Rock'n'roll and Hubei chips: fungalhorse rides again

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it's time to say goodbye to china...

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of sleep deprivation, long train rides, sunflower seeds and music. The three fungal horses set off from Kunming in mid-May after a couple of great gigs there and in Dali, and headed up to Chengdu.

Kunming... the city of eternal spring finally pulled out the stops and gave us some good weather just before we left. Kunming was all about quebecan bluegrass, dodgy dvd's, the first snow in 10 years (eating shit on the mountain), late night ridiculousness, and flea markets.

Dali, as usual, was all about Bai women trying to sell us drugs, hotpot flavored vodka, card games and music. Real rye bread and fried mushrooms, the best spaghetti bog I've had in... months.

We rolled in to Chengdu after one of those train trips where you lie in your narrow bunk thinking about sleeping and how good it would be, instead of actually doing it. We were in the care of the indomitable Sascha, who's been in Sichuan and Chongqing for the last 8 or so years, and is almost unstoppable. We stayed a little way out of the city, south east in the flower-growing district, in the first actual house I've stayed at in China. Just 20 minutes down the road is a market selling just about everything including fresh food, where children dared each other to race up and scream out "lowaii!" at us. Chengdu was the Jah Bar; a percussion jam, a great show and a lot of friendly faces. Chengdu was the Bookworm Cafe, a much more quiet and serious kind of show, to a small gathering of expats. Chengdu was the government burying the real news about Xichang, or Tibet, and little pieces of reality filtering through the smog. A young girl, recent journalism graduate, sending the message "the Tibetan killed one immaculate citizen near the hospital". Chengdu was soldiers and police checking the bars and trains for trouble, or Tibetan faces. Everyone talking about the protests, no-one knows what's actually happening there, but many suspect the people on the tv news are actors, and that the govt is using the issue to take the heat off its relations with Taiwan - which has a newly elected government in favor of closer economic ties...

We missed our train out of Chengdu. There's a saying used to promote chengdu to tourists: "once you come to Sichuan you will never want to leave", a play on the old saying that "you should go to sichuan later in life in case you never want to leave". Anyway, the locals say "once you come to chengdu you will never find a taxi"... and so it was. Perhaps it was the unusual number of shop opening ceremonies or the shut down of traffic in the Tibetan quarter, but whatever it was the place was almost in gridlock. We arrived 15 minutes late, but the fates were with us and we managed to exchange our tickets for the next day.

The trip to Changsha took us through more mountains and tunnels, which gave way to a steady kind of lowlands farming scenery. a magnificent pink and orange sunset cheered me up and almost prepared me for my sleepless night - tormented by the fella in the bunk next to me snoring his head off raucously for hours. We all had seats/bunks in different places, and it was unusual and kind of enjoyable to be by myself, as anonymous as any exceptionally tall foreigner with funny looking hair and a septum piercing can be in china. Most of the passengers got off half way, and the train was roomy and quiet... ah. I actually got some sleep in between the stranger's snores, and we arrived in Chang Sha befuddled and hungry.

We were hassled by beggars for a couple of hours while we waited for our friend Mong Ni/Pinky to come and meet us. We ended up getting out the guitar and mandolin and trying reverse psychology, asking everyone else for money. Didn't work so well though... Finally MongNi arrived and we set off for Xiangtan - the birthplace of Chairman Mao... I passed out on the bus, and as I awakened I was struck by the thought "what would Mao say to the Mcdonalds/KFC/fast food strip in his old town?"
We dodged the crap food and went round to a mate's place - Nate served us hot chocolate and let us play Grand Theft Auto for a while until our brains clicked back into reality. As usual I suck at computer games.

Next we headed for ZhangYi's place. He's the owner of a true underground rock bar. By that - it's built under a road intersection, and it's called the "rock bar"... ZhangYi settled us in to his parents' old apartment, extremely comfortable thank you, and we were soon semiconscious again. We hung out at the bar that night, and the next day slept and slept some more, before heading to the bar for the show. Another band was to play first, and after a sound check which involved awkwardly jerry-rigging microphone stands and a crap jam on drums by kt, we got a feed in a little room under the stairs - seriously. I'm not sure it's owned by ZhangYi, but it's like a little hidey hole under the stairs in the park where the Rock Bar is.

Another band was set to play before us, and - expecting almost anything - we were not horribly surprised when they turned out to have a kind of epic rock ballady type feel. When we got up it was to a pretty full house, and we were greeted by calls of "go crazy!". So we did our usual thing, sweet folky gypsy discordant rock with a pinch of reggae. They were all pretty happy, we had jug after jug of beer brought to our table.

Next day MongNi and ZhangYi took us on an adventure, out to a little island in the middle of the river. Right across the turpid brown waters was a huge factory - some kind of building materials, perhaps concrete. There's definitely a huge market for concrete here... The island was covered in little rows of cabbages, mustard, everything in a soft blend of greens and yellow. We strolled up through the gates of a "nature park" which cost 1.5Y and consisted of a very neglected collection of trees and some abandoned buildings, with some strangely shaped stones for effect. Still, we rambled around and had a great time picking through the left-behinds at the abandoned house. old photos, good student certificates, lens-less glasses and other assorted bits and pieces, old shoes and a rotten zucchini that was so impressively mouldy it looked like a small animal.

