Understanding America and China

“You Americans don’t understand anything about Chinese culture,” my roommate on the Yangtze River cruise said. We’d been talking about cultural differences in Chinese, and he had reached this conclusion based off of recent news. He said that Americans are fine, but that they know nothing about China. (And if you are thinking “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” then you and I have the same brain).

To be frank, I could say the same about him and American culture. We would be trying to talk about it, and when we reached a Chinese word I didn’t know that was related to American history, he’d be aghast, saying that I don’t know my own history! Then, when I looked up this mysterious word, which was “The Civil War” I had to explain that we use different words to describe our history, and that maybe I just didn’t know how to talk about it in Chinese. He was a plump guy with an impressive collection of Hawaiian shirts and pants that never quite made it past his socks. He also had an innate ability not to pay for things and to cheat the tourism market to save hundreds of yuan. I had much to learn from him.

But as much as we could talk about certain things, and as much as he thought he understood my culture, still there would be times when he would interrupt a good conversation to ask what I consider to be stupid questions.

Such as:
“Why is your hair gold?”
“Can you use RMB [Chinese money]?”
“How long are you going to stand here and look at things?”
We all have our moments.

Still, it bothered me. China and America are both such big, influential countries, it seems like the most important thing in the world is to understand each other, or at the very least be able to have conversations with each other without it being reduced to mud-throwing or argumentation. A real conversation–the art that sometimes I feel is slowly dying in a comment-strewn wasteland.

We never really got to that point, mostly because my Chinese has limits, and his English is basically non-existent. A pity. Sometimes speaking a foreign language feels like trying to stuff a handbag into a keyhole–there’s so much you want to say, but very limited capabilities with which to express it.

But sometimes, you make it work.

I found this when I went to the Summer Palace with one of my American friends, who was there for the week. (Only a week in China! How overwhelming.) We both play violin, and so it was with joy that we saw a man sitting at a desk with a violin case next to him. He had fake teeth that looked like they were about to flap right out of his mouth, a fanny pack, a stained white tank top, wild black and grey hair that looked as though it was struck by lightning, and a pair of glasses on his nose. His nose was bent over white paper on which he was practicing calligraphy.

“Want to make a new friend?” my friend asked me.

Obviously.

I sidled up next to him and mentioned that we both played violin. And, boom, the violin was in my friend’s hands. Then, it was my turn, and I played “The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto,” which is a famous violin and erhu piece in China. He got really excited, took out a beat-up erhu, and began to play with me. My poor friend was reduced to holding the music for us (though would get his chance later to play as the man then got us to do Beijing opera with him) and we played.

“You see?” he said to the surrounding gaggle of tourists watching our progress. “The American can play our music! And we are playing together now!”

Indeed we were, and although it wasn’t my finest performance, it was still a good one.

He kept playing, and then turned to expostulate some more to the audience. “Just as there is a great canal connecting Hangzhou and Beijing, so we are connected from far away. We are playing together, and so we are connected. Obama and Xi Jiping can fight and argue all they want, but we don’t need to do that, not here! Leave the fighting to the leaders. Chinese are good. Americans are good.”

And then we played once more, before romping around in Beijing opera (he had me singing, and my friend on violin).
Maybe that’s all it is. Once we realize that some governments represent only the idea of a place, then maybe we can realize that the actual place, the actual people, and the actual conversations are not as scary as we might think.

Or, when it doubt, make music and hope the rest comes together.

Midnight on the Water

When I first came to China and tried to play Mark O’Connor’s rendition of “Midnight on the Water,” I sucked.  I mean, the notes were right and all that, but I still sucked. 

I mean, it’s written in such a way that one hardly needs to try at all to make it sound good.  Same with the violin I was using at the time—my precious Meinel, which is awaiting my return from China.  On that instrument, you don’t need to be all that talented to sound good.   So…why couldn’t I get it?

Maybe it was because I was watching Mark O’Connor perform the piece too many times and was trying too hard to copy him.  Maybe it was because I had no sense of dynamics and more or less played mezzo forte the whole time. 

Why was I playing it at all, you might ask?

Because I wanted to sound good.  But maybe, that’s not the point.

