Notes from the (Silk) Road

Hello from the sleeper compartment of an overnight train from Shanghai to Xian. I have been away from Urumqi for a week and a half, and this train ride marks the start of my slow return to my current home base in western China.

It was a perfect time to leave for a while—the weather was frigid, the heating and internet were completely out in the apartment, I was literally out of money, and despite having some positive relationships with the people around me, I was feeling pretty isolated, not to mention downtrodden because my progress on the ghijak is going so slowly (more on that later). And I couldn’t have come up with any better reason to get away—I was headed to Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Shanghai to travel with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble on their Asia tour.

In the spring of this year Brooklyn Rider, a quartet of four fantastic musicians that breaks away from the traditional notions of classical chamber music, spent a week in residence at Wellesley. I was lucky enough to work with them in master classes and attend their concerts on campus that week, and during that time had the chance to talk to them about their experiences working with musicians from other musical cultures and playing music influenced by multiple musical traditions. I quickly became good friends with Nick, one of their members, who told me that they are also members of cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s multicultural music collective, the Silk Road Ensemble, and invited me to come to their sound check and performance at Harvard a few weeks later. There Nick introduced me to some of the ensemble members, including Yo-Yo himself, who told me about his enthusiasm for my Watson project and encouraged me to keep him posted as I went along on my adventure.

Nick has been an unbelievably thoughtful and generous friend, advisor, and resource, and we have stayed in close touch, especially as I have undertaken my Watson project. When he told me that the Silk Road Ensemble was doing an Asia tour and invited me to join the tour, I was truly amazed and grateful. And so, last week I booked it out of Urumqi and arrived in Taipei to await the arrival of the Silk Road Ensemble from Korea and Japan. I spent a few days getting my bearings by drinking bubble tea and exploring the famed Taiwanese night markets with my friend Ty, who is on a Harvard-sponsored fellowship to farm with Taiwanese aborigines. From efficient and clear public transportation to lamb-free food, and from a paranoia-free populace to gorgeous weather, I actually experienced some culture shock coming from Urumqi to Taipei.

(brief interlude for Taiwan pictures)

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial

Taipei 101

Night market in Taipei

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial at night

and during the daytime 

Taiwan National Theater

Freedom Gate

And then it was tour time—for the last week I have shadowed the ensemble, attending their rehearsals, sound checks, run-throughs, press conferences, and performances, and hanging out with their members in their downtime. It wasn’t always glamorous; the many-hours-long sound checks, in which the ensemble members would work with the sound technician to adjust sound levels in their monitors and balance in the concert hall for each piece on the program, were grueling to sit through. The players were scheduled to return to Taipei after their concert in Kaohsiung, and so after making some significant cuts to the program there was a mad scramble to make the train—a crazy hustle that got us on board with just a few minutes to spare.

But the highs were high—beyond ritzy hotels and sumptuous dinners, the ensemble’s performances and ability to connect with the audiences wherever they went were absolutely striking. I can’t at all convey the audience’s sheer awe and amazement in Kaohsiung at hearing the duet between Yo-Yo playing the Bach Cello Suites and Wu Tong singing and playing a Taiwanese folksong, or the overpowering rhythmic applause in Shanghai as the audience egged on the duel between the sheng (Chinese mouth organ) and tabla (Indian drum) players.

I am listening right now to the Silk Road Ensemble’s recording of “Atashgah,” a piece composed by Brooklyn Rider’s Colin Jacobsen for Iranian kamancheh (spike fiddle, similar to ghijak) player Kayhan Kalhor and two violins, viola, cello, bass, and percussion. It’s extremely frustrating to listen to the recording after having heard “Atashgah” live at least half a dozen times in the last week; the work’s beauty is largely due to how natural and organic it feels, from the gradually layered pizzicato with which the piece opens to Kayhan’s haunting improvisations in the kamancheh solo passages, which obviously rendered each performance in the tour unique and unable to be replicated. It’s not that what I’m listening to now isn’t a lovely recording, but it’s just that—a recording, a record of one time the players played the piece together, rather than a shared, in-the-moment experience of the musical dialogue between players and the audience. The interactions between all of the Silk Road Ensemble players during their performances were tangibly cooperative—each player’s individual performance onstage influenced his or her fellow ensemble members’ musical interpretations, whether in how a melody was passed from the pipa to the cello or how the drummers responded rhythmically to the tabla player. That energy and symbiosis is arguably the greatest strength of the group, and the source of their success. In their performances, the Silk Road Ensemble shows that players from the most seemingly disparate of musical traditions can find ways to relate to one another, and that the players’ unique backgrounds do not inhibit, but rather enhance, the entire group’s ability to communicate.

