"I Am Somebody" film review - offering a Chinese-American perspective on the early American West

"A Chinaman's chance" means "no chance in hell." Out in the more politically correct mid-Atlantic, I never actually came across this phrase in public conversation. However, I've heard that it's still used in other parts of the US.

The historical plight of Chinese-Americans is less well known than that of other minorities in America. While many Americans may know that it was Chinese labor which helped build the railroads, considerably fewer would be able to tell you of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), which outlawed Chinese immigration to America and denied citizenship to those Chinese already residing there.

Yesterday, I saw "I Am Somebody" by Aki Aleong, shown as part of the currently ongoing Beijing International Film Festival, a movie which attempts to address this period in Chinese-American history. It's unique in that it takes the traditional Western genre then gives it a refreshing twist: telling the tale from the perspective of a young Chinese coolie, and deals with the sort of violence and discrimination early Chinese in America (among other minorities) dealt with.

The film is important in that it provides a rare insight into the lives of Chinese-American coolies, who helped to build the 17 railroad lines which united the US, a monumental act of intense physical labor under miserable conditions that was pivotal to the country's economic development. The narrative offers a welcome alternative to the traditional 'hero' mythology of rugged cowboy heroes and heathen Indians, instead paying honor to the many Chinese laborers who struggled for dignity within a society so clearly unwilling to confer it upon them. It is styled as a traditional morality film, and as such, pulls no punches about what it wishes to convey: that Chinese in America were treated as non-citizens (non-humans even) by White America, that they were mistreated and murdered without just trial, and that they and other minority groups (and sympathetic Whites) banded together to help one another.

It's plot is typical of such morality tales: In the 1890s American West, Sing, an honest young coolie (played by Reggie Lee, a Philipino-American actor) is falsely accused of the murder of a white girl and must escape from a posse of vigilante white racists. He's supported along the way by a black friend (played by Coolio, interestingly enough, though no rapping takes place), a Mexican love interest, a mixed-race couple and a pastor. Many die: there's cold-blooded murder out on the railroad construction site, the hanging of an innocent old Chinese man, and lots of Western stand-off gun battles.

While Mr. Aleong was able to secure a number of reasonably well-known actors into the film, "I Am Somebody" remains a decidedly B-level production. The acting is over-the-top, lines are painfully cheesy and the script is filled with cliche and lacking in originality. The cinematography and audio production is reasonable, but I still found myself cringing during some of the half-baked action sequences and long biblical passages. The Chinese-English dialogue pandered unfortunately closely to lame stereotypes, with a typical line by Old Sing's character sounding something like: "We must be like water flow into river...you must make money, send back home to China!"

"I Am Somebody" is essentially a personal labor of love of Mr. Aleong, who wrote, directed, acted, sung for the soundtrack of, and probably maintains the website for the movie. After the film, Aleong, who is of half-Chinese, half-Cuban descent, spoke of how the film was essentially about himself - the name of the protagonist and the protagonist's older friend are both his own. It took him three years to complete, and he was particularly interested to see how it resonated with a Chinese audience (from mainland China).

The Chinese in the audience expressed gratitude for the film, and when asked if they understood its message, nodded their heads earnestly.

Interestingly enough, those qualities that would make it commercially unviable in the west: lower production qualities, exaggerated acting and cheesy dialogue/characters, would have no such impact upon its chances of finding distribution here in China, where such characteristics define local productions. I can definitely see a lot of potential for "I Am Somebody" to be broadcast on CCTV: the film would serve as a good introduction to Chinese-American history for the country's mainstream audience, even if the polarized good guy-bad guy characterization may not carry the best timing given the increasingly strained state of Sino-American relations. What the film would provide, however, is historical context for the millions of Chinese here with dreams of America--particularly young aspiring students applying to university there--regarding those who went before them and the injustice they suffered.

At this stage in contemporary movie-making, it's sad that stories and perspectives such as this can only emerge in the well-intentioned though unpolished DIY efforts of individuals like Mr. Aleong. I congratulate him on his accomplishment in creating this unique film, warts and all. Here's to hoping that such stories will one day garner enough viewership and funding support to allow for more films that explore these many buried narratives within American history.

