Come with me for a stroll along my favorite part of Suzhou Creek
Often overshadowed by its bigger and more famous brother, Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek — it’s really a river, by the way — is one of the city’s most pleasant stretches. Come with me for a 30-minute walk along my favorite 2 kilometers, passing numerous historical sites while enjoying some natural peace and quiet at the same time.
The Suzhou Creek, so named because it runs between Shanghai and Suzhou, spans 125 kilometers, 54 of which are within Shanghai and have recently been revitalized to provide uninterrupted walking paths, new gardens and ample resting areas.
My favorite 2 kilometers begins near the Bund at the Waibaidu Bridge, before heading west along the north side of the Suzhou Creek until we reach the Sihang Warehouse, recently made famous by the movie “The Eight Hundred,” and a 400-meter riverfront area called Read Suzhou Creek.
This walk will take you just 30 minutes. Let’s start!
1. Waibaidu Bridge
Our walk begins at the Waibaidu Bridge, probably Shanghai’s most famous. It was erected in 1907, and taken completely apart again in 2008, 100 years later, for complete refurbishment. So much history happened here, including the 1915 assassination of then Shanghai’s top military officer Zheng Rucheng and occupation by the Japanese from 1937 to 1945. This is China’s first all-steel bridge and, in Shanghai style, lights up in different colors in the evening.
2. Sichuan Road N. Bridge
The Battle for the Liberation of Shanghai, a 16-day series of skirmishes that began in Baoshan District, came to a head on May 25, 1949, when a final push by the People’s Liberation Army to oust the Kuomintang hit the banks of the Suzhou Creek.
The PLA attacked four bridges from the south of the creek — including this bridge – where they needed to cross to the north, which is where many KMT soldiers were holed up. In order to keep Shanghai’s valuable infrastructure as undamaged as possible, they vowed not to use artillery in the city center, but many PLA members were killed on the bridge while attempting to approach the post office.
3. General Post Office Bldg
Built in 1924, the four-story General Post Office Building, considered a high-rise at the time and located directly at the northern end of bridge, became the KMT’s stronghold. Because of heavy casualties on the bridge in front of the post office, this became the only place in the city center, during the entire Battle for the Liberation of Shanghai, where the PLA used artillery.
Today, the Shanghai General Post Office Building is no longer a post office, but you can visit the Shanghai Postal Museum inside, which is free.
4. Xizang Road Bridge
This bridge was made famous recently by the movie “The Eight Hundred” (see No. 5).
5. Sihang Warehouse
The Sihang Warehouse, otherwise known as the Sihang Warehouse, was the site of a fourday battle between Chinese forces and invading Japanese back in 1937. The battle, right across the river from the then-International Settlement, took place in front of the world’s media and led to a morale boosting, albeit small win for the Chinese side. The battle of the Sihang Warehouse was the subject of the popular Chinese blockbuster, “The Eight Hundred,” which was released last year.
6. Read Suzhou Creek
The end of our walk takes us to this newly refurbished 400-meter area of riverfront that begins opposite the Sihang Warehouse. The area features new gardens, outdoor tables and chairs, and a line of engraved poetry about the Suzhou Creek for you to enjoy. Each poem is presented in Chinese, English and Braille. The area from the Xizang Road Bridge to here also features traditional cobblestone roads, and you can find a large 1953 map of the river engraved in the ground.
I hope you enjoy this walk along my favorite part of the Suzhou Creek, traversing some of Shanghai’s most intriguing recent history. Be sure to check out the southern side, too, which is also well worth the walk.
Addiction runs in my family. And while I’ve never found myself on the thorny end of the addiction stick, I’ve learned something while witnessing the trauma of loved ones impaled on theirs. Addictive behavior is just that: behavior. It’s not the sum of ones being. People are addicted; they are not their addiction. And in a world high on clickbait, bingedrinking and porn, how far are any of us from dependency?
According to neuroscience, a habit is an action with some choice, whereas addiction is compulsive. Fail to feed a habit, and you’ll feel uncomfortable, but people will burn their lives to the ground to feed an addiction. In ancient Greece, the word addiction meant “those not entitled to rights.” Put differently, slaves.
And what does the system do with slaves? It punishes them.