I started on the violin before I could count to ten without pausing to think about it.  Honestly speaking, I don’t remember a time in my life when I was not playing violin.  I have played in recitals growing up, concert halls, orchestras, string quartets, and at weddings.  I’ve grown up with a series of violins: 1/8size, all the way up to full-size, lamenting when my dampit got trapped in my violin, and dutifully scraping the rosin off of the strings—ignoring the pained looks of those around me cringing at sound of cloth on dirty string.  I devoted hours to practicing music and then performed it. 

But amid all of this heartache, I never asked: Why?

Here in China, I’ve sent the Meinel back to America, bought a cheap instrument named Mimi, and have entered a completely different arena of violin performance.  Yes, there are classical corners, but I seem not to have found them.  Friends ask me to play something for them in dingy practice rooms.  I bring it into class to saw out Christmas carols come December.   I hack away at bluegrass even though I’m from Minnesota. 

Does it sound good?  Maybe good enough.

And I still never paused to ask why I now owned an extra thing to carry back with me to the US.  I have no ambition to be a professional musician, no dreams to make millions off of my strings.

And then a family that I’ve gotten close with in China got the opportunity to go to America for an indefinite amount of time.  They were having a music party as a sort of send-off.  They wanted me to play.

I took out “Midnight on the Water,” which is something I wanted to perform for a long time anyway.  But there was a problem: I now had less time to prepare, and also didn’t have as nice a violin as I used to.  I had also never solved the problem of why I sucked.

There’s a repeat of the slow, melodic section, and I didn’t know what to do with it.  I figured, play louder, right?  Crescendos are good.  Except, then it ended up being a flat slab of noise.  Pretty notes, no heart.  Why am I playing this?  Why am I playing this when I know I won’t sound the best?

Before, when I thought of “Midnight on the Water,” I thought of myself on a stage, playing it and sounding good and people being impressed.  This time, I had no such illusions.  Instead, I thought of the family, and how kind they’d been to me, and how much I’d miss them when they went away.  I thought of all the times they invited me into their home, fed me, took me to interesting places around Hangzhou, told me stories, and how when I got sick, they were there to help.  When I thought of Future Hannah playing this piece, I thought of how I never really did want that song to end.  I wanted them to know that I cared, and that the time spent with me was not fickle or easily forgotten.

I decided to slow down in the repeated section and not to interrupt long notes with vibrato.  I wanted notes to sound like the pause you make before turning around that last time to see if the person is still waving goodbye.  I wanted to cup each note close to me like a firefly flickering in the night.

I’ll never know for sure whether or not it worked.  But that’s not what matters.  Together, with friends and other teachers, we held onto the time, enveloped in a hush within an otherwise noise-filled world.  And after almost 20 years of playing the violin, I think I finally understood why anybody makes music: because there’s something beating inside, and because there’s someone listening.

A big fat bluegrass wedding

Now, I’ve tried all kinds of strange combos: whipped cream and potato chips (don’t judge), Grecian statue poses with fake mustaches, and even waltzing to Bon Jovi.  But I never thought of trying the combination of bluegrass and a Chinese wedding.

“I hope the bride knows what bluegrass is,” the guitar player in our as-yet nameless bluegrass band said while tuning his strings.  We were skulking outside of the Starbucks by the Culture Center because it was raining and we needed to practice.  Our banjo player was filling us in on the details of the wedding to come.  Us, playing bluegrass, after a Chinese wedding ceremony. 

Standard stuff, right?

Here’s the kind of wedding I’m accustomed to: a string quartet made up of two violins, a viola and a cello arrive, set up the instruments, adjust some stands, and then hack away at Pachelbel and Handel’s Water Music just well enough to be ignored.  The general goal of wedding music: sound good enough, but not so flashy or good that guests can pick out any one specific song.  The person in charge of the money sort of goes AWOL as we pack up, and we end up playing some random Baroque stuff.  Sometimes, we just play the service: a standard prelude, processional, recessional, postlude.  Though one time, we played for a reception, and in fact, we all vowed never to do it again because it translated to an hour and a half of playing while in full eyesight of a delectable chocolate fondue fountain.  We had our standards, our music that amounted to nothing more than the word “nice,” which is usually all people are looking for in wedding music.

So, a bluegrass wedding?