--

Links:

Official movie site: www.iamsomebodymovie.com/
Wikipedia article on Chinese-American history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_American_history

Two Cousins, Part 2: Beijing Reunion

Recently my cousin Jennifer, a junior studying Chinese literature, visited me in Beijing. She flew in from Chongqing, from various friends’ accounts a dirty, choking, uncomfortably crowded (even by Chinese standards) megalopolis that lays questionable claim to being the largest city in the world. Recently, it’s been in the news for the refreshingly harsh punishments that have been leveled against its well-connected gangsters, including the deputy police commissioner’s sister-in-law, reputedly the ringleader of a gang and dubbed the "Godmother of Chongqing." A stout, homely 46 year-old, she reputedly kept no less than 16 strapping young men as lovers in her own harem.

Jennifer is from a small town in Borneo, and in addition to Beijing’s classic sights, I made it my goal to present her sides of the city that she wouldn’t ordinarily have the chance to experience in Sichuan, but also those that she might not have expected at all. My own travels have benefited enormously from the generosity of hosts in cities ranging from Delhi to Tehran, who showed me around their hometowns and took me to meet their friends, and from those experiences, I’ve come to believe that the best insider tours of a city involve a mixture of natural beauty, interesting conversation with residents and a dash of the unexpected. Over the course of the weekend, I also had the opportunity to bond with my cousin sister, who I’d never seen before outside of the context of family reunions back in Malaysia.

Friday evening: “Old alleys, young chatter”

Having come straight from the office, I beat Jennifer and her fellow Malaysian friend Kelly, who herself is also studying Chinese literature but in Beijing, to Mao Mao Chong (“Caterpillar” bar), one of my frequent haunts. I’ve befriended the owners, recent parents Stephen and Stephanie, and they recommend a couple of house cocktails that feature home-distilled spirits such hawthorn-infused vodka for the girls, who arrive with gift-stuffed bags from Tiananmen square and shopping mecca Wangfujing. Stephen is a former pizza chef from Melbourne and his wife is from Guangdong: together, the two make a solid business pair—he makes the best (probably the only) gourmet chocolate dessert pizza in the city and Stephanie expertly handles all of the troublesome bureaucracy involved in running a small business in China. Across the walls of the bathroom, she has painted in broad Chinese characters the love story behind the bar’s name.

My girlfriend soon arrives and we take our two Malaysians along Nan Luo Gu Xiang, a traditional “hutong” district that has been renovated and sanitized into the closest thing Beijing has to New York’s Lower East Side. It’s filled with tiny boutique salons housed in sloping slate-eaved buildings that sell ironic pins, Cultural Revolution-era kitsch and bohemian houseware, interspersed by bars where hip folk singers with acoustic guitars sing out on to the din of the main street. Over dumplings, the girls tells us of their experience pursuing literature degrees in China: predictably, Chinese college students are more studious than their relatively relaxed Southeast Asian peers, and they find a lot of their classmates to be parochial and quite ignorant of things beyond their national border.

I take them to a rooftop bar housed in a banking tower in the nightlife district of Sanlitun, where a friend is having his 27th birthday party. There, amongst the elegantly landscapes of the garden bar, I introduce them to the eclectic group of expats and locals that make Beijing’s social circles so fascinating: among them AIDS researchers, political journalists, investors and climate change activists. They are particularly impressed when an American friend named John, for whom I occasionally beatbox, delivers a verse of his smooth eco-conscious Mandarin rap. Later, at “Latte”, one of the city’s utterly over-the-top, gaudy silver nightclubs, I escort the girls around like an over-protective Uncle as they observe an energetic array of live singers cover everything from Gloria Gaynor to Black Eyed Peas.

When I ask what the girls think of Chinese clubs, their reaction surprises me.

“Here it’s a lot more civil than clubs in Kuala Lumpur,” Kelly says. “Even though they’re supposed to be conservative, Malaysian youth are wilder.”