In 1971, US President Richard Nixon famously declared drug abuse “public enemy No. 1,” going on to say “to fight and defeat this enemy, it’s necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” His declaration led to a series of experiments in which individual rats were caged with two water bottles. One bottle was filled with water, while the other was laced with heroin or cocaine. Nine times out of 10 rats became addicted to the drugged water until they eventually died of overdose. These experiments formed the widespread belief that chemical hooks cause the body to become dependent on drugs, leading to addiction.
But there’s something wrong with this narrative.
Amidst the Vietnam War, some 20 percent of US troops were using heroin. The news horrified officials who feared an impending nation of addicts. On returning to the United States, researchers monitored soldiers in an extensive study. The result?
Of the servicemen using heroin in Vietnam, 95 percent stopped on home soil. And if you believe the story of addiction, none of this makes sense.
In the 1970s, professor Bruce Alexander looked again at the rat experiment. Immediately it irked him that rats had been isolated and with nothing to do. Alexander decided to try something different and built what would later be known as Rat Park. Inside was an abundance of food, toys, tunnels and, crucially, other rats. As before, rats had access to both sets of water. But in Rat Park, the drugged water went mostly untouched, and no rat ever overdosed. Rats went from almost 100 percent overdose when isolated to 0 percent when they had fun and connected lives. Alexander concluded there must be a different story about addiction. To him, addiction wasn’t about the chemical hooks in your body; it was about your cage. In other words, addiction is an adaptation to our environment.
In his 2015 TED Talk, author Johann Hari speaks on this point, citing a professor called Peter
Cohen, who referred to addiction as “bonding.” Humans have an innate need to bond. When we’re happy and healthy, we’ll do this with each other, but when we can’t, because we’re isolated or in pain, we’ll click with anything that’ll grant relief. For addicts, compulsion is a reaction to suffering. But rather than offering an empathetic hand to those who cannot bear to be present in life, most countries — to some degree — punish and shame addicts as an incentive to stop.
Portugal was the first to spot a broken system. The country tasked a panel of Portuguese experts with solving its crippling addiction rates. What they came back with was nothing short of radical: put the money previously spent on punishing drug users into reconnecting them with society. As Hari puts it, the aim was to ensure that every addict had a reason to wake up in the morning. Years later, officials conducted a review. Injected drug use, addiction and overdose had all gone down.
Going back to professor Alexander, while correct to talk about addiction in terms of individuals, he urged we also think about social recovery. But in a world plagued by loneliness, in which many have swapped flesh and blood friends for online followers, how real are our connections? Studies show the number of close friends the average person can call upon has been steadily declining since the 1950s. We’ve created a society where life looks more like an isolated cage and less like Rat Park.
Loving an addict isn’t easy. But we must hold the pain of the addicts in our lives. Rather than threatening their connections to us, we must deepen them through love trust, and empathy. As Hari poignantly points out, togetherness has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, both socially and individually.
Because the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.
It don’t make no difference escaping one last time, it’s easier to believe. In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness, that brings me to my knees.
— “Angel” (Sarah McLachlan song)
“
Peony Pavilion,” a play written by Shakespeare contemporary Tang Xianzu, went on to become one of the most enduring classics in the Chinese opera repertory.
It is lyrical tragicomedy of love and perseverance that transcends time and space, life and death.
Du Liniang, a beautiful young girl born into a wealthy, influential family in the last days of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), is shackled by feudal ethics and customs, denied the freedom to find love by herself.
One afternoon, Du takes a nap in the back garden. In a dream, the girl meets a young scholar holding a willow branch in his hand. He invites her to write a poem with him and leads her to the Peony Pavilion, where they eat forbidden fruit.
A flower petal drops on Du, awakening her in the garden. She realizes it was all a dream, but it seems so true to life that she hurries to the pavilion to see if the scholar is there. He is not. She pines for him day after day, finally becoming so ill that she dies.
Her father buries his daughter under a plum tree in the back garden, and builds a nunnery nearby, tended by an old nun.
Du’s soul descends into hell. The keeper of dead souls checks through his Book of Life and Death and finds her death was a mistake. Moreover, Du was destined to marry Liu Mengmei, a top scholar in the imperial examinations. Her soul is released back to the living world.
