Zonked in Zhongshan
Ten hours travel got us down here yesterday, the monsoon waiting to greet us, ending with a two hour coach trip across the Pearl delta, a stretched out rollercoaster of huge motorway bridges. I lost all sense of direction, further confused by sitting in a revolving restaurant. This morning, the dying stutter of my tourist conscience egged me out – don't sit on your lazy arse, get out and soak up the new tropical world. It turned out to be a cheap sauna. I walked up a sort of Tottenham court road, solicited to buy a £3 Rolex or more carnal delights (wow, in this heat!), passed shops, each blasting its own music out onto the pavement. Why do we do this? Is this din anything to do with music? What does it do to the brains of folk standing in it, seven days a week? ........I decided to let my colleagues do the tourist duties today.
Nicola is playing the Sibelius. It is less obviously about the Finnish landscape than most of his music and I'm wondering what sort of response it evinces here in China? What shared resonance is struck? The lonely soul, striving across an unforgiving landscape? Could I discuss those mythological undertones here, even if I had fluent Chinese? Their culture is based on taming nature. The inscrutable orient. Are we forever separated by incompatible systems of language and thought? Does the music somehow sail over that chasm of non comprehension? Music, especially western music, was virtually banned for years. Beethoven was burnt, and now the phoenix is rising. And what about the Elgar, we are playing Froissart and the string Serenade? Might Elgar evince the Edwardian gent living up the river in Guangzhou (Canton) dressed in his ridiculous clothes, an occidental curio for ridicule and distrust? Froissart is a miniature tone poem about chivalry. Its Englishness verges on the embarrassing even to me, an Englishman. Was that chivalry just a fantasy, stemming from the need to justify the rabid selfishness of the Victorian 'Great Game' – exploitation under the guise of exploration? The sort of chivalry displayed by Francis Younghusband, who invaded and defeated (!?) Tibet in 1904, massacring medievally armed Tibetans – widely perceived as a noble venture, which then led on to Younghusband being in a position to commission Parry's setting of Jerusalem? Do I feel a little cringe coming on? I hope I don't sound too negative about these things; I'm an enthusiast, and I also happen to love ironic juxtapositions. Incidentally, my vision of chivalry has been permanently sullied. I was brought up on the usual English diet of King Arthur and Richard the Lionheart. I don't buy into that stuff now. Recently I suddenly realised that a knight in armour on a horse had no possibility of dismounting and attending to nature's calls.......all day. Quite takes the romance out of it. (I'm sorry, but in hotter climes one tends to get a bit focussed on these matters.) And Richard; he wasn't English, could hardly speak any, hated us, (I'll delicately avoid any mention of his outrageous relationship with the French king), and through sheer wanton brutality went on to do more than anyone to lay the foundations of the blood feud with Islam. He's the icon of chivalry we have standing high in front of the Houses of Parliament. Could we please have some statues of noble people – a new hagiography?
Back to the music. (Where have I heard that before?) Most of us are zonked by the tropical heat and travel fatigue. The audience was small for the size of hall, and we were sitting a long way back into the stage. There was a 'running on empty' feel. It was fine, we can at least imitate the real thing (like the Rolex). But Nicola, she played with an astounding heroic assurance, different from anything before! Where do they get it from?
Standing high on a hill by the theatre is Sun Yat-sen. He was the founding father of modern China, a sympathetic figure admired by all, a visionary democrat and socialist, who turned down the presidency; but who also didn't live long enough to see his great ideas taking root. Lucky he didn't see what was coming next. He stands in a beautiful park in his home town, looking down on a vast and elegant European style opera house complex. What was he thinking - about things now, about us? What does he think about China having just 'bought' the Congo? (The West needs to nip along quick to that supermarket.) Next up, Shenzhen, the massive manufacturing zone and export gateway. I read that if you bussed the entire population of Glasgow there, you still wouldn't be able to fill the current job vacancies.
Anthony