--

Saturday afternoon: “Family tales”

After a first day of cultural sites, Jennifer wants to see some of Beijing’s green spaces and I accompany her to Houhai and Beihai, two classic tourist parks that lie along a stretch of lakes just west of the Forbidden City. There, we try to evade the packs of local and American tour groups, some of whom whiz past in rickshaws, snapping photos of “traditional Beijing.” After a winter that lingered months beyond its welcome date, the weather is finally warm and the streets teem with activity: retirees are singing Peking opera on the lake or writing water calligraphy, free-to-join tai chi classes are taking place beneath centuries-old gateways.

Tired from more walking than my sedentary, office-bound legs have seen for several months, I plead for us to rest in the shade in front of a man in his sixties performing various tricks on a Chinese Yo-Yo. There, Jennifer tells me of an older cousin who devoted years of her life to an ex-husband, losing her own identity and falling out of touch with family in the process. When she found out that he had been cheating on her for several years, she left him, but not before finding that she had to rebuild her own separate life once more.

“I think that an ideal woman needs to be self-reliant. She should be able to support herself with her own career, just like those friends you introduced me to last night,” Jennifer said.

It dawned on me that I was having a conversation with my cousin about women’s equality: a topic I have discussed dozens of times with various friends but never before with a member of my family. And while to a feminism-raised audience in the west the topic would sound rather outdated, with her I could still hear the urgency and relevance in her voice. Both in Malaysia and China, where notions of the ideal “passive, selfless” wife remain widespread and associating the term “strong” with a woman can contain both good and bad connotations, Jennifer’s soft soliloquy sounded positively Hilary-like.

She displayed a similarly well-constructed moral compass over the weekend several more times, and each time I heard her deliver such rousing lines, I felt a mixture of both pride and shame: pride in that I have such a passionate, ambitious, responsible cousin sister, and shame that, despite all of my privileged Western education, I haven’t played a larger role in helping shape my cousins’ lives to date. It would turn out to be the theme of the weekend: while I introduced her to some of the city’s sociable, cosmopolitan types—like an Australian-Chinese gay couple who courted in Italy, or a young chef who cooks for the Canadian embassy—and exposed her to the violent theatrics of punk rock and elegant design of boutique hotels, she would provide me lessons in familial devotion and friendship, all the while gently filling in the vocabulary in my non-articulate Mandarin. It was a bit like one of those skill swap gatherings, except free of any weight of expectation.

That evening, over roast duck in a bustling local restaurant, we discussed our two youngest cousins, each of whom lost a parent while in their infancy. Jenny told me about the way that the other kids would tease them, hurling such schoolyard insensitivities as: “You don’t have a dad…that’s why you’re so poor you have to walk to school.” These days, almost all of my cousins have left their hometown for better-paid work, and until she too left home, Jenny would take care of Hua, the baby of our generation, playing the role of big sister and counselor.

“I hope as a teacher that I can both contribute to society but also make a high salary,” she told me at a Malaysian restaurant, shortly before flying back to Chongqing, her eyes flickering. “That way I can help to pay for Hua to continue her studies in the future.”

--

Sunday noon: “Return to reality”

“Going to Chongqing made me not like China,” Jenny explained over tea. “Traffic is awful, people are so uncouth…But Beijing is really different. It’s not as crowded; people are more civil.”

I ask her whether she’d ever consider moving here, but she says that teaching Chinese literature as a Malaysian national would be difficult in China, where they prefer locals. Instead, she’s been talking about going to New Zealand after she graduates, to “experience Western life.” I tell her to go to Australia instead, where she could be close to my parents.

Later, we walk through the commercial heart of Beijing: Sanlitun Village, where the consumer class aspires and acquires its Apple phones and Mango jeans. Arriving at the Opposite House, Beijing’s most famous luxury boutique hotel, I asked a local hostess if we could view one of the hotel’s legendary rooms. Though she tells us that the rooms are all fully booked, the English manager must have found enough authenticity in my English to give us a full tour, and Jenny snapped away with her camera while I schmoozed with the manager. Opposite House is the sort of uber-designed hotel where transparent showers are placed in the middle of the suite, every furnishing is hidden away and the USD $3,500 per night penthouse includes complimentary use of the hotel Maserati. She had never seen such luxury and I enjoyed utilizing my cultural capital to allow her a glimpse of it (something my salary certainly won’t provide anything more than).