Wu Tong sings Wu Tong

I am still processing how incredible it was to travel with the Silk Road Ensemble. Observing and hearing their playing was an unbelievable opportunity, and I feel even luckier that I developed relationships with some of the ensemble’s members during these last few days. There are some things that can only draw people closer together, like helping the tabla player get a blind massage in the park by the Kaohsiung concert hall, or cheering on Wu Tong, the ensemble’s sheng player and singer, as he sang karaoke to his own commercially successful Chinese song (i.e. watching Billy Joel sing “Piano Man” at karaoke). It was really amazing to talk to the musicians about their individual experiences of music and thought process as they brought “outside” influences into their own musical interepretations. I am particularly grateful that I got to spend some time talking with Kayhan, the ensemble’s kamancheh player, about my Watson project. I have been extremely frustrated that I am not making substantial progress in learning to play the ghijak; a lot of it has to do with the fact that Uyghur musicians have attempted to apply Western music conventions to music education. I am practicing from a book of pieces for ghijak written with Western musical notation, which doesn’t come close to capturing the nuances of the ornamentation and embellishments. In lessons my teacher plays the piece I am working on once, goes on long tangents about the history of muqam and how his struggles to make ends meet and inability to buy a house threaten his sense of masculinity, and then tells me to go home and practice, not acknowledging that the way in which he plays the same piece is far more complex (and also that I don’t have enough of a foundation to replicate what he does). I can’t help but feel that I picked up erhu much quicker than I am acquiring ghijak. I’m also fed up with how opaque and bureaucratic the entire school system is; I’ve complained before about classes getting cancelled sporadically and having immense difficulties accomplishing minor tasks.

I vented to Kayhan, whose instrument is quite similar to ghijak and who has worked extensively with musicians in Central Asia and the Middle East. He sympathized with my concerns that the post-Soviet and Chinese music conservatory style of teaching muqam music has seriously damaged the musical education process. We also talked about how dominant ethnic groups pigeonhole ethnic minority groups based on stereotypes of their music and art. In the case of Xinjiang, there is virtually no market for Uyghur music beyond the Uyghur communities themselves, save for the annual nationally televised New Year’s showcase of ethnic minorities. This politically-informed gauge of what will be well-received, what’s appropriate, and what sends the “correct message” is shaping the Uyghur musical canon (and apparently the musical traditions of other ethnic minorities across China, though I cannot speak about those firsthand). It is degrading when an entire group of people is reduced to a few token songs and dances with funny hats. As someone attempting to learn and replicate Uyghur musical traditions, I am frustrated and distressed that Uyghurs themselves are facilitating the whitewashing of their own musical culture in order to scrape together a living.

Kayhan and I talked about these concerns for a while, and after I told him that I was planning on studying music in Azerbaijan in the spring, he told me I shouldn’t go. “What will you get from Azerbaijan?” he asked, mentioning low English levels, the inflexible and standardized teaching methods for folk music education, and general dearth of cultural and social outlets for me. “The conservatory in Baku will be just like Urumqi—it’s the same story at all of these post-Soviet music schools.” He recommended instead that I go to Istanbul, Turkey, and the Greek island of Crete, saying that both would be a better experience for me overall, musically and socially. He offered to connect me with contacts in both places, including a Turkish kamancheh player and a Cretan lyra player. At this point, I am definitely on board for Crete—the teacher I would hopefully study with is an Irishman who has lived there for 35 years and has a music school where he hosts musicians from around the world. This plan also appeals to my inner child—I was obsessed with Greek mythology growing up (let’s just say that I got a perfect score on the National Greek Mythology Exam). The idea of going to Turkey sounds amazing, too, though it’s a little harder to conceive of just because I am so unfamiliar with its culture and history. In terms of Azerbaijan, I don’t want to make it sound like I will toss in the towel when things get difficult, but the truth is that I don’t really have a clear conception of how I would undertake my project there, nor do I feel a need spend time in Baku purely for the sake of being in Baku. My Watson project is such that I can carry it out wherever there are musicians willing to play. Thus, if I do have a connection and a solid foundation for my project in Crete, why reinvent the wheel? (Also, I so miss island life.)

