosity.
What happened in 751? It saw the Battle of Talas – the first and only time in recorded history that the forces of China would clash against the might of medieval Islam.
BY: DIANA COCA
It’s 5 a.m.
In my home country of Spain, people are either sound asleep or stumbling home. But in China, many people are rolling out of bed, embracing the day and heading straight for the parks. Here, they spread out, making room to stretch their limbs, minds and spirits with rituals of Tai Chi, Yoga, Qi Gong and meditation. Others simply sit around, shooting the breeze or singing, playing instruments or dancing in unison.
In the gallery below, we capture a real community doing communal things. Together, they practice rituals to energize their bodies and minds. They’re involved with each other’s lives. They share their experiences. They seem happier, less stressed and healthier, especially the elderly.
Why not join them? If you can manage to get up early, head to a park and try the following exercises. Your body will thank you for it!
In a city where cannabis is scarce and sunlight scarcer, it may seem strange that reggae music should flourish – but if Beijing has nothing else, it’s got talented musicians with a hunger for innovation. We can likely thank the latter for the birth of the Chinese mainland’s first-ever reggae band, Longshendao.
Though Chinese immigrants played a well-documented role in the birth of reggae more than 50 years ago, the genre didn’t catch on in the Chinese mainland until 2006, when a handful of seasoned Beijing rockers-turned-dreadheads launched Longshendao (龙神道), a name as cultural as it is hippified that means “the Tao of the dragon god.”
Though 2006 may seem like a late start for Chinese reggae, singer and bassist Guo Jian (XTX and Cold Blooded Animal) says the band actually started fiddling around with reggae in 1997. “We were all daily friends, and we all liked this kind of music, so we just naturally got together,” he says. Those friends form a veritable who’s who of 90s and early 00s Chinese rock: like Guo Jian, zither player Zhang Wei played with XTX and Cold Blooded Animal, as well as Buyi; keyboardist Fei Fei played with Zhang Chu, and drummer Gao Fei played with Secondhand Rose. Despite the band members’ high profiles, for nine years the music remained a private hobby. “At that time, there weren’t many people in China who liked reggae music,” Guo explains.