“In places like those, I find that speaking English provides significantly better service,” I explain to her as we walk out. “They treat me completely differently when they know I’m Western.”

It reminded me of a humorous story that Jenny had told me earlier, from our childhood years in Borneo. When my brother and I were scheduled to arrive from Australia, Jenny’s mother wasn’t sure whether we would eat the family’s standard Asian diet and as such, had stocked up on bread and snacks before we arrived. Back then, my own family had also treated my completely different because I was Western. To be honest, they still do. But hanging out with my cousin in Beijing, conversing in the language of our shared cultural heritage, I saw those early lines that divided Western upward mobility from family belonging continue to fade away. I’ll never be “one of the cousin crew” – an entire life spent in other lands to date has guaranteed that. But I can still be; indeed, still am: “part of the clan.” And I’ll take that offer any day.

Li Daiguo at Yugong Yishan

Contemporary Chinese music can often feel dramatically polarized. On the “modern” side, one could lump all of the sugary KTV Mandopop and simultaneously rebellious and conservative Western-influenced indie rock. Then on the other, more “traditional” side, one could place all the folk, revolutionary period and classical Chinese music. It’s a rough split, admittedly, but one that speaks to the dramatic schism that Opening and Reform’s ensuing influx of Western culture has created within Chinese musical culture.

Li Daiguo, an Oklahoma-raised ABC who has been based in China since 2004, offers a refreshing aberration to this bifurcated environment. His music, played on a mixture of Chinese and world instruments, joyfully mines numerous folk traditions, continuously pushing the boundaries that instruments like the erhu or pipa are generally held within. On a chilly Wednesday, he held captivated what was surely one of Yugong Yishan’s quietest audiences to date.

Li is based in Chengdu, though he spends considerable time touring, and while living there, I was fortunate enough to see him play a dozen or so times. This extended exposure has allowed me to get beyond his virtuosic mastery and further into the probing, open-ended themes that his music explores.

The mastery tends to leave most first-timers dazzled, and often blown away: a Li performance will involve any combination of huqin, hulusi and other increasingly obscure Chinese folk instruments, violin, clarinet, mbira, beatboxing that slides from hip hop to Four Tet-like electronica to tabla-mimicking Carnatic Indian beats and finally, almost casually, over-tone throat singing (from all accounts: an extremely difficult craft to learn).

If all of this musicality were strewn together in a “look-at-me” medley of instrumental ostentation, most might probably forgive him. But Li’s performances have never been about showmanship; they are explorations of consciousness and the internal life, with pieces that leap purposefully from a Bach-like contrapuntal melodic line to rapid bluesy-riffing to screeching cat-claw white noise. Through it all, motifs of existential conflict, spiritual yearning and playful non-sequitur appear. Experienced live, his music is often rapturous, while never losing its sense of modest folk tradition exploration.

Dressed on Wednesday in blue worker’s uniform, a red and white striped hat and his signature over-sized owl glasses, Li cut a figure somewhere along the lines of Where’s Waldo, Taoist sage edition. His first set was split between a pipa-like instrument and violin, his beatboxing and throat singing lending rhythmic agency to the sometimes serene, sometimes unnerving mood.

His second set, featuring Beijing-based musician Mi, continued along this more theatrical vein, with Mi’s childlike scat and jibberish interspersed between her gorgeously high-pitched, folk minority-styled melodies. The two have played together for years, and their comfort with one another was clear, as Li slid easily into the background, while Mi, on accordion, lifted the mood to a place of confused hysteria and searching—a sonic exploration so germane to her generation’s current situation, yet one so rarely expressed in public.