At the same time, the young scholar Liu is on his way to the capital to sit for the examination. He catches cold and seeks refuge at the backyard nunnery near the plum tree. There, Du’s soul meets the man she encountered in her dream. The couple falls in love.
Liu confides in the old nun, asking her to help him exhume Du’s grave to reunite her body and soul. Du comes back to life and follows Liu to the capital for the examination.
Liu comes out top in the exam, a certain guarantee of a high-ranking post in the imperial court. They return to Du’s home where Liu asks her father for her
hand in marriage. Her father, however, refuses to believe that Du is still alive and says the young man must have been bewitched by a “devil.”
Hearing that his daughter’s grave has been dug up, the father flies into a rage and orders his men to tie the scholar up.
The father writes a letter to the emperor, accusing the young man of being a devil and seeking his arrest.
The emperor holds court. Du is summoned to prove that she is indeed human. The emperor pardons Liu. In the end, the couple marry and live happily ever after.
The play written by Tang is a reflection on love, life and human nature. The playwright himself failed the imperial exam four times and refused to curry favor with influential officials. Settling for a low-level court position, he had personal experience with government malpractice and rigid social norms.
Disheartened, Tang retired in 1598 and returned to his hometown in Jiangxi Province, where he focused on writing plays. Living in seclusion in a small village, he listened to the tales of local farmers, enriching the creative sphere for his literary works.
That same year, he wrote “Peony Pavilion.” It was originally composed for staging as a Kunqu Opera, one of the genres of traditional Chinese theater arts. It was first performed in 1598 at the Pavilion of Prince Teng and became instantly popular.
The play, sometimes called the “Chinese Romeo and Juliet,” has 55 scenes, which can run for more than 22 hours on stage if presented in its entirety. The opera has been performed countless times in China and even abroad. It was adapted into a film and numerous modern versions.
With the surreal romanticism, Tang eulogized ideal love. He portrayed Du as a brave young woman, pursing ideological emancipation.
The play’s focus on female consciousness was a rarity in Chinese literature more than 500 years ago.
To flesh out the opera characters, painter Zhu Gang combines both the realism techniques of Western painting with freehand brushwork often used in Chinese art.
Zhu prefers meticulous lines and heavy colors, but at the same time, he uses the contrast of the wet and dry ink, different shades of colors and the use of exaggerated light.
Exaggeration and symbolism are part of freehand brushwork in Chinese painting.
The figures he paints have detailed faces that bring realism to them. However, clothing and postures are treated in freehand style, with clean-cut lines and large areas of colored ink rendering.
The painting “Du Liniang” is a typical embodiment of this style. The limbs and sleeves of her costume reflect flexibility and lightness, showing a beauty of movement to reflect her lovesickness when strolling in the garden.
The picture “Peony Pavilion” depicts the scene when Du and Liu meet secretly in the garden. The painter doesn’t draw any background environment, but the expression of their love suggests the young couple are basking in bright spring sunshine among blossoming flowers.
Anew exhibition at the Pearl Art Museum intends to add a splash of color to the lives of anyone brave enough to step inside and view.
“Manque de Recul: Interdisciplinary Trends in Art” features an eclectic mix of art, created by more than 60 artists, including papercutting artist Chen Fenwan; Chen Yingjie, an ink graffiti artist; Victoria Lu, first female art critic and curator in the Chinese contemporary art world; Kristy Cha Ray Chu, who paints her toy collection and Ye Funa, who explores the boundary between art and aesthetics through nail art.
Li Dandan, director and curator of the Pearl Art Museum, said the exhibition “tries to explore new phenomena in a light-hearted, joyful way.”
“Popular culture, ACG (anime, comic, and games) culture, world history, folk beliefs, myths and legends, tradition and innovation are inspirations for the artists,” Li said. “No longer constrained by the conventional art circle, they created new roles for themselves, collaborating with brands, commercial space, entertainment industry and the tech world.”
The highlight of the exhibition goes to Chen Fenwan’s “Infinite,” one of her most important pieces.
Chen, though in her twenties, has been recognized by critics as “a Chinese papercutting artist with immense potential,” successfully leveling-up traditional craftsmanship to a contemporary art angle.