During the tour I also loved spending time with Yo-Yo—he is revered as a god by the audiences in Taiwan and China, yet he is absolutely genuine, funny, and humble in person. He’s completely ambassadorial in that he puts the people around him at ease and handles every social situation with humor and grace. It was also hilarious to see him cutting loose and cutting up with the Silk Road Ensemble—after the last concert in Shanghai, the ensemble was sitting on the tour bus waiting to depart for a final dinner party, when from the back of the bus Yo-Yo declared loudly, “We have seven minutes! If there’s not a drink in my hand in seven minutes…Audrey! Do something!” When I was saying goodbye to him as the ensemble was parting ways for good, he hugged me and thanked me for joining the tour.

“I worry about you in Urumqi! Will you be safe? Will you be okay? Do I have to worry about you, Audrey?”

I assured him that my mom already does plenty of that.

“Make sure to watch your drink. Be careful of strangers!”

I promised I would, thanked him for an incredible experience, and told him I sincerely looked forward to seeing him again.

Heart-flutterings on Halloween

Happy Halloween from Urumqi! While we won't be getting trick-or-treaters, we have put up some decorations left by the last occupant of this apartment, who apparently had a penchant for theme parties and acquired a nice collection of masks and color-changing LED pumpkins. I accessorized one of the masks with a dopa, a traditional Uyghur hat, and made a DIY tampon ghost, so the place is officially tricked-out.

I give you...the tampon ghost! #WomensCollege #Halloween

A photo posted by Audrey Woz (@audreywoz) on Oct 10, 2014 at 1:25am PDT

Happy Halloween from Urumqi! #Uyghurween

A photo posted by Audrey Woz (@audreywoz) on Oct 10, 2014 at 1:25am PDT

I've also been getting in the spirit by practicing Eugène Ysaÿe's "Obsession," the first movement of his second sonata for solo violin. Ysaÿe's series of solo violin sonatas was the Belgian violinist's response to the solo violin sonatas of J.S. Bach. This one in particular starts by quoting the light and joyful opening of Bach's E Major Sonata, and then quickly takes a dark turn, evolving into an exploration of the "Dies Irae" chant for the dead. I have a practice room on the Uyghur music floor of the Arts Institute, and so when I practice violin there the music coming out of my room stands in stark contrast to the Uyghur muqam coming out of the other practice rooms. Bach, and of course Ysaÿe, are unfamiliar sounds around here, and I have been struck by how excited people are to hear solo Bach--certainly more enthusiasm for Bach than I've ever encountered in the States! Whenever I practice Ysaÿe in the Arts Institute my ghijak teacher comes out of his office to listen; he told my housemate to tell me, "I love hearing Audrey play violin--when I hear her play violin my heart flutters!" (He made very sure she understood that it was my violin-playing he was in love with, not me.)

And if that didn't put you in the mood, here's Franz Liszt's even more blatant take on the "Dies Irae" tune:

BFF = Baijiu Friends Forever

Given that, in describing my entrance into Xinjiang, such terms as "traumatic" or "agonizing" or "consuming all truth and reason" would not be amiss, it seemed that as I finally got settled in Urumqi there was no way things wouldn't start going my way. But three weeks in, that's just it--I guess I assumed that once I arrived I would get my bearings and things would just fall into place immediately. In fact, every single day around here feels like an uphill battle, and an especially frustrating one at that because so much of the time I find I don't have a clue about what's going on (even when I thought I did)! Even the smallest tasks can require wading through many iterations of bureaucracy and procedure (not my natural proclivity, as you may know). Lest you think I'm just complaining about language barriers and culture shock--yes, there's some truth to that, but it's more than just that.

