Music and Missed Chances
by Kay Sexton
As I’ve mentioned before, Beijingers have an unselfconscious willingness to burst into song. In the parks there are glee clubs where large groups gather to sing, and in the streets it is common to pass people heartily raising their voices in a rousing chorus of something popular. During my "Traditional Blind-man Chinese Massage" I was treated to a jaunty but sotto voce rendition of a Cantonese ditty while my masseur (not fully blind, young, very jolly, and incredibly expert) worked knots out of my neck. If you even smile at a singing Chinese matron she’ll grab your arm and start conducting you. Your choices are limited, sing and look foolish or pull away and look ungracious.
In my second week in Beijing I found myself in the middle of a Chinese park singing "Can’t Get You Out of My Head" while three middle-aged fan dancers practiced in front of me. Each time I stopped singing they folded their fans and applauded, and my audience grew larger and more expectant. It was two choruses and three mumbled verses of sheer hell.
If you need silence to sleep, find out if your hotel has double glazed windows before booking a room and pack earplugs. Beijing is a city of sound, and the best way to experience it is to listen appreciatively. That’s not always easy at 2 a.m., especially if you’re enduring a mattress composed of springs with no cushioning–a Beijing special I learned to dread. Asking for a softer mattress was catastrophic. I got two sets of springs piled on each other and each time I coughed, I lifted gently in the air and bounced back down again like a novice trampolinist.
And you do cough; Beijing is a filthy city. Buildings are torn down and restructured twenty four hours a day, especially around the new Olympic sites–if the sun breaks through the gauzy layer of airborne dust, people step out of shops and restaurants to have a look at this rare phenomenon. Street dining, as a result, is a true fast food experience; don’t be put off trying anything you see, but wait until the vendor puts fresh stock out and then strike because older items likely contain a patina of cement dust. Try the fruit sticks–crab apples stuffed with walnuts or dates, dipped in toffee; or any of the dumplings and patties sold on most street corners–for a couple of pence you can acquire a fresh, well-seasoned snack to munch as you tour the city.
Actually, I just worked it out; the cement dust shouldn’t be avoided, it’s not optional–it’s meant to weigh you down so you can stay on your mattress!
I’m getting to the real musicals. Foreign-looking visitors who step off the beaten track are likely to find themselves appearing in wedding photographs. As a small brunette I wasn’t much bothered by this, but my tall auburn-haired colleague was constantly harangued by proud family members escorting newly-weds out of banquet halls to have their photographs taken alongside her. There will be a whole generation of Chinese who grow up, point to the tall, titian-haired white woman in their parents’ wedding album and are told, "We saw her passing in the street so we made her stand between your parents and have her photograph taken–cool, huh?"
But if you want to be in a musical, it’s even easier. Hang around Grand View Gardens in Beijing for a couple of days. It’s an essential location for Chinese soap operas and for many advertisements. I’d only been there ten minutes when I was handed something and filmed grinning at it; laundry soap, dehydrated food, vacuum-packed drugs? Who knows? The person recording the sound spoke English. Did I want to be in a musical they were filming, he asked. Would I get paid? Yes. How much? When I worked out the pay rate I realized it would cost me more to get into the gardens every day as a foreigner than I would get paid to feature in the film; I declined.
Now I regret it. I should have sung for my supper. How many people get to start a singing career in their forties, especially when they’re tone deaf? Perhaps I could have been the next Kylie? "I should be so lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky."–and maybe I would have been, if I’d only grabbed my chance.
BIO: KAY SEXTON is an Associate Editor for Night Train journal. Her current focus is "Green Thought in an Urban Shade" a collaboration with the painter Fion Gunn to explore and celebrate the parks and urban spaces of Beijing, Dublin, London and Paris in words and images. Her Web site gives details of her current and forthcoming publications and she blogs at writingneuroses.blogspot.com. Contact her at kay@charybdis.freeserve.co.uk