“Infinite” features a pink paper dragon with a head but no tail, supported by a soaring steel structure.
“Today all artistic mediums encounter the same issue: How do you attract an audience at the first sight?” Chen said.
“In the eyes of many, papercutting is ancient and out of date, while multimedia is fashionable and interesting. But for me, both face similar difficulties capturing an audience.”
Chen used hollow cutting to reflect her vision of the infinite in a finite space. On closer inspection, the layers of scales on the dragon look like the shape of opening palms.
“For no reason, I like the symbol of palms. It is reminiscent of the thousand hands of Buddha, or to be exact, it reminds me of love, as we use hands to touch the people we love and care.”
Another of her installations at the exhibition, “Lucky Garden,” presents the palm print of each participant in papercut. The artist shapes these pink hued palm prints like layers of blossoming petals standing on the mirror-made ground. Their reflection on the mirrormade ceiling of the small exhibition room conjures up a surreal, fairy talelike world.
The combination and movement of the palm prints become a twinkling, moving array, while the mirrored “garden” reconstructs a sense of ceremony in a delicate and poetic form.
“There are no formulas to art and each creation is a breakthrough,” said Chen Yingjie, who studied Chinese painting at the age of 3.
He explored the combination of classical Chinese ink painting and Western graffiti art in different ways, working to find a balance between the two
conflicting cultural forms.
By casting off cultural restrictions, he established a new artistic language exclusively of his own. During the 2020 pandemic, he created “Gravity,” using an eruption of colors to express the conflict and relationship between man and nature.
His “2020 Breaking-Loong” series drew inspiration from the martial arts philosophy of Bruce Lee, attempting to build a realm in which Eastern and Western painting styles merge with no conflict.
Among all of the participating artists, Xu Zhen® is a landmark figure in Chinese contemporary art, a leader of the younger generation, an artist, curator and the founder of MadeIn Company.
His wide-ranging body of work involves installation, photography, video and performance.
The catch phrases and texts in his “Metal Language” series were drawn from cartoons in public places, removed from its original context and framed with various materials like a dialogue box. Evoking the relaxed attitude of graffiti, the work is a spiritual portrait of the 21st century, such as “I used to be cool and do cool things.”
“Nowadays, we are constantly receiving new information. One afternoon, you might receive a text that changes your values, which is usual. I think artists should not ignore this. Why not jump into this era and play with ourselves?”
The exhibition also highlights a newly coined word “urbart (urban+art)” by Victoria Lu, who made her debut as an artist this time.
“Urbart today has already transcended graffiti art or street painting. It is not just the art of an urban space, it incorporates the virtual time and space of social media, transcending the limitation of one’s geographic or physical environment,” she said.
“Urbartists are no longer technicallytrained professionals, instead they could be participants, formulators and operators of the aesthetics of the present era, while at the same time they could be a huge group of consumers.”
Together with the 59 emerging artists, she created the “Viki Lulu House,” on the idea that more and more people will join, until everyone is a part of it. Their paintings, sculptures, toys, garage kits, skateboard decks and digital creations are presented around the museum.
Live streaming equipment is also available to visitors, offering a full experience of urbart’s aesthetic and interdisciplinary experience.
In a historic year at the box office, a recent survey reveals Chinese movie buffs regard this year’s must-see movies during the Spring Festival as the best. A number of new productions of diverse themes were offered during the important movie season of the year.
The survey, conducted over the holiday period by the China Film Art Research Center, shows Chinese cinemagoers favored three movies: “Hi, Mom,” “Detective Chinatown 3” and “Endgame” — based on their storyline and artistry.
Wang Yun, a 31-year-old movie buff, saw six of the seven Spring Festival releases, and highlighted two of the three, “Assassin in Red” and “Endgame,” as his favorites.
“Assassin in Red” has multiple plot lines intertwining reality and fantasy, with a modern fable theme of revenge and redemption. “Endgame,” on the other hand, is an interesting story that provides an insight into the truth and absurdity of reality.
Statistics from China Film Administration revealed the Chinese box office created history at this year’s Spring Festival. A record of 7.8 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) was taken over the counter, a 32.5 percent increase over the same slot of 2019.
