A Canadian In Beijing: Turn Up The Volume

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift is the newest member of Gadling. Over the next three months, this Canadian woman will be living in and exploring China. During her time there, she’ll be posting regularly about her adventures. Check in every Wednesday and Sunday to see what China is like from a Western perspective…

Beijing is less than one week away and my musician self can barely keep the volume down. My excitement is cranking and I haven’t even started packing yet. That’s tomorrow’s task and it brings me that much closer to eventually hearing the lilt of Mandarin spoken nearly everywhere I go for a solid three months.

I am a full-time musician who has logged a lot of travel miles. I’m onto my fifth touring van since 1997, for instance, and only two died of unnatural causes (one fire, one theft) while all the others were just driven to their graves after years of loyal service. But, to give you more résumé-like context, throughout the past eleven years there have been ten different independent releases (nine albums and one DVD), thousands of performances averaging approximately one hundred and fifty per year, eight tours to Australia (our most frequent overseas destination) and lots of changes to my band line-up which I must confess includes six different drummers – yikes! All in all, it makes my résumé sound heavily steeped in experience but lacking in flavour. Of course, résumé bullet points don’t include the stories. These stories weave in and out of the awards and accolades, times of struggle and periods of prosperity, debt and recovery. They are told in songs or between songs; they’re stage material that keeps this crazy journey full of life.


At the University of Toronto, I completed a degree in East Asian Studies and have four years of university Mandarin training lodged in loyal cavities in my brain. In between university and this nearly-in-China moment, I have pursued my music career full blast (as described above). What has been missing is the subtle connection between my education and my career. Now, nine years since graduation, it’s time to bring it all together.

My life seems to be playing out like a long-laboured-over song arrangement; this is the moment when all of the players are gathered in the same space and it’s time to hear if their parts fit together. There’s excitement and tension simultaneously, but all of the amplifiers are humming and ready.

China has always been my dream destination. . . . “when the music thing was over,” as if it really would be “over” one day. It only recently occurred to me that I am the agent in making any and all dreams come true, and that I didn’t have to wait for one part of my life to die in order to birth another. Besides, who says they aren’t related? It also occurred to me that going to Beijing for three months is very much a career decision. And, it will be. Now – well, now that I’ve listened to those occurrences — the potential seems obvious. It’s spinning before me.

Not only will three months in Beijing be a luxurious block of time and space to write more songs away from the rigorous tour schedule and constant business and band dynamics, but being surrounded by the tonal beauty of the Mandarin language will push my ear into new musical territories. For me, speaking or hearing Mandarin spoken is like singing or being sung to. Top that off with the opportunity to explore what is happening in the music scene of Beijing and we alight on the research portion of my trip: I can finally dust off some undergraduate research work that was an investigation of women and music in China and the growing audibility of women’s voices in the outpouring of Chinese music. My undergrad research was limited by my geography and I always envisioned the research continuing there.

Here is the door. This is me walking through it.

I’ll be starting off my trip as a tourist. Just a couple of days in a downtown hotel before moving to the University district and setting myself up in a dorm room. I’ve already scoped some sightseeing tours that will take me to some official tourist destinations and then spit me out into the registration line at the Beijing Language and Culture University. There, I’ll be refreshing my rusty Mandarin in a part-time morning course at twenty hours a week. The rest of my time will be spent opening many live music venue doors to listen, jam, meet people and cultivate the hope that I’ll eventually bring my band to China. We are an internationally touring act, but not yet in Asia, and I do believe that this journey will yield that opportunity.

Isn’t that all potential is? Finding the open doors? Being open to opening them?

Three months in one place is a radical choice for a gypsy. Keep in mind, however, that this is a city of fourteen million people to keep me occupied! I am looking forward to undressing the underbelly of the arts scene — particularly the music world — and I am sure that three months of networking, connecting, befriending and exploring will yield colorful stories.

So, I start as a tourist, morph into a student and then morph nightly into the artist that I am. Already I’m realizing that I’m really all these things all at once; this cacophony, or symphony, is me.

How will it sound?

I don’t know for sure, but I’m turning up the volume knob anyway.

Call it trust.

Hire a Toilet Guide in China

by Justin Glow on

If you happen to be in China, and unable to find one of those bizarre outdoor urinals we talked about last week, don’t fret. The city of Wuhan, China now employs “specialist toilet guides” to help you find your way in a time of need.

