Cave

Caloons

Puddles Deep As Breath

Beijing Tribute

This some was stitched together from a 5 minute rough recording of a Chinese friend in Chengdu trying to play an english language guitar song called 'falling slowly'. All the sounds in this song are constructed from that recording. I made it for her birthday a few years ago and recently rediscovered it.

Popcorn

Today Mosaic Part I

Today Mosaic Part II

This was recorded in May 2012 in a square in the very center of Kunming, China. Chinese retirees often have incredibly rich and active lives with a range of activities to keep both entertained and in contact with the community. This is one I'd never seen before. 
Almost every day this fluid group of folk gather here to play music, sing, dance or all of the above. Many of them were playing a four-stringed octagonal mandolin-type instrument, which have either carvings or a flashy paint job on the outside. It's a traditional instrument from one of Yunnan's ethnic minorities and I've never seen one before in China. One lady was there singing and had a clip-on mic and speaker attached to her belt, hence her loud voice. Those less musical would just dance around and be part of the circle. 
Each song would go on for a long time, then there would be a little break, some would sit out, some would join in, and another song would start. The songs seemed pretty similar to the unfamiliar ear, they all shared a sort of mesmerizing folk spirit, like a story told over and over again where the contents loses importance and it's the telling, the process, the repetition that is the most powerful. 
I hope when I'm retired this is the kind of thing I do with my time.

This was recorded with an Olympus ls-10.

Dance and Music Circle in Kunming

This was recorded in 2010 at Daci temple in Chengdu, China, using an Olympus ls-10. 

One of the best features of Chinese temples is the sound of chanting. It both draws you into the devotional atmosphere and reminds you that Buddhism is still alive in some way in China. Telling, however, is the demographic of the participants - apart from the monks it's almost entirely elderly women.

I used to visit Daci temple every week to drink tea with an old friend in a little courtyard inside the temple. Right in the centre Chengdu’s main shopping district, the temple was on a busy main road. If I arrived at my regular time - roughly 10:30 in the morning - I would walk off the main road and be greeted by the sounds of people coming together to reach for something greater than the flesh. I would perhaps stop for a minute to listen to the chanting, then let the sounds carry me along as I walked deeper into the temple, where I would find my friend waiting with a cup of tea.

The hall in which they sung was maybe only 40 metres wide, but had a huge, cavernous roof with plenty of space for the sound to resonate. You can hear some of that resonance in this recording. As well as the chanting you can hear someone hitting a wooden block to keep time, which I think is normal in Buddhist temples.


Chanting in Daci Temple

Chinese busses and other public transport tend to be noisy places, not just because of the crowds, but also the hectic array of warnings and recommendations about what you should and shouldn’t be doing on the bus that are blasted out over the crappy bus speakers. Here is a little section of a bus trip I took in Chengdu. 

There’s an interesting section where they talk about the 中华民族的传统美德 – the traditional values of the Chinese people: “respecting the old and loving the young are the traditional values of the Chinese people, if there are any old, weak, sick, disabled, pregnant or carrying a child, please actively give up your seat for them.” It’s a good tactic on the local government’s part to invoke traditional values in order to encourage ‘correct’ behavior. If you do that then people feel that part of their identity is doing the right thing, otherwise you must rely on the individual’s personal motivation for doing being ‘good’ at that specific time, which is much more unreliable.

It’s also interesting thinking about the way that only certain sections are translated into English while others aren’t. They do translate the warning about not bringing explosives and the like on the bus, but don’t translate the above section about Chinese values and giving up your seat. Was that a concerted effort to transmit only certain information to English speakers, or have they simply not gotten around to getting all the different parts translated?


Cam Norton

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