We started the day off with lunch in an elegant Xi’an hotel that served French bread and cheese, both rarities in the cities we’ve been to. The vintage clothes district was our next port of call, and according to Lua, people have only been wearing second hand clothes in China for the past three years. Some of her friends still think it’s a strange and dirty habit. The stock is quite different to at home, definitely more limited, though perhaps that’s because every decent dress in sight was bought up for Yang Haisong’s wife and Johnny’s girlfriend. Our favourite shop on the vintage street was Blog, Only a Blog, for obvious reasons.
Everyone was concerned this morning that the venue in Xi’an was going to be shut down by the police. The only way to avoid this was to turn the night into a non-ticketed event with free entry for the first 200 people to arrive (the venue could hold a lot more), and the police threatened to confiscate all equipment if the speakers were turned up too loud. The local kids told us that this kind of thing seems to be happening a lot more because of the Olympics. To prevent unwanted attention, the posters lining the entrance steps outside the venue were taken down in the afternoon, and the support band Echo Rush advised all of their friends to arrive early if they wanted to get in without an argument.
Lua and I did a joint interview with Echo Rush in the afternoon, the most excitable band we’d interviewed all tour. Later on it was a choice between dinner and a short rest at the hotel or going to watch them perform, and like the committed music journalist I am, I missed them entirely in favour of sizzling beef. We checked our emails at the hotel, and Ellis found a message from his friend Poppy in London, saying that she lived with Johnny from P.K.14 in New Cross for a year and could she please have his email address. He hadn’t even told us that he used to live in London! This caginess might have had something to do with the fact that he’d forgotten the exact name of the place that he lived. He knew it was somewhere near Elephant & Castle…
There were lots of people outside queuing when we arrived at MoonKey. A couple of the crew saw us loitering with P.K.14 guitarist Xu Bo and literally pushed the three of us down the stairs and into the venue. Aggravated shouts came from behind, but I didn’t want to look round in case it was the police trying to stop us from getting in. Once we were through the door, I asked around to find out what the band and crew members thought of Echo Rush’s performance. Not one person I spoke to had arrived in time to see them. I spent the rest of the night avoiding their expectant little faces so that they couldn’t ask me if I enjoyed what I didn’t see.
Luckily, we arrived in time to see all of Queen Sea Big Shark’s show, which was fun tonight. Fu Han stood on a table right in the middle of the crowd, and later pulled off her T-shirt to reveal a tight black leotard. Lots of people were singing along. P.K.14 had some equally enthusiastic fans, the most eager of whom was a girl wearing a rare grey version of the band’s T-shirt that even they don’t own. The Wieden+Kennedy, Converse and Dazed teams all got up to jump around together and throw popcorn, before heading out with the bands to a cheap barbecue restaurant where I am proud to have sampled and enjoyed tripe, using the plastic gloves provided. I finally figured out from the excessive amount of greens at the table that Yang Haisong is a vegetarian, much to Ellis’s amusement. Tonight was the end of the official tour, and we feel like weeping. There are, at least, two more Beijing reunion shows still to come this weekend, which makes us feel slightly less despondent. Ellis and I are currently trying to steal a DJ slot at the Friday night showcase under the alias Dazed vs. Confused. We could never get away with being this embarrassing at home.