Last year, movie theaters in China were shut for almost six months, from late January to July, because of the coronavirus outbreak.
During the Chinese New Year holiday from February 11 to 17, around 160 million viewers attended more than 390,000 screenings at theaters all over the country. It has been a robust opening for China’s film industry in 2021. As of last weekend, the national box office has already surpassed 13.7 billion yuan in takings.
Among the seven Chinese films released during the holiday, “Detective
Chinatown 3,” “Hi, Mom” and “Assassin in Red” were the topgrossing ones, reaping 3.56 billion yuan, 2.72 billion yuan and 539 million yuan respectively.
Chen Sicheng, director of “Detective Chinatown 3,” has become the first Chinese filmmaker to contribute more than 10 billion yuan to Chinese cinema. Chen’s new scifi movie “Mozart in Outer Space” is scheduled to hit screens around the country later this year.
Industry insiders attribute the Spring Festival box office revenue success to the variety of film genres and cinematography.
Additionally, many out-of-towners chose to stay in the big cities for the holiday season to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection.
Professor Liu Haibo, a film expert from Shanghai University, said that people’s enthusiasm for movies was reignited. The Spring Festival box office performance will also rebuild filmmakers’ confidence in the market, which faced unexpected challenges last year because of the pandemic.
“Theaters will still be the primary venue for movies to be released in the future as ordinary people are used to watching films in a cinema,” professor Liu said. “But filmmakers must keep improving the artistry and originality of their works to attract the audience.”
The most important screening seasons in China include the Spring Festival, summer break, the National Day holiday in October, Christmas and the New Year.
Professor Liu says some producers and film investors will choose online distribution as a substitute for theatrical release amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. It means that cinemas need to broaden their service scope and make changes to survive. Live broadcasts for big sporting events and concerts seem to be a good supplementary to film screening.
Both experts and movie buffs are optimistic about the development of China’s film industry this year.
Movie fan Wang believes Chinese cinema will see a steady increase after the Spring Festival box office boom. He admits he can’t wait to see director Zhang Yimou’s new spy thriller “Impasse,” which is slated for release later this year.
The film, set in the 1930s, is director Zhang’s first attempt in the spy thriller genre.
Since this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, an array of mainstream movies will be released.
Two eye-catching productions by Shanghai Film Group include “1921” and “Wang Dao.” “1921,” helmed by Huang Jianxin, reveals how the Party was founded in Shanghai 100 years ago. Biopic “Wang Dao” is centered on linguist and educator Chen Wangdao’s efforts to translate the first full Chinese version of “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Tan Songyun’s romance movie “August Never Ends” will be released on April 16. Based on the work of novelist Qing Shan, it follows two close friends who fall in love with the same man. It is an urban tale of love, youth and friendship.
The first installment of director Wu Ershan’s highly-anticipated epic fantasy “Fengshen Trilogy” is another film scheduled to hit cinemas across the country this year.
Considered China’s answer to “The Lord of the Rings,” the series is inspired by the plot of a 16thcentury Chinese novel “Fengshen Yanyi” (The Investiture of the Gods). The plot follows the combat between immortals and demons 3,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, several female filmmakers will be active this year.
Award-winning director Li Yu, whose credits include “Fish and Elephant” and “Buddha Mountain,” will release her new comedy crime film “Tiger Robbers” on May 1. Adapted from Japanese writer Isaka Kotaro’s novel, the film follows a robbery gang’s hilarious adventure.
The pandemic inspired veteran female directors Sylvia Chang, Li Shaohong and Chen Chong to shoot “Her Story,” which will be screened later this year. The film records touching moments of how ordinary people faced up to the challenge of the pandemic.
Additionally, movie buffs can see Peter Chan’s biopic film “Li Na,” Jia Zhangke’s documentary film “Swimming out Till the Sea Turns Blue,” Andrew Lau’s drama film “Chinese Doctors,” Deng Chao’s sports film “Ping-pong of China,” and the sci-fi war film “Warriors of Future.”
An all-women string quartet recently held their debut performance featuring two Beethoven pieces. The Magnolia Quartet, named after Shanghai’s city flower, consists of four principal performers from Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, including its 25-year-old concertmaster.