For starters, we were put on a stage (right next to a precariously-stacked tower of champagne glasses, go figure) and were given mics to diddle around with.  We actually had no idea when we were supposed to play since everything was really laid back.  We wandered about the coffee bar that the wedding was taking place in.  We edged closer to the food (and I had no expectation that I would be fed, but later would be digging into delicious food) and generally schmoozed until the bridesmaid/interpreter came and said ‘Hey, the bride is running a little late.  Can you play something…lively?” 

But of course!

The wedding was supposed to begin at 6:18, and the three of us speculated the significance of this time in our respective corner of stools, chairs and stands.  The guitarist maintained that, since 8 was a special number, having one in the time was lucky.  I thought it had something to do with the combination of 9’s, since the Chinese pronunciation of two 9’s and the word for “forever” is the same.  At any rate, we started playing at 6:21, so symbolism be damned. 

I looked out over the smartly-dressed guessed seated at coffee tables, at the pictures of the bride and groom in traditional Chinese wedding outfits, and then at our instruments.

And then: why not?

Enter the bluegrass band, Chinese style.  Photo courtesy of Chad Allen, banjo extraordinaire.

We began with “Cripple Creek,” which is just about as bluegrass-y as you can get.  The banjo plucked out an ambling tune, and then suddenly, children were up dancing and flopping around.  Some adults joined them, and the atmosphere was one of celebration.  I think that’s the universal thing about weddings: everyone is there to celebrate with the enthusiasm of a firecracker.  We transitioned into a Chinese song 《我的姑娘在哪里》 which translates to “Where is my girl?” because the bride was still running late.  We kept playing, and no one was running around in hysterics.  In fact, it was time for more dancing.  The Chinese guests cheered and sang with us, the foreign guests snapped photos and laughed at the dancing kids.  We played faster and faster, and then when the bridesmaid came back to say we could stop, we slunk away into a different corner to watch the proceedings.

Of course, Chinese weddings are different in many ways than Western weddings.  For one, the couple is usually already married (having gone to the officials and gotten the papers signed).  So the “wedding” is really just a formality.  The officiant is more like an emcee cracking jokes and introducing the couple and interviewing them in the process.  (“Who do you want to see most?”  “My bride!”)  There’s a series of bows to family, to the attendants, to each other.  There is a tea-serving ceremony in which the bride and groom offer tea to their new parents.  The bride also changes into a red dress come reception time. And also: receptions usually only last as long as the dinner, with activities in the middle.  So when dessert is served, that’s usually the signal for everyone to leave, whereas in America, the party is just getting started.

This wedding defied all traditions: Chinese at its core, with enough foreign elements to make it fusion.  Half of the guests were foreigners who had studied with her, and the other half Chinese people who I think had a good grasp of Western culture.  She was in a big poofy white dress.  They cut cake, poured the champagne, and the emcee made them play games before they could kiss each other.

Then it was reception time, and so we were back on stage.  Despite of how random it seemed to be there, we fit right in.  Right in, with our jeans, our American instruments, and our songs.  We played “Turkey in the Straw,” and even got a folksy “Canon in D” going (because it wouldn’t be a wedding without it).

The bride performing her song “Ready for Love” with us. Photo courtesy of Chad Allen.

The bride came up to sing a song she requested called “Ready for Love” which was in Chinese.  We plucked and played with her, and I sang along with, more as a prompter for when she got lost.  Then, when she ran to hug her new husband, we played and played, watching the gaggle of dancers hoedown in qipao.

The night swept by, and I wished that our set list was longer.  The bridesmaid handed us our envelope (and we didn’t even need to hunt her down!) and thanked us profusely for playing.  They said they were so lucky to know us, but I felt like the lucky one: a gig, a good dinner, good company, and a lot of fun.

Just goes to show: some of the strangest flavor combinations have the best taste, hmm?

If a tree falls in the forest…

I’m not being modest when I say that my recently-acquired Chinese violin is little more than a shoebox with strings.  The sound is unnaturally tinny, and there isn’t even the name of the maker inscribed on the inside.  The point is: I can love it to death without worrying about collateral damage, which is exactly the truth: I love this Chinese violin.

So much, in fact, that I decided to take it with me to a park for a play-date.  There’s a park across the street from my university in Xiasha.  A great place to admire blossoms peaking out of buds, with the added bonus of being fireman-themed.  

