Once in Changsha, P.K.14 wanted to do some flea market and second
hand clothes shopping, which we liked the sound of. We arrived slightly
late to meet the band, at which point they told us that because a
Converse cameraman went with them to the market, the owners shut the
curtains and turned off all the lights as soon as they walked in, and
the whole place was closed down within minutes. Gladly, this was more
from a fear of being filmed running an illegal bazaar than an
unwillingness to cooperate with the media. We’ll try again tomorrow
without the cameras.
P.K.14 went off to hunt for some CDs instead. The first place we
went to, had all of Sony’s releases packaged in irregular-sized blue
cases designed to prevent piracy. In a small shop next door, we found
Love is All, Anthony and the Johnsons and our tour band Queen Sea Big
Shark’s album, but no P.K.14. I asked drummer Johnny why not, and he
told me that the band switched to a much smaller label for their fourth
album (released one month ago), after the established Beijing indie
label Modern Sky were less than forthcoming with sales numbers and
other crucial details about their last two albums. The corner of the
shop that the band hovered around the most was the section selling cut
CDs: the ones that the customs officials mutilate in a very minor way
when they arrive in China so that they cannot be sold, or not
officially anyway. I sneaked off to the DVD section where I was
surprised to be able to pick up recent films like XXY, The Band’s
Visit, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
This morning, we went with P.K.14’s guitarist Xu Bo to visit his old
university digs. Our taxi passed a statue of Mao on the way, who once
studied at the Hunan Teachers College in Changsha, and looked very
dashing in a carved flapping coat. Xu Bo’s old ground floor apartment
was positioned along a narrow winding road in the university district.
He used to pay about £25 per month to rent the entire floor. Today he
wore a T-shirt with the name of the Swedish city Umeå printed on it, a
souvenir from P.K.14’s Sweden tour in 2005. This looked a little out of
place in the small street, also home to a woman scaling fish plucked
from an outdoor tank. Around the corner was a huddle of small guitar
shops and a lady grating fresh noodles from a lump of dough into a
giant pot of boiling water, one at a time. We ate next door in a noodle
cafe that had a health and safety rating of :| on its certificate.
It was P.K.14’s turn for a ‘key visual’ photo shoot today. The location scouts chose a village
an hour’s drive from the city of Changsha to park the Converse bus, on
a road that divided a landscape of very green rice paddies. The idea
was to make it seem as if the bus had broken down, with members of the
band pushing the now filthy vehicle from behind. A grinning gathering
of kids we found on the roadside gave helping hands with the
‘breakdown’, though the official photographer for the shoot could only
photograph them from behind, since their parents weren’t around to sign
off on a release form.
We bundled back into the bus and headed for the main part of the
village, which was really only a hotel, restaurant and shop, with
plenty of space for us to set up both bands’ equipment for live outdoor
shows. P.K.14 played first. When we saw their show in Hangzhou, there
were four stage-divers; this time, four local children under the age of
ten danced at the front with their right fists in the air. Behind them
were more children on a row of chairs, and a bemused assembly of
mothers and fathers. A car or motorbike went past every five minutes,
and most of the drivers stopped to watch, which resulted in a whole row
of bikers facing the band. There was a lot more energy here than at the
service station the night before. During the interlude I took the
opportunity to try out my first ever piece of graffiti on the side of
the bus, a drippy and badly-executed ‘Dazed’. Look out for Ellis’s
‘Confused’ on the other side later this week. Queen Sea Big Shark
played as the sun set – or as the sky got dark, since the smog in China
means there is never a clear sky here. The male half of the audience
seemed especially appreciative of Fu Han’s pouting, and to celebrate
the bands’ successes, we ate three plates of snake in the village’s one
and only restaurant.
Click here for more about the Converse LoveNoise China Tour.
