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.