I didn’t want to play in the middle of picnics or couples watching clouds, so I found a somewhat secluded forest of bamboo trees.  I sat amid green shadows, and cool green bamboo stalks lined like a ruler.  The path was out of the way enough to catch the random stragglers, but not to make me end up on the evening news.  I took out the violin, tuned, and played. 

Not long into playing, I saw some workers go by.  They climbed right into the bamboo trees and, from the corner of my eye, I watched their flat shoes pad softly over fallen leaves.  What were they doing? I wondered.  This time, I didn’t ask (though I usually do) because I wanted to be a part of the background.  If I stopped what I was doing, then it would be like breaking the spell. 

I wanted to play for the sake of ambiance.

That’s when I noticed the machetes.

I’ll skip ahead and tell you that they were not members of a local gang, or dangerous.  Actually, they were very good workers.  Because even though there was a strange foreigner sitting in the bamboo forest playing violin, they were not to be deterred from their task, which was to lop down bamboo trees.

Of course, I didn’t know this, and continued playing random fiddle tunes despite my creeping suspicions.  It wasn’t until they stood about 5 feet (that’s about 1.5-2 meters for the non-Americans out there) from me that I figured I was getting the final curtain.  I watched as they examined the bamboo trees, and then HACK! went the machete and CRASH! went the tree.  I went on playing, like those musicians on the sinking Titanic, and tried to muster the romance of a few moments ago.  It was no use.  My stage was disappearing and there was nothing for it.  I was just about to count it as a loss, when one of the workers turned toward me.

“HALLOOO!”  He said.  Then, he paused.  “That’s how foreigners say it, right?  Halllooo?”

“Yes,” I said.  “But you can also just say “你好, right?”

He nodded. 

“Where are you from?” his friend asked.

“Where do you think I’m from?” I asked.  (Guessing games are always much more fun).

“America,” he said without hesitation.

I had to wonder how he knew so quickly.  Was it a random guess?  Were Americans more likely than other Westerns to perform even when the stage was being torn apart?

It’s like that question: If a tree falls in a forest when no one’s around, will it make a sound? 

No one will know. 

Except, now I have an answer: it will sound like violin music.       

   

 

 

 

We Play a D

“We are now in The Echo Room,” an English tour guide said.  I was in the main temple in Angkor Wat, shamelessly mooching off of someone else’s paid tour by pretending to linger just a little bit longer by a shrine.  The guide was a smiley Cambodian guy leading an English couple.  He smiled at me, as if to acknowledge that, yes, I could learn, too.  In other words, he was onto me.  I prepared to slink away into the temple to find another guide to mooch off of.  

“The Echo Room?” the English couple, well, echoed.

The guide nodded. And then a small Cambodian woman gently pressed them against the wall and instructed them to thump their chests.   They exchanged glances, and so the Cambodian woman thumped her own chest.  The sound, deep and low like a drum resonated in the room, reverberating off of the walls.  

“Wow,” I said, forgetting to pretend that I was being stealthy.  The Cambodian woman encouraged the English couple to do the same, and when they pondered the ensuing echo, I decided to try, too.

There’s no point wondering how you look when you’re thumping your chest, because it just looks like you’re whacking yourself in the chest.  But when I did it, I felt as though I was of a different breed.  An instrument, rather than the player.  A drum equipped with its own mallet.  I thumped again.  

The couple and the guide moved on, and I stayed behind, thumping the right side of my chest and listening to the echo.  And for the rest of the morning, when I found myself alone in a corridor, I thumped again, beating out a rhythm I didn’t fully understand.

Until I did.

“Oh, it’s a “D!”” I said, relieved that my years as a violin player could still provide me with musical notes, pitches, whenever I needed them.  (It’s a fact that any and all string players are eternally equipped with an “A”–regardless of whether convenient or timely)  And then I toured happily, knowing that we humans, are capable of playing a D.

Yes, the key signature of our lives.  D.  

Just don’t tell Pachelbel.  

 

V for Violin

Okay, I caved.  After one year without a violin, I decided that enough was enough, went to a corner shop, tested out all of the dirt cheap, basically-tissue-box instruments, and by the grace of a “Christmas discount” am now the proud owner of what the owner could only comment as “Why not try a different one?”