Links:

Li Daiguo's Douban (most often updated): http://www.douban.com/artist/love.betternonsequitur.com/
Myspace (not as regularly updated): http://www.myspace.com/specialaffection
Musician's website: http://love.betternonsequitur.com
Written for Beijing City Weekend, originally published December 17, 2009: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-beat/li-daiguo-at-yugong-yishan-december-16-2009/

Review: Great Lake Swimmers at Yugong Yishan

While waiting for the Great Lake Swimmers, one of Canada’s numerous indie-folk jewels, to take the stage, I found myself discussing the peculiarities of bringing mainstream Western acts to mainland China. This narrow market is built around kids: those middle-class, nouveau-angsty teens who will pay good money to fill out a stadium for Linkin Park but would shrug their shoulders at the prospect of, say, the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan. At the smaller level, however, Split Works, a promotions company based in China, is doing just fine, as it continues to bring increasingly notable indie acts (mostly Canadian) over to tour the Middle Kingdom, culminating at the end of January with Andrew Bird.

“We’re the Grateful Dead Swimmers!” joked Tony Dekker, soon after the group took the stage. The unerringly polite singer-songwriter’s gentle, confessional songs, with their poetic couplets and naturalistic imagery, have been gradually winning over an increasingly large audience in the West.

“We’re so proud to be in China,” he would repeat several times, as the band glided through a two-hour set which wound along at the shuffling pace of their sparse folk tunes. He was accompanied by long-time musical partner Erik Arnesen on electric guitar and banjo, their signature minimalist sound rounded out with Bret Higgens on double bass and Greg Millson behind the drums. Dressed in plaid shirts and tidily groomed, the band looked as tasteful and saccharine as Travis, but for the occasional glimpse of several tattooed arms, a subtle hint at the punk rock past that Dekker has referred to in interviews.

Mid-way through the show, the other band members departed, leaving Dekker to play a few solo numbers.

“Can you play ‘Imaginary Bars’ please?” asked a female member of the audience.

“You’ve got it,” he responded, almost instantly. If only all musicians were so accommodating!

Then, as his reedy, emotive tenor delivered lines such as “When the sun fell down and fell asleep/drunk from drinking all the heat” one young Chinese listener remarked to his girlfriend: “His voice isn’t bad,” and “I can understand the lyrics.” I doubt that when Dekker began writing songs as a hobby—he still considers himself a writer before a songwriter—that he imagined himself winning over new listeners in Beijing.

The crowd remained thoughtfully attentive throughout, though it felt like, after a few of the band’s jangly, more up-tempo numbers, they wanted the Swimmers to switch completely over to rock mode, rather than slip back into more finger-picked melancholia. Still, they demanded two encores, and Dekker closed the night appropriately with “Concrete Heart.”

The song makes reference to Toronto’s CN tower, and its refrain goes: “This is the place where I felt/Like the world's tallest self-supporting tower/Or maybe number two.” Number one, as you might guess, is in China, and was completed last year in Guangzhou.

--

Links:

Great Lake Swimmers Myspace: www.myspace.com/greatlakeswimmers
Split Works: www.spli-t.com/
Written for Beijing City Weekend, originally published January 11, 2010: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-beat/review-great-lake-swimmers-at-yugong-yishan/

Concert review: Andrew Bird at Yugong Yishan

There were faces of deep concern at the nefarious smell of a blown fuse from both stage crew and crowd when the sound blew out with a dramatic bang mid-way through Andrew Bird’s set at a packed Yugong Yishan. The Chicagoan singer-songwriter’s visit has been the buzz around town for weeks now and, judging by the squeeze, he could have easily filled a venue twice the size.

But after several minutes, the sound returned and Bird, who had reacted to the potentially concert-halting explosion with remarkable calm, soldiered on to complete his set, tired as he clearly was. In a way, the bang provided an unusual climax to a performance that otherwise lacked one: for all of Bird’s dazzling virtuosity and comfortable stage presence, he doesn’t quite possess the showman’s feel for lifting musical tension to its peak or the fine balance between instrumental exploration and pop execution. As a result, Saturday’s show was stunning without being fully satisfying, beautiful but somehow lacking closure.

What was never unclear was Bird’s gifted mastery of the violin: watching him construct his soundscapes, mixing deep, orchestral foundations with syncopated grooves and floating pizzicato, before launching into constantly astounding solo passages, was worth the price of admission alone. His guitar playing, on the other hand, is heavy-handed and raw, and while it provided his songs with a certain garage rock bite, it just left me yearning for more violin. Holding the ship together between this instrumental juxtaposition was his voice, which was much fuller than on his occasionally sleepy-sounding recordings, extending into grand Rufus Wainwright-like warbles before dropping into grittier, throatier territory during a Blues number.