For instance: 

Instructions for enrolling in school as foreign language student 

1) Email school at address posted on official website
2) Wait for email to bounce
3) Track down current exchange student to give you email address of exchange program director, send message
4) Receive no response because "she doesn't check her email during the summer"
5) Get cell phone number of exchange program director
6) Call and explain that you would like to take classes, get vague directive to fill out application
7) Submit application and receive no confirmation
8) Show up months later at school, hope for the best

Even now that I am theoretically enrolled in the Arts Institute, I deal with a host of daily challenges. It took me nearly two weeks to get the correct card to check out a key to a practice room because no one in the Music Department seemed to know the correct procedure--professors would direct me to other professors, who would point me back to the original person I asked. For a few weeks my ghijak teacher was not responding to my inquiries about when we could meet for a first lesson--I thought he had dropped me as a student. Classes change meeting times sporadically, or are canceled without warning (at least for those who aren't connected via social media with the teacher). Xinjiang also operates on two timezones--the official time, which like the rest of China is calibrated to Beijing, and unofficial "Xinjiang time," which is two hours behind. This is a constant point of clarification that recently was only further convoluted by the school's take on daylight savings time--shaving off thirty minutes from class start times in two directions. My ATM card still hasn't arrived, although I discovered that it had been languishing in the Urumqi FedEx facility for a week and a half because they didn't have the right address on it. Even once I contacted them and they assured me that they would deliver it within a few days, it is nowhere to be found and I am no closer to paying my rent. In other words, even the things that seem like they should run like clockwork, well, don't. Even the clock! When my sister and I were little our mom used to give us these stickers of frogs wearing prize ribbons with sayings like, "I tried my best!" and "I solved my own problem!" I'm keeping morale up now by mentally awarding myself a frog ribbon daily.

Besides my frustration about how difficult it has been to get started in Urumqi, I also was feeling a bit blue about how codependent I am on my host. She's absolutely lovely and I am learning a lot from her about local music and culture, but the fact remains that she has her own life, work, and circle of friends that I can only encroach on so much. In addition to such trivial tasks as calling FedEx Urumqi and getting student ID photos taken, I set myself the goal last week to "make friends." Hong Kong was such a crutch--between the vast sea of English speakers and the easily accessible online events postings, I had no trouble connecting with new people. Not so in Urumqi--for one, there is virtually no English except among the few expats here*, and you're considered lucky to come across a non-belated concert poster. Beyond that, I just have had trouble finding opportunities to plug in with the community at the Arts Institute because it is so insular.

*A side note about the expat community in Urumqi--from what I have been told the expats here are  largely divided into two distinct camps: researchers and missionaries. While religion does underly many of the tensions in the region, I guess the missionaries are either discreet enough, or more likely considered a religious buffer against extremism by the government, to avoid notice. Still, they aren't discreet enough for the tastes of some here--my favorite anecdotes are the Uyghur who complained that the leaders of his English language circle "only want to talk about Jesus," and the missionaries in language classes who use biblical references in all of their example sentences. 

This downtrodden note seems like a great lead-in for what shall be hereinafter referred "The Great Uyghur Baijiu Bash of 2015." A little background: months before I departed for my Watson year, I came across this gem of a video--a Uyghur music rendition of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." 

It turns out that Abduwali, the musician himself, is an instructor in Urumqi, and the former teacher of a friend who just left the city. She had introduced us, and one evening I ran into him as I left the Arts Institute. We chatted and he invited me to come watch his ensemble's rehearsal, a Uyghur jazz combo-type affair. I eagerly agreed and watched them jam out until the bassist literally wore out his fingers. The musicians were great, and afterward some of them invited me to join them for dinner. We bonded over hotpot, one of them telling me about his Uzbekistan conservatory days and showing me videos of his award-winning performance in an international competition. They were excited to hear I was from Texas, and insisted they take me to Urumqi's aptly-named Texas Cafe after dinner ("It's owned by a Texan!" they exclaimed). Sadly, Texas Cafe was closed, but the night was just beginning. We went back to one of their homes, where they pulled out naan (Uyghur bread), a dutar (two-stringed lute) and a large bottle of baijiu, China's infamously pungent and potent alcohol of choice. After the musicians launched into singing muqam songs from Islamic poetry and Uyghur pop, they pulled out a shot glass. 

"Us Uyghurs, we like to make long toasts and tell stories when we drink." 

They filled up the glass. 

"We are so glad to have met you tonight. We are your friends for life, and if you ever need anything, ever, let us know and we will help you! Hosh!" 

They passed the shot glass to me.  

"Uh....um...it makes me so happy to have gotten to know you tonight and heard your wonderful music. Ours was truly a fortuitous meeting tonight. I am so grateful for your help and hope that I, too, can help you in the future! Hosh!" 