I knew it was bad before I even picked it off of the hook.  There were absolutely no details on the thing, which meant that it was probably just a factory chew-toy, and the owner hadn’t even bothered to put the bridge on or tune the strings.

“This one is really bad,” he said handing it to me.

“I know.”  And really, I did.  

But after noodling around on the fingerboard (and this particular fingerboard left black marks on my finger tips) and trying different places on the strings, I concluded that it was still an improvement over silence and went ahead and got it.

Merry Christmas to me.

My new violin is nothing like my old one, which is this incredible Meinel instrument, which one of my friends calls “The Chocolate Violin” because it’s so delicious when it gets to playing.  I named it Gerald.  Gerald came with me to Vienna.  Gerald was my only companion when I first came to China, when my baggage got trapped in Beijing, and all I had with were my backpack and my violin.  (And no, that’s not as exciting and vagabond-y as it sounds).  Gerald came with to Yangzhou in the countryside, and it was with Gerald that I played for the occasional audience.  The back is striped in golds and darker browns, and it stays in tune for weeks, which is an excellent trait for the lazy violinist. 

But, Gerald is a classy fellow.  And when you live in a place that doesn’t have central heating in the winter, you’re not about to leave classy fellows behind to crack and die.  So Gerald went back to Minnesota when my mom came last year.  And there were no sad violins to play him a farewell song.  Poor Gerald. 

My new violin, well.  First of all, there is no name.  I mean, if there was a maker, they did not write their name in it, and so this instrument is like a shadow, a secret, nameless as if having materialized out of nothing.  So I decided to name it myself, just so that it wouldn’t seem so junky.  Her name is Mimi (秘密 mi mi which is the Chinese word for “secret”).  Mimi did not come with a shoulder rest, and there’s a funny ringing sound if I’m playing too far away from the bridge.  It’s pretty muffled, as though I’m playing from under a blanket, and it took a lot of rosin to make the bow actually grip the string. 

But, hell.  I can bang on it as much as I want, I can pass it on to other people who want to play without having an aneurism, and I can bring it anywhere I want without worrying too much about dampits or humidity levels. 

So I brought Mimi to class today to bang out some Christmas carols (which Gerald would have done, too, but would have insisted on more finesse).  We sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” and when the end of class came near, I was sad, because I was saying goodbye to the kind of class I will reminisce about in later months when I face new, confused students. 

“Miss Hannah, can I play it?” a student named Grace asked.  Without hesitation I said sure, because it was just Mimi, and so I tuned it better for her and handed it over.  Grace played the theme from “Castle in the Sky” with very precise, if somewhat stiff fingers.  I’ve heard that song in just about every Chinese old town, in the old ocarina shops, and really anywhere that’s trying to create ambience.  But there, in a cold classroom in China, we had music.

After Grace was done and we applauded her, I said class had ended, and the words sounded weak and stupid even as I said them.  I mean, this was a class that actually ran itself once when we had a debate, and who ran up after class was done to fight over who would erase the board for me and who came with PPT presentations just to share current events.  

“Well, okay, I guess I can play another one for you…” I said.  I began to play “The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto.” 

The thing with “The Butterfly Lover’s Concerto” is that it’s overdone in China.  It’s a gorgeous piece of music, but it has also been translated into a car horn.  I play it for Chinese friends, because they usually get a kick out of something familiar and are mostly just impressed that I know it at all, regardless of whether or not I get it right. 

But this time, there was something special.  Last night, for the first time, a listener at a Christmas party actually told me I was playing too fast and that maybe I should linger more.  I’ll admit that sometimes I go on autopilot for that song, or that I’ll think so much about getting slides and notes right that I miss out on the heart of the thing.  So in that cold classroom, on a shoddy violin, in China of all places, I lingered and tasted every note, especially since it meant more time with some great students. 

Gerald would have played it better, and I definitely stopped before the more difficult fast passage to save face.  But I swear the room was humming with more than the instrument, and the song was alive–a living, breathing organism evolving with each pair of ears listening.  I’ve gotten this feeling playing with an orchestra before, but never on my own.  On my own, it has always been about performing, not participating.  This time, when I was done, I wanted to keep playing and playing and playing all the way until I closed my eyes to sleep.  (But I think my class would have resented skipping dinner for that). 

