by Alan Paul
He thanked me, but I doubted he would follow up. Yechen walked us back to the gondola and said he wouldn’t be joining us on the ride down. He wanted to head higher up the mountain to visit more temples. Jacob said good-bye, and I turned back to Yechen.
“It was very good to see you,” I said. “I think of you all the time and miss you. Please be in touch.”
He thanked me for my friendship and my concern and assured me he would be fine. “Keep practicing your Chinese,” he said. “It sounds good.”
He gave me a heartier handshake than he had at the bottom, and I said good-bye and put my arm around Jacob’s shoulder as we headed down a steep walkway on the final descent to the cable car. Just before entering the station, I looked back and saw the two monks walking back up the mountain.
Chapter 27
Beijing Blues
I still had not told Woodie about the growing likelihood that I would be leaving early and it was beginning to feel like a burden. I went to several gigs intending to talk about it but just couldn’t do so. Even thinking about it was excruciating, and not just because of how Woodie might react. It would also force me to confront the impact moving would have on me. It would force me to say aloud and acknowledge that this was happening, and what it meant for Woodie Alan.
We had put so much into building the band and still felt very much like we were on our way up. Contemplating its end was too much to bear, and I could feel myself immersing into the music more deeply at each show. As every performance gained a new poignancy, I entered a virtual trance state, completely focused on the music to the exclusion of anything else.
My time of reckoning—of discussing this with Woodie—was drawing near because I was working on a column that I planned to publish as soon as we officially made the decision to leave. After another great Jianghu show, this one featuring a guest appearance by my visiting brother on guitar, Woodie and I sat in the courtyard on a beautiful warm night. I just blurted out my news.
“It looks like we are probably moving back in December.” After holding this information inside for so long, it felt good just to get it out, but Woodie looked at me blankly, stunned by my words.
“What? Why?”
“Becky got a new job and is being moved back.”
I lamely filled the silence that hung between us.
“They wanted us to go back now but I said we couldn’t.”
Woodie took the news stoically, not saying much, but it was not his way to reveal his true feelings. I knew that we were both hurting and feared that he and especially Lu Wei and Zhang Yong might see the band as a sinking ship and start looking for other opportunities.
“Look,” I said to him. “I still have six months here and I am not giving up on this band. And I really hope that no one else does either.”
A week later, we played a gig at Cheers, a small bar in the city’s sleazy Sanlitun bar district, which was crawling with disreputable characters of every nationality. The area had oddly been ignored in the city’s