We spent a couple of hours enjoying the "solitude" and "serenity" (with the constant grinding of the factory across the river...) and then made our way to a local farmer's place and asked for some dinner. they brought out dish after dish of hot and delicious veggies, bin-lang (a kind of stimulant-berry - chewed -very popular in Xiangtan) hot tea and more... and we watched the farmer kill and pluck a chicken right in front of us - now that's fresh.

Then it was time to leave the bin-lang stained streets of Xiangtan and head for Wuchang - in Hubei province. We got up super-early and taxi'd through the misty streets in time for our 5.45am train. We had standing-tickets, so had to fight our way through the sleeping passengers to find a free seat, and defend it once we got there. We arrived in Wuchang and walked past the colossal new train station for ages to try and find a cab in the traffic-jam mayhem... We stayed with ChaoChi and XiaoWu - good friends of MongNi's who had only moved from ChangSha the week before. Their apartment is spacious and empty and clean... walking through the dusty back alleys past endless vendors of street treats and veggies we crossed into another universe when we entered the gates of the apartment complex... manicured gardens, clean streets and hardly any people...

MongNi and ChaoChi cooked a pretty amazing feast and we vegged out for a while before heading in to the Vox Bar to meet the owner and sound check. The Vox bar is set up for some serious concerts - not really the kind of quiet little-advertised gig that we gave them, but it was still great fun. THe bass we managed to borrow had ridiculously low action, so Mick performed surgery implanting half a toothpick which unfortunately had the side effect of causing the bass to go out of tune rapidly. Anyway... we had a fantastic meal including the best potato chips I've ever eaten - thin strips of potato deep fried with sichuan pepper, chilli, chives and salt... mmmm. We played a decent gig, sound was good, and managed to get a response out of the crowd at last when we played the "dibbler rap". Locals Wuen and Ben are mad keen about helping bands get around, and line up shows for them. We retired to the lap of luxury for an "early" night...

The next day the whole house slept in til afternoon, except me who got a call from Australia at 10.30am. We ate street food and bummed around, spent the evening watching chinese films and downloading all my music onto XiaoWu's computer, looking at his albums of photos of tattoo's he's done, and learning new chinese words. Not bad really...

Up nest morning we were back on the train, this time back to ChangSha - a 4 hour trip of cracking open sunflower seeds, eating mandarins and for me - hot and cold sweats as I finally succumbed to the cold/flu Mick and Tegan have carried all the way from Kunming. ChangSha - the familiar faces of beggars while we waited in line for tickets, and then got them refunded and got new ones... a trip to a small flea market (clothing) which smelled like opshops at home, and an almost fruitless search for a pharmacy for some paracetamol... after a fairly funny conversation about drug ingredients in broken chinese/english we finally found something with the right stuff and a bottle of good old vitamin C as well.

Our farewell china gig: the three of us acoustic at the Freedom House - a newly renovated little bar in an "old street" reminiscent of Lijiang or Dali. We were all a bit worse for wear - tired, sick, and the owner of the bar we were supposed to play at "forgot" and therefore didn't want to do it, so we're playing a cosy little show with MongNi's friends in the comfort of the Freedom House. Hot tea with sweetened condensed milk, raisins, banana chips and apricots with chilli. We played all night, blues/rock/ACDC covers/whatever, and finally crashed at about 4am.

The train to Guangzhou was okay, despite being a long trip and all of us having aisle seats (no wall or table to lean on for purpose of sleeping) and we met a very friendly and helpful local student who directed us towards the right ticket booth for getting to Shenzhen. The train to Shenzhen was a totally different experience - glimpses of HK world - very clean and bright and sterile. It zoomed through the province at up to 200km/h, Guangdong flashing by in the darkness.

Immigration posed no dramas, despite my fears of having a temperature and being "found out" by the infrared scanners at all HK entry points (to try and detect SARS/bird flu). Shocked by the price differences on the other side - $18 for a newspaper and drink - I reconcile myself to readjusting my budget...

The KCR/MTR ride back in to HK was as smooth as ever. Familiar stations flashing by, we suddenly found ourselves emerging from the underground at Central. Just up the street was the familiarly offensive Lan Kwai Fong, with hordes of drunken foreigners (sort of Claremont on a thursday night kind of deal) but strangely reassuring after so long away. And the ever-perplexing figure of "plastic bag lady", who sleeps on street corners, entirely wrapped in plastic bags - even her face covered, with a bowl out for alms. Christina met us in LKF and spirited us away to HKU where we are squatting an undisclosed location until somewhere better to stay pops up....

We had a great catch up with the charming Maggie, who sent her brother off to buy me Cepacol and made me drink hot tea for my cold. The streets are plastered with art and stickers, some left by us more than 6 months ago... Our gig at Sense99 was a shambles of borrowed equipment and bodgy organisation - no-one took any door money so we didn't get paid, but we had a great jam with Adam, Bryan and others ... not to mention hanging out with Kathy, Tat and BigMad...

if you want to see some more photos go to
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=705550&l=f9ef4&id=572849814

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Photos

Xiangtan
abandoned house near Xiangtan