The service isn’t free, however. A dedicated toilet-boy will set you back ¥3 CNY (about $0.38 USD) per finding. But how do you even find one of these guys when you need them? Apparently they are “distinguishable by their red armbands.” I couldn’t find any photos, so I took the liberty of photoshopping my own interpretation which you can see above.

Don’t mind the can of Busch our toilet guide is holding.

Rickshaw Run Himalaya/Monsoon Edition

by Willy Volk on

Oh, how I wish the heavens would align so I could participate in this summer’s Rickshaw Run: the Himalaya/Monsoon Edition. Beginning on June 23, racers will traverse 2000 miles of road — described as “average, bad, terrible and non-existent depending on where you go” — through India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and China. And that’s just the first leg.

Organized by the brilliantly-named Institute of Adventure Research (a.k.a., Tom Morgan), the 2-week-long contest is a charity event disguised as an adventure race. On Day One, racers spend the day “playing cricket and acquainting ourselves with the rickshaws, each other and no doubt some gin and tonics.” Subsequently, teams launch from the start line (this year, Calcutta) and travel the length of the mighty Himalayan range — passing through mountains, forest, jungles, wild plains, and “just about everything India can through at you and your almost useless vehicle” — toward the finish line, using any route they like. There are optional checkpoints along the way, but who has time to stop when your 150cc vehicle travels at only 34 miles per hour?

Why a rickshaw? With only 3 wheels and half a horse power, Morgan argues that the rickshaw is more fun than any other vehicle on the planet. Amusingly, he claims the Rickshaw is “undoubtedly the ultimate long distance, off road machine, despite being designed for short distances on road.”

If you *think* you might want to enter, watch some of the clips from last year’s race, and then read up on the rules. If you’re looking for a teammate, please contact me.

China Fleecing Locals over Tourism Trade

by Neil Woodburn on

China, once closed off to the outside world, is finally learning the monetary value of tourism. Unfortunately, according to a recent article by Don Lee, very little of it actually trickles down to the locals who live in or near popular attractions.

Lee uses the city of Hongcun as an example. Thanks to the popular movie, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” tourists now flock to this UNESCO heritage town. The tourist trade, however, is managed by the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group. The company, owned by one of China’s richest people, collected $2.3 million in ticket sales last year from tourists visiting Hongcun. According to Lee, the company kept two-thirds of the profits and turned the remainder over to local government officials. Meanwhile, ordinary townsfolk have been forced to clean up their homes and to keep livestock out of view of the tourists. In return, they receive a paltry $90 per person for their efforts.

This is not an isolated occurrence. Lee explains that villagers near famous tourist sites are routinely under-compensated and taken advantage of by local governments or massive companies like the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group. Some are even forced out of their homes or required to turn their land over to help build a lucrative tourist infrastructure from which few locals will ever benefit. In a land of few rights, most have no chance at a fair compensation.

So, does that mean a socially conscious person should never travel to China? No, not at all. Just be sure when visiting such areas to try and spend some money off the main tourist circuit. Injecting a cash flow directly into the hands of locals instead of the companies or governments which take advantage of them is always a much better option whenever possible.

The Other Great Wall of China

by Iva Skoch on

We had no problem finding internet connections throughout China. Internet cafes, or “net bars” as they’re called, with fairly quick download speeds, were not hard to find. Once connected, however, we did have our share of problems: for example, Hotmail and Yahoo often functioned poorly, and some news sources were blocked (like the NY Times). This was probably due to the so-called Great Firewall of China.

Even though Google and others have bowed to its wishes, the Chinese government wants to make it even harder to get on line. According to the Times of London, the Chinese government has banned any new internet cafes from opening. This is in addition to the 3-hour legal on-line time-limit placed in effect in 2005, it’s in addition to the no-one-under-18-admitted law, and it’s in addition to the requirement that all net bar users register with their ID cards before using the computers.

However, there is hope. About 113,000 recognized net bars exist in the country, and there may be many more illegal ones. Over 128 million new internet users have logged on in China since 2000, bringing the total official on-line population estimate to over 137 million (compared to 207 million in the U.S., making it the world’s second-largest on-line market).

(This site actually let’s you check to see what websites are censored there.)