It’s funny how these sorts of things work out, though.  Who knew that my greatest solo performance to date would be in China with Mimi in a cold classroom wearing a Santa hat?

Here’s to you, Mr. Pachelbel

The practice room itself is a Room of Requirement of musical gadgets.  Mazas, Kreisler, Paganini, and Etudes all shuffled and stacked on top of the piano next to a thin wire-stand with Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnol dog-marked at one of the harder pages. 

And then there was the student staring at me—a thin male student, leaning over the piano with thick glasses, a sweatshirt over a plain white t-shirt and jeans.  When I expressed my intent, he said “Yeah okay!” and led me over to where there was a “public violin,” while his lanky friend chortled at the foreigner who not only spoke some Chinese, but was also going to dink around on a violin because apparently, that’s what foreigners do in their free time. 

The public violin is nothing like the Meinel waiting for me back in Minnesota.  It’s dark brown, lacks a shoulder rest, is out of tune every time I find it, and seems to be perpetually thirsty for more rosin.  I tuned the strings, wondering how in the hell anyone could play music when the A sounded more like a B-flat, and as I awkwardly shifted with the instrument slipping along my shoulder, the boy (named “Allen”) scrambled over to another violin case and pulled out a shoulder rest for me.  “It’s mine, but you can use it.”  He gave me his phone number, so I could just text him whenever I wanted to be practicing.  “I’m usually here,” he said.  Actually, I often wonder if I’ve stumbled upon the phantom of the practice room, since he really is always there, but I choose not to think about it too much.

The reason I needed to find a violin so badly: a friend wanted me to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D for him. OF COURSE of all songs, that’s what people want to hear.  I think of all the weddings in which my quartet wanted to gouge our eyes out from the dirge massacre staggering out of our instruments.  Because there is nothing better in the world than Pachelbel, even though it’s the same freaking chords over and over again at a sappy “Just get married already!” tempo.

But I digress.

We were in this cramped practice room (not the one with all of the traditional Chinese instruments scrunched together, but that’s another story), and I was about to unleash the Pachelbel Beast.  It started out fine enough, the nice longer notes, slowly knotting together into the seemingly-difficult passages (all while the cello thinks WHY ME?).  But then I forgot exactly how this part transitioned to the next, and then what came next, until I was just sort of making things up that still fitted with the chords and then ending on a nice cadence in the hopes that he didn’t notice. 

“Sounds good…” he said.  And then asked for more sappy wedding-y songs. 

Oh, brother, I thought.  So I played a Minuet, and he waved his hands around as if conducting an invisible orchestra.  Then I played “Autumn” by Vivaldi.  And then…

“Oh my God…” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“I forgot Vivaldi’s Spring!”

“Maybe it’ll come back…” he said, asking me to play the Minuet again.

It didn’t. 

Instead, I played all kinds of Hornpipes, a Bach thing, a Handel thing, and Minuet in D again. All part of the wedding quartet tradition of playing the same things over and over again with standard, white-lace, gusto—sweetly enough not to be noticed when the bride entered.  Why am I doing this, I kept thinking.  Why not play something, I don’t know, FUN?  And I kept thinking, too, that my notes were out of tune, and SERIOUSLY HOW DO YOU FORGET SPRING??

Me and this rickshaw violin teeter-tottering around sounding great and sounding like a saw.  The notes warbling out on unreliably-tuned strings, the shoulder rest wavering whenever I shift, and the bow scratching like a monster trapped in a steel box.  The kind of playing that would make my violin teacher tell me I had lightning fingers, because “you didn’t hit the same place twice…”

But when I was done, I could tell it was the most special thing my friend had ever experienced.  And it occurred to me that it didn’t matter about the sound quality, or which pieces I remembered, or how perfect the Canon in D was.  All that mattered was that I played it for him, and that in playing it, brought us together through the mystery of black notes, or something Hallmark-y like that.

So, here’s to you, Pachelbel.  Here’s to you and your goddamned Canon in D.  May you rest in piece, and may we as musicians try to force another classical piece to catch on before our cellos fester in their own boredom.