By Bing Czeng
After organizing four amazing
PyC events in Hong Kong where we have had a lot of fun, we decided to take this
HK-based event across the border to Shenzhen where we fell in love with an
artsy book cafe named Old Heaven Book Store, located in the eastern part of the
city, in an 798-ish artsy area named OCAT. Excited, and with some nerves
dancing ala Gangnam style,
I began to liaison with the book store and started looking for speakers. In the
end we managed to find 3 speakers from Shenzhen and 3 from Hong Kong.
We set the date on 15 September.
I did not at first realize that it was on the exact date from one year previous
(2011) when we held our first PyC event.
I kicked off the event with an
introduction of PitchYourCulture and a brief account of the PyC events in Hong
Kong. Not sure how the audience would react. I wanted to inform them as much as
possible (but not too much) so they would know what was going to happen. I
continued the PyC bilingual “policy” and MCing was conducted in Mandarin
supplemented with English.
The theme of the night was “The
Most Important Song.
#1) Jiayi: Search for the confidence
in the campus life
The PyC Old Heaven edition began
with the stories of Jiayi. Jiayi is a Year-4 university student who studies
music in Xinghai Conservatory of Music. Like most people in their teens and
20s, she found her most important song randomly via the internet.
Her story began as she entered
university where she could not fit in at first, as the environment changed and
she nostalgically lingered on the happy memories of her and her schoolmates
back in middle school. Her song, Umbrella by Eri Takenaka, helped her through these
difficult times with its soothing sound and encouraging lyrics of friendship.
She gradually gained confidence in the new life and started to enjoy it. While
one song may be just a song for some people, it could be a great encouragement
to other people who need to be cheered up.
At the time of the event, the relationship between
China and Japan was very tense. There had been riots in Shenzhen earlier where
some angry mobs had destroyed Japanese-brand cars on the street. Before sharing
her story, Jiayi stated that music should be beyond the boundary of countries
and that no politics should be brought into this subject. (ah what a crazy
time) The audience seemed calm about this, which was comforting.
#2) Mike and his Bossa Nova
Next we had Mike’s story. Mike
is an editor of Mugazine.net. His story is
simple yet inspiring: one day he lost his job and he broke up with his
girlfriend. Being in very low spirit for a few days, he picked up a CD and
found a song that brought his feet back to ground: it’s Mondo Grosso’s Show Me Your Love.
This bossa nova song gave
him much energy as we could feel it through his energetic talk. The audience
was gradually heated up by his hyped mood.
Few days after he heard the
song, he found a job he loved and he became a fan of bossa nova.
#3) Alice and her epiphany
Alice graduated from an arts
college in Guangzhou where she studied music. And prior to that she had joined
different choir groups. Despite her efforts, she failed her entrance exam to
her dream college and ended up in a different one. During the first year she
was very depressed, yet it was – again – the music that helped her reflect on
her life. Kelly Poon’s Oblivion
taught her about how to let go of the past that made her unhappy and cherish
what she had now. The experience of letting go was world-shaking for her in her
late teens, but through the painful hardship she finally saw the light in her
life.
For her, it is exactly the
flaws in life that made her see more of the other sides of life. It is
acceptable to look back on our past, but we should not live there.
#4) Yi Chen: Struggle as an
Indie Singer-Songwriter
As an independent
singer-songwriter, YiChen has experienced hardship since he started playing
music in high school. Even though he joined several singing contests and had
learned to play guitar, he eventually went to Beijing to study law so that he
could fulfill his parents’ expectation.
After graduation, he did not
forget his dream about being a singer. Growing up in the dry dessert area in
the Northwestern part of China, YiChen was drawn to the scenery of the sea,
which he had never seen. He brought a one-way ticket to Shenzhen and started
his life here. He has since taken many small jobs, including singing in bars.
Later he quit his jobs and
became an independent singer. Through hard work he managed to produce two
albums with songs all written, sung and produced by himself. Now he has his own
studio and performs almost every day.
The important song for him
is Tsai Chin’s Zhangsan’s Song.
YiChen first encountered this song when he was learning to play guitar. This
song has inspired him to go out and see, especially this part in the song:
“I would like to take you and fly away, to
everywhere in the world
we would fly to the places far far away and have a
look
This world isn’t that sad. It is still full of
light.”
As a singer-songer, he always
performs his own songs. But when receiving a request to sing another’s song, Zhangsan’s
Song has to be
the one, as he wishes to inspire other people to fulfill their dreams with his
love for this song and for music.
Let’s hope his story inspire
more people to pursue their dreams.
#5) Yang Jing’s Uygur
Identity
YangJing is an editor in a
publishing office, yet her sense goes beyond the words. Despite being a Han
ethnic, she grew up in Xijiang Province in western part of China, where the
majority of the people are Uygur who are Islamic. Yang Jing often endures the
stereotype “terrorist” and “thief” against Uygur, and it went as far as her
being questioned whether she’s terrorist at the China customs. YangJing
showcased the discrimination against people from XinJiang by listing
stereotypes and misunderstanding about people living in Uygur: people from Xin
Jiang were almost always labeled “thief” by larger cities in the eastern part
of China, and most Uygurs were often associated to terrorists due to some riots
started by few Uygurs who seek independence.
However, apart from the
ignorance/nonchalance concerning the Uygur culture in the rest of China, Uygurs
themselves also face identification crisis/confusion. In order to be recognised
as Uygur, they even have to dress up as other ethnic groups whose dress
resembles theirs.
The song she chose, Lift Up Your Veil , was a Uygur-style pop
song composed by a Han Chinese. This song reminds people of Xing Jiang, but
ironically the lyrics show much disrespect to Islamic culture. This song, as
explained by Yang Jing, wasn’t her important song, but it is very important to
Uygur and (Han) Chinese. The video of the song filled the event with the erotic
mood with ridicule of the singer dressed up like a cowboy and dancing in the
Mongolian-like grassland. Yang Jing hoped to make people review their
perspectives on this long-neglected controversy.
#6) The thunder-stealing
present of Hendrix
Our last presenter of the
event, Andrew Guthrie, the founder of PitchYourCulture, made himself the “headliner” by
imitating what Jimi Hendrix did at Woodstock: insisting on being the last one
on stage. Andrew introduced Hendrix’s journey to stardom which relied on his
talent in finding different sounds as well as musical notes. While the popular
genres of music in the late1950’s in America were Blues, Jazz and Rock, Hendrix
mixed them together and gave life to a new form, and thus became one of the
best known electric guitarists. The
song started with a dialogue between Jimi Hendrix and his manager Chas Chandler
based on the TV show Star Trek. Then the listener was free to travel from outer
space into their inner space and through the musical groove and the raw
feedback of the electric guitar.In the late 1960’s the movements for liberation
were sprouting, and Hendrix’s song Third Stone From The Sun, (according to an account from one of Andrew’s
American colleague) complimented two people reaching simultaneous orgasm .