“Are you guys having a good time?” he asked the crowd with an affable smile, looking casually smart in a faded green dress shirt and dark blazer. “I’m having a good time!”

Having opened with an easy-sounding half-time “Darkmatter”, in which his strummed violin sounded almost ukulele-like, the set picked up pace with “Nervous Tic” and “Fits and Dizzyspells,” both played rough and rocky. Part of the joy of a Bird live show is the faint sense of chaotic danger involved: you start to get nervous as he bounds back to pick up his violin or fling his guitar around his back to squeeze in a glockenspiel line—“Is he going to make it in time for the loop?”

The set pulled heavily from his latest album, “Noble Beast,” disappointing fans looking for earlier favorites. Still, his “Section Eight City” rendition was superb, and the set ended strongly with “Imitosis” (“brought to you by the letter ‘I’”) and a drawn-out, powerful version of “Anonimal,” whose skittering, ruminating-on-existence lyrics are imaginatively squeezed into a complex melodic flow. He closed with “Scythian Empires,” enlisting the crowd’s help in helping him keep time while he syncopated loops. Its majestic melody was entirely re-worked, which, while more fun for Bird, meant that it possessed little of the grandeur of the recorded version.

Despite endless cries for “Simple X”, it wasn’t to be, and he closed the show with an intimate cover of Dylan’s “Oh Sister.” It was a moving end to a show that the crowd was grateful to have had in the first place, sonic mishaps and all.

--

Links:

Andrew Bird - official site: www.andrewbird.net/
Written for Beijing City Weekend, originally published January 31, 2010: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-beat/concert-review-andrew-bird-at-yugong-yishan/

Trippple Nippples at Dos Kolegas

When one considers Beijing’s own No Wave scene, whimsy is rarely one of the first things that leaps to mind. Earnest indie scholarship, with required devotionals at the altars of Sonic Youth and Joy Division? Check. Insightful exploration of their generation’s nihilism and/or search for authenticity in an ownership-obsessed society? Check and check. But what of irreverence? Absurdity? Dressing up as a cow and devoting yourself to the “shooting of miracle magic milk” into audience’s minds? For such specific needs, we should look no further, of course, than swaggering Tokyo: home to a famously odd, vibrant underground arts scene.

Trippple Nippples, or PPP, have yet to release an LP, but their bombastic live performances, soundtracked to glitchy, funky poptronica, are already the source of much enthusiastic online chatter. The crowd was clearly ready for some “Japanese weirdness,” and as such, dressed for the occasion in leopard print and stonewash, sailor hat and grandpa cardigan. In a city like Beijing, in which, regardless of whether you’re a yuppie climber or artsy sub-cultural diver, sensible black or navy are the mode de rigueur, PPP’s show became a colorful celebration of unabashed fun, of wackiness for wackiness’ sake.

It began humbly, with opener Platinum (Bai Jin 白金) leaving some wandering if he was indeed the opening act, or simply a well-dressed man playing electroclash numbers off of his iTunes. After several songs, all utterly devoid of anything resembling “live performance”, he began to shout-sing into a microphone. And after that…hurrah! He put on a guitar and it began to feel as if we were at a concert. Bai Jin’s songs are catchy, well-crafted pieces of post-punk rock, mining themes of disillusioned youth and bitter love. The guy just really needs some band members.

PPP, on the other hand, in addition to nippple sisters Yuka and Qrea, included a band of three hip-looking white boys with tribal-signifying painted faces. They played the drums, turntables and keys with assurance and swing. Half the fun of a PPP show lies in discovering what costumes the sisters will conjure, and on this occasion they wore no shirts, but rather black clouds of tape and gladiator aluminum foil head crests: it was part cow, part Roman gladiator, all tongue-in-cheek, libertine fun.

The gig began like a fashion show, with earnest young DIY photographers and video-camera operators vying to snap the sisters Nippple, whose performance appeared half-rehearsed, half-spontaneous. After the first song, Yuki and Qrea smashed pillows against one another, and the exploding sea of feathers made their way throughout the show from stage floor to audience body. Halfway through the set, with the crowd suitably warmed up, the camera crew gave way to a sea of giddy, moshing revelers, leaving the crowd fittingly sweaty, slightly bruised and covered in goose down.

