Rockin’ Hutong
(Collector’s Edition)
On March 2, 2016, DDC GRAND JAM ran from 9:00 p.m. all the way until 5:00 a.m. at Dusk Dawn Club (DDC), which is tucked deep in an old lane in Dongcheng District, Beijing. More than 40 artists including Cui Jian, hailed as “Father of Chinese Rock,” took the stage.
It was the second such event at DDC since February, and the club hopes to permanently host similar shows on the first Wednesday of every month. They’ve staged three shows so far, featuring a wide variety of bands from many countries. Dozens of musicians improvised and jammed at each event, which all maxed out DDC’S capacity of 200 spectators.
DDC was founded in July 2014. In less than two years, it has become one of China’s most buzzworthy concert venues. Since its opening, its stage has featured 700 independent bands from around the world, giving its patrons myriad styles of rock music.
DDC founder Zhang Jincan became obsessed with indie rock while he was at university. “Commercial profit is not what indie musicians work for,” he asserts. “Rather, they seek independent musical ideas and foster the courage to make break- throughs, innovate, and express themselves, all flavored with straightforwardness and naivety.” From the day it was founded, his philosophy about the function of his DDC has remained steadfast: Provide a professional performance site and high-quality sound equipment for independent bands from all corners of the world.
Zhang dubbed his club an “Open Source” independent cultural platform. “By ‘open source,’ I mean that anyone can promote an event at DDC using the internet,” illustrates Zhang. “What we do is curate the quality and rhythm and provide supporting services.”
DDC has excelled at finding and presenting “fresh blood” indie rock acts from both home and abroad. Guo Xiaohan, former journalist-turned-vice president of Musikid, a supporting platform for music programs in China, wrote, “It was in DDC in 2015 that I discovered my favorite band, Horseradio, which led listeners on a journey from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to the Silk Road and up to outer space.”
According to Zhang, Horseradio is a Mongolian power-ballad band from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The group has performed in bars across Beijing, including DDC. After receiving Zhang’s backing, they have participated in Chinese music festivals and toured Russia and other European countries. “It’s all worthwhile when DDC catapults emerging bands onto a larger stage,” grins Zhang.
Almost all livehouse founders, Zhang Jincan included, have their own musical ambitions. On November 17, 2015, the U-dastan Ensemble became the first group to sign a contract with DDC. Consisting of five highly- experienced Uygur musicians from Xinjiang, the band features the best traditional Uygur musical instruments such as Rawap, Tanbur, and
tabour, yet plays pop music accompanied by Western instruments such as a bass guitar. A new rap version of Muqam (a Uygur musical legacy, world cultural heritage and comprehensive classical art form consisting of songs, dances, and melodies), was staged there.
“I acted like an agent for the U-dastan Ensemble,” Zhang explains. “I suggested they establish a band as early as 2013 when I was working in a Beijing bar. But I never expected the chance to sign a contract with them.”
Zhang is extremely confident about the future of the U-dastan Ensemble. “I’ll get them into lineups of foreign music festivals.”
“I hope DDC inspires young people in China and helps them find their favorite music and accept the spirit of independence promoted by independent music,” he adds.
Author Li Kunwu recounts life as an ordinary Chinese baby boomer in an ordinary town, with over 3,000 frames of comics and comic strips spanning half a century marked by meteoric social progress in China.
He created more than 100 characters based on his family members, classmates, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and soldiers, drawing real details of ordinary people and their feelings.
The graphic work consists of three volumes, respectively titled Hardships, Turning Points, and Prosperity, using ordinary people’s lives to trace the social progress in modern China. The first volume recounts the frustration of the author’s family in the 1950s. The second focuses on his army service that began in 1972. The third shows the new choices Li and everyone around him made during the economic tide after the country launched reform and opening-up in 1978.
Dargaud, a prestigious French publisher, released the complete graphic novel in 2009. It won two prizes at the Saint-malo book fair in 2010 and was selected for the Angoulême International Comics Festival, often likened to “Comics Oscars.” Today, the book has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and English. This new version is a collector’s edition, with new material added to the original three volumes.
“A unique epic depicting ordinary people’s toils over half a century, it documents their daily life through historical changes, authentic, sincere, and touching,” commented journalist Cao Jingxing.
As a review in The Guardian puts it, the stories support the lead role of fate, reflecting how individuals were molded by modern China as well as the choices and struggles made by people around Li. With his ambitious graphic novel, the author shortened the distance between his readers and China, and showcased the losses and gains of the country as well as its greatness and various headlocks during its development.
Li Kunwu from China and Philippe Ôtiér from France worked together for five years to co-author the book. During compilation, according to Ôtiér, they always tried to find balance between “selves in the eyes of the Chinese” and “China in the eyes of foreigners.” They eventually reached consensus to present the original look of stories through the eyes of ordinary people and leave the space for readers to feel and judge.
Li Kunwu, a native of Kunming, Yunnan Province, was born in June 1955. He joined the army in 1972 and fought in the Sino-vietnamese War of 1979. From 1980 to 2010, he worked at Yunnan Daily. Li serves as member of the council of Yunnan Artists Association and executive member of the council of China Newscartoon Society. Over the last few years, he has showcased Kunming with his comics, publishing more than 30 comic books, the most noticeable of which is Eighteen Weirds in Yunnan, a classic depicting civil culture in the city of Kunming.
Philippe Ôtiér was born in Périgueux, France, in 1964. He has been a playwright for 10 years and a comics fan for longer. During the early 1990s, he worked as a diplomat for France’s Ministry of Finance, and for 15 years that followed he worked and lived in China and East Asia. Today, he resides in Wuhan, the provincial seat of Hubei.
1. When I was child, I was afraid of rats.
2. On August 15, 1962, Lei Feng, a soldier of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who was known for selflessly helping others, died in the line of duty. On March 5, 1963, Mao Zedong, chairman of the People’s Republic of China, urged the whole country to “Learn from Lei Feng,” and Lei’s spirit has since served as an inspiration to the Chinese people.
3. During that era, young people who talked about reading while dating were considered to have lofty ideals.
4. When we were upset and confused, our nanny always inspired us with her benevolence and optimism.
5. China’s economic reform and opening-up have brought dramatic changes to the country. Now, villagers living deep in the mountains of Yunnan Province can check the mail online.