We toasted many things that evening ("To music!" "To friendship!" "Hosh!") and as we approached the end of the baijiu bottle, one of the musicians emptied it completely into the shot glass and handed it to me. I tried to politely refuse, but:

"This is me giving you my good luck! You cannot refuse!"

I figured that at least that would mean the baijiu consumption would be over. But then they pulled out a second bottle.

I just want to take this opportunity to clarify that until that evening, I had been drunk once in my life (one month prior) and had certainly never thrown up from drinking. In college, my exposure to extreme alcohol consumption was as the person keeping friends from choking on their own vomit. And so after I returned to my apartment that evening and slapped myself in the face to retain consciousness while throwing back liters of water, I had a chance for hazy introspection about the evening and where things had gone awry. My head was spinning and I was stumbling and slurring as I vocally coached my liver: "Hang in there--you can do this!" Barf. This is probably a sensation most of you have experienced long before I did last week; however, now that I have finally been naan-tossing drunk, I can confirm that the baijiu shots hellhole is one into which one should never descend, and that I have no intention of drinking to excess ever again. That said, I did feel a strong glimmer of pride as I stared into the toilet basin--I had gone to a Uyghur drinking party with fantastic musicians, held my own (at least in terms of speaking Chinese language), and left with self-proclaimed lifelong friends. Culturally speaking, this felt really significant because these types of get-togethers are a huge part of the social culture; moreover, as a female it was amazing to have had the chance to attend since gender divides are so strong in Uyghur culture.

As for less alcohol-soaked social gatherings, the girl who had introduced me to an erhu teacher at the Arts Institute has been very sweet and invited me to visit her family home in Shehezi, a town two hours away from Xinjiang. Her parents come from Gansu Province and speak Mandarin with a really strong accent, and so they would say something to me and she would translate it to more standard Mandarin. That said, we had some pretty eye-opening exchanges--for instance, they were amazed to hear that there are Chinese people in the United States who own Chinese restaurants where they make and sell dumplings. I gave her dad an English name, Mark, and then was at a loss when he immediately asked, "So what does it mean?" I looked it up and got "Mars" and "warlike," which I didn't tell him, so I settled for a happy medium: "It means you're fiercely awesome!" He seemed placated. Her family was welcoming to a fault, insisting that I sleep in their daughters' single bedroom while both of their daughters slept out on the couch. I felt bad (also stuffed because I had gorged myself on the aforementioned dumplings) but they wouldn't have it any other way. As for Shihezi itself, if you have the chance to go, I wouldn't--the city was constructed fifty years ago in the middle of the desert as a semi-colonial project. With massive streets, empty monolithic buildings, and a gentrified Han population it has all the charm of a waiting room. (Surprisingly it is home to a university of 40,000 students and participates in many international exchanges. Regardless, I can without a doubt say I have seen it, and helped you dodge a bullet in the process...)

I have had my first two ghijak lessons, and while it's still to early to offer any serious commentary on the learning process, it's a great time to post a new video of lackluster stringed instrument playing! Ghijak presents unique challenges from erhu, especially since it has four strings instead of two and the bow, which is not attached to the instrument, has a higher contact point with the string than it does on the erhu. My biggest challenge right now, beyond keeping the bow on the string, is keeping the bow on the right string--the whole instrument pivots on the spike that rests on one's lap, so there is a swiveling motion to account for when playing that I have never dealt with before. I really like my teacher, though. He's a really nice guy who is seriously picky and sounds like he is screaming all the time; in fact he just cares a lot and tends to talk loudly, especially about the history of Uyghur instruments and music. He showed me this very cool instrument which he called the "grandfather of the erhu"--it looks like a large erhu with a metal body and five sympathetic strings (not played but  that vibrate when the two main strings are played). Because of the sympathetic strings and the metal chamber the instrument echoes the notes long after they have been played, and the sound has a distant and haunting timbre not unlike a sitar. He complained that no one wants to study the instrument these days, and I told him I was very interested, so tentatively I am going to take lessons on both instruments! In the meantime, here's the video status report on ghijak and erhu:

I regret that there are not more pictures in this post--I haven't been toting my camera as freely because I don't want to draw attention to myself and also don't want to jeopardize anyone whose image I might post. That said, I'm working on it--more pictures to come!

First Quarterly Report: the spider was a metaphor

While the Watson Foundation does not require its Fellows to produce a research paper or findings from their year abroad, they do ask for quarterly reports in the form of a "long letter home." Mine is due today, and I thought I'd share it on the blog as well.