While undoubtedly a performance-over-craft act, PPP’s songs, with titles like “RIP Meat” and “Cavity”, feature endearing English bubblegum raps over well-patched beats. And while their nonsensical theme songs are a far cry from MIA’s anthems of the oppressed or Santagold’s righteous rap-singing, watching these confident young women leap about theatrically, masterfully overcome technical difficulties, then leap climactically into the crowd for a surf felt similarly globalized, gender-liberated and triumphant. I imagine the after party at White Rabbit only built upon such infectious good vibes.

--

Trippple Nippples official site: http://trippplenippples.blogspot.com/

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/trippplenippples

Platinum: http://www.douban.com/artist/bj/

Written for Beijing City Weekend, originally published May 21, 2010: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-beat/trippple-nippples-at-dos-kolegas/

Rustic at Dos Kolegas

Around the time of Rustic’s band members’ births, about two decades ago, their country’s doors were just being opened up to the rest of the world. With that came sweeping changes, new opportunity and exposure to alternative lifestyles previously unimaginable in China, especially for three self-proclaimed “poor boys” from rural Hebei. Jump forward to 2010, when Rustic, on their way next week to London to compete as China’s national entry in the upcoming Global Battle of the Bands, are well on their way to their openly stated dream of rock stardom: eyeliner, booze, women and all.

They’re not quite there yet. On Friday evening, they played before a half-full Dos Kolegas crowd, which warmed to their trademark retro rock and roll theatrics without being completely won over. Rustic’s tightly wound pop-punk, which gleefully mines everything from early Sex Pistols-era punk to 80s hair metal, makes for an escapist, hope-fuelled performance, where members announce their starry-eyed dreams as brazenly as bassist Ricky Sixx’s open chest; the stage a platform that lifts them—at least for now—far above the cynicism and irony of the modern world.

“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend…but girls are always a boy’s best friend!” screams lead singer Lucifer, wearing his trademark rectangular sunglasses, a nod to his idols, the British “punk pathetique” band Toy Dolls, whose coarse humor and working class pride present clear inspiration. He continued to throw out a litany of tongue-in-cheek one-lines throughout the set, including “If you say you don’t play rock for girls or money, you’re a liar!” and, in reference to their upcoming contest: “We’re just three boys from Hebei who are going to kick the world!”

They led the set with “Girls Are Not Yours”, a riff-tastic dedication to hedonism, whose fast-flowing hooks and chorus are all Mötley Crüe and Poison, a nod to Ricky Sixx’s glam metal roots. His is an obsession turned way-of-being that flows through his entire soul, from his bleach blonde shag and skin tight cow (niubi) pants to his sensual, phallic bass-playing. Lucifer, who briefly demonstrated his musical prowess with a surprise clarinet solo early into the set, sneers his way a la Billie Joe Armstrong through tales of debauchery like gutter punk-ish “Pay to Cum” and “Rock n Roll for money and sex.” His guitar playing is smooth and assured, and he and Ricky possess a magnetic, naturally flamboyant interplay. Behind them, drummer Li Fang, with his bright red mop top, propels the mythological Starship Rustic forward with swift, deliberate economy.

They closed with “Anarchy in the UK,” fitting given that their next gig will take place there, but also because of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren’s recent passing. The show was entirely over-the-top, utterly anachronistic and filled with a joie de vivre so refreshing within Beijing’s gloomy post-punk-focused scene. It was also a lot of fun.

Forget the fact that hair metal died long ago, or that most casual observers will see Rustic as a group of country boys playing dress-ups. These three wild boys from rural China—poverty-stricken, naïve and boundlessly talented—are out trailblazing a new path to that of their yuppie peers, but one born of the same ambitious dreaming and dedication.

--

Links:

Official Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/rusticpunk

Written for Beijing City Weekend, published April 11, 2010: http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/articles/blogs-beijing/the-beat/rustic-at-dos-kolegas/