Liu Ming is first violin in the quartet, with her equally young classmate Chen Jiayi on second violin. They are joined by principal viola Ba Tong and principal cellist Zhu Lin, both born in the 1980s.
“We didn’t start by thinking that it ought to be a group of all female performers,” Zhou Ping, director of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, told Shanghai Daily.
“It just happens that all four are excellent young women performers with much to anticipate in the future, and that’s great. It is a global trend that the number of women musicians continue to rise in symphony orchestras.”
The quartet was formed shortly after Liu became the orchestra’s youngest female concertmaster in its history last June.
At the time, the orchestra was preparing to welcome audiences again in its summer music festival in July and then the new season in September, months after concert halls were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of audiences were restricted when the concert hall first opened the gates again, and strict pandemic-prevention measures were required.
“What makes the situation uncommon is that I actually became concertmaster of SSO in the middle of the pandemic,” Liu said.“Since I was merely a student of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the time, I was thrilled to receive the offer. I felt overwhelmed by the transition to the role as well as by my lack of experience.”
Encouragement from the other members and the increasing frequency of performances helped her get used to the new position.
Classical music has been booming in the city and around the country, proved by sell-out performances and more diverse talents. Compared with symphony, chamber music started much later in Shanghai and is still in the early stages of it being developed and promoted to more audiences.
“We all have strong personalities and preferences in the repertoire,” said viola Ba Tong. “We had many discussions on how to accumulate our repertoire in the future and had some consensus among the members.
“Certainly we will have to play the masterpieces of the masters, so we start with Beethoven, also a continuation of the orchestra’s serial celebrations of his 250th birthday. But we also want to play more contemporary works like those from Shostakovich and Stravinsky, among others.”
In her early 30s, Ba is one of the most familiar faces to the orchestra’s audiences for having taken on so many different roles. She is often the one who introduces and interprets pieces to audiences before performances. When the orchestra was limited to online performances earlier last year, she was one of the most active in online events and classes, and even tried livestreaming.
“Audiences today are very different. They probably have heard enough of the early classical masterpieces. We want to play more works that are closer to our times, so that we can have more resonance with audiences while introducing less-heard pieces to them,” Ba said.
In the quartet, Ba and other members often rely on cellist Zhu Lin on final decisions. The Shanghai native was the first to enter the symphony orchestra in 2009, after returning with a bachelor’s and master’s degree of music at the Juilliard School and a second master’s degree majoring in orchestral study from the Manhattan School of Music.
She has won various cello competitions and performed frequently around the world, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York.
“Decisions?” Zhu hesitated when asked about the final decisions she made for the quartet, before laughing. “Not really, maybe like telling everyone to wear black pants today for the press conference. In terms of music, we collaborate and accommodate each other’s personality and performances.”
The two youngest members were former classmates at Shanghai Conservatory of Music. They were both recruited by the orchestra when they were still students, in different years.
They were first spotted by the orchestra in the biennial Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition. Liu was the only Chinese competitor of the six finalists in the inaugural competition in 2016. Chen was the 4th place winner in the second competition and impressed many international judges.
“Liu is like a cat, casual most of the time with her own personality and turns into a different person when playing violin — very explosive,” said Ba, describing the young members.
“Chen is like a little squirrel, cheering us up whenever she is present. She is very diligent, always practicing, probably because she wasn’t professionally trained in music schools until she went to Shanghai Conservatory of Music.”
Yu Long, the music director of the symphony orchestra, has been promoting young musicians for years, by providing them with more opportunities to showcase their talents, such as on solo stages.
Yu, who thought of the English name for the quartet, has high hopes that they can represent the city’s musical spirit.
“A healthy art eco-system increasingly needs more young musicians to inherit and carry on the music,” Yu said.“Shanghai was where classical music started in China, where countless music talent were nurtured and given stages. The Magnolia Quartet is not only a generation of musicians in Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, but also that of Shanghai and Chinese music.
“They deserve attention and I hope they can inherit the city’s musical spirit and legacy, and one day showcase the sound of Shanghai to the world.”
We want to play more works that are closer to our times, so that we can have more resonance with audiences while introducing less-heard pieces to them.
Ba Tong
Principal viola of Shanghai Symphony Orchestra