Dear Chris, Michelle, and Sneha,

Greetings from Urumqi, where at the moment I am sitting in a muqam performance class at the Xinjiang Arts Institute. Since the class is taught in the Uyghur language and thus I can’t really appreciate much more than the music, I’m also practicing writing the Uyghur alphabet in the hopes that picking up even a bit of the language will serve me during my time here.

I want to let you know that starting off my Watson in Hong Kong was truly a phenomenal experience, daunting though it was at the beginning. My first few weeks were overshadowed by trying to salvage my Wall Street Journal internship, only to find out that a variety of circumstances had made it impossible to do it at all this summer. (WSJ is happy to have me come back for the internship next summer/fall after my Watson year, which is my current plan.) So in my first week I was without a plan or established network.

On my first day of ‘funemployment’ I went to lunch by myself, and then decided I would walk uphill for as long as I could. Four hours later I was at the top of Victoria Peak, where the usually panoramic view was entirely obscured by thick mist. I resigned myself to a contemplative walk down the mountain, which went smoothly until I spotted a huge, face-sized spider dangling nonchalantly overhead. I am deathly afraid of long-legged spiders, and seeing this one I felt myself start to hyperventilate. I suddenly realized that Hong Kong is in a tropical environment, as is Indonesia, another of my Watson year destinations, and if I were going to survive this year I would have to accept the inevitability of spiders and learn to keep my cool even if they were hanging over my head. And I’m pretty sure the spider was a metaphor.

Later that day I walked into a random music school and signed up, sight unseen, for erhu lessons. My teacher ended up being a patient, talented, and generous young guy who, beyond teaching me how to play the instrument, shared his insight on attitudes toward music acquisition and preservation in China, and also invited me to join his Chinese orchestra. I performed with them for their Mid-Autumn Festival concert on erhu and as a solo violinist, playing a Cantonese opera piece and a violin showpiece.

One of the biggest things I took away from my time in Hong Kong was how interconnected the world is if you are open to it, and proactively seek out new connections and opportunities. I was warned by multiple previous Watson Fellows that this year would be lonely and miserable. Thus, expecting this would be the case, I made an events calendar, attending everything from an experimental jazz vocal concert to a dramatic reading of short fiction. I set up meetings with acquaintances of acquaintances, and then volunteered to help them out on their projects, no matter whether they seemed related to my own project or not.

And in fact, even those activities and connections that seemed so tangential ended up serving me in major ways I would never have foreseen. I worked closely with a composer and music critic who I met through a markets editor at WSJ. She invited me to a concert she was reviewing, at which time I discovered she had done her graduate studies with composer Lou Harrison and played gamelan on the recording of his work that inspired me to play it and write about him for my senior honors thesis. I volunteered to assist her in her work in any way I could, and soon was regularly going to concerts with her, traveling out to the island where she lives to help her with her work, and play her music (which draws on both ‘Western’ and Chinese influences).

Through the composer I met multiple wonderful people, including a Chinese linguist and professor at Hong Kong University who became my Mandarin teacher, mentor, and closest friend. He is a renaissance man with a self-declared ‘perfect’ memory and extremely strong democratic leanings despite having grown up and studied in northwest China. Discussing notions of cultural purity and propaganda in music with him in Mandarin helped my language skills, and made me think about the potential political and cultural implications of performing music from an “outside” culture or with ideological ties. “The thing with propaganda music is,” he said one time, “you may be singing ‘The Sun is Red,’ but the melody is really nice!”

I won’t go into the play-by-play of how I fell into all of these projects (I have recounted them on my blog) but here are some of the other highlights, in no particular order:

• Coaching chamber music for a quintet of middle school boys
• Becoming a classical music reviewer for TimeOut Hong Kong
• Meeting John Thompson, a preeminent scholar and performer of Ming Dynasty guqin, on a far-flung island
• Taking a few-day trip to Hangzhou, where quite by accident I met some of China’s top erhu players. I traveled with them to a rural village to meet their master teacher and join their family reunion, and then put on a recital of my own in a public square
• Working at Hong Kong University’s Centre for Journalism and Media Studies a day or two each week in exchange for free housing at one of the Residential Colleges (I was named a “Junior Visiting Scholar” and a “good role model for the students”). I also joined HKU’s Gamelan Ensemble and played violin and erhu with HKU students
• Spending multiple nights observing the Hong Kong democracy protests

Without realizing it, I had found a really wonderful niche in Hong Kong through the incredible relationships I had formed, and the prospect of leaving the place that was never supposed to be part of my Watson project became overwhelming. Many people, including my mother, suggested I not leave Hong Kong at all. But while there was so much more I could have done had I stayed longer, it felt important to stay faithful to my initial proposal, and that I would be cheating myself if I didn’t get out of my comfort zone.

And so, I arrived a little past midnight in Urumqi two weeks ago, a trial-by-fire start to my time in Xinjiang because my host had mixed up the date I was arriving and wouldn’t be returning to the city for two more days—which I discovered after the airport shut down at 2 am. Also, I had discovered a few days prior that my ATM card had expired and was subsisting on the cash I had borrowed from a friend. (I am still waiting on my new ATM card to arrive—fingers crossed it makes it!) I ended up getting in an unmarked car with a strange man and going to an airport hotel I could barely afford, where I started freaking out. Thankfully my host got in touch the next day and put me in contact with my first friends in Urumqi.

Things have steadily improved from that low point, although adjusting from a largely English-speaking, generally politically free island financial capital/culinary paradise to a frigid Uyhgur-speaking [SELF-CENSORING] that subsists on carbs and lamb has meant some significant culture shock. I am in my second week here, but only now starting to get my Xinjiang sea legs. I am planning to take a week long detour to Taiwan and Shanghai at the beginning of November to shadow Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble for part of their Asia tour. I was only planning to spend two months in Xinjiang, but because it has taken me this time to settle in, and because I will be taking that week away, I am thinking that for this part of my year to be productive (in terms of learning erhu and ghijak, a Uyghur stringed instrument, and Uyghur and Mandarin languages) I should stay longer than I originally planned—possibly through some of the winter (so much for my plan to avoid freezing climates). I also am really enjoying learning erhu, and am vaguely entertaining the notion of going back to Hangzhou to find those erhu musicians and study with them—they offered to teach me after all! I am still wrangling with questions about how to prioritize my time, energy, and focus, so of course, if you have any insight I absolutely welcome it.

Okay, muqam class is out—time for Mandarin! Hope all is well with you.

Audrey

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Scratching out my first Watson quarterly report

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Carmen in Uyghur-land

I attended a fantastic concert tonight, and my first in Urumqi--the opening concert for the 3rd Academic Conference on Traditional Chinese Medicine, Western Medicine, and Uyghur Medicine. (Can you imagine if academic conferences on any subject in the States or U.K. devoted an entire evening to hosting a three-hour musical gala?) The performers were faculty and students from the Xinjiang Arts Institute, and the ensemble was a Uyghur music take on the Western orchestral setting--ghijak standing in for violin, bass rebab comingled with cellos and actual upright basses, many other instruments whose names I don't know that most certainly don't have direct equivalents Western classical music...

Arranging Uyghur instruments in an orchestral layout is a phenomenon of the last fifty years (as it is with Chinese instruments such as in the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra). It's an interesting aesthetic--trying to emulate the composition of a Western orchestra with different timbres, and certainly different instrumental techniques and musical styles. The concert included many traditional and folk songs from Xinjiang as well as Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan arranged for the ensemble and featuring singers and solo instrumentalists. My absolute favorites were the ghijak soloist (Track 5) and one of the singers (Tracks 3 and 4). I will post the video later, but one thing that was so striking about this performance (and the concert in general) was that it seemed like there were no barriers, but rather a fluid connection, between the performers and audience. The performers and audience members were active participants in the concert, each equally providing an essential service of sorts. As you can hear in the audio, people would start cheering when they heard something they liked.  The onstage solo players, on top of being excellent musicians, were extremely expressive performers and treated the act of performance very holistically--they had chops and were great at engaging the audience. They looked like there was nothing else they would rather do but play for the crowd, and their passion shone through.  

There were also a few ritzy opera arias in the concert for good measure. If I have learned anything about cross-cultural musical exchange in these few months, it is that no matter where in the world you are and what instrument you are playing, people go wild for Bizet's Carmen (Track 6). There's a story in that somewhere (and I won't settle for "sex sells")--I will have to keep probing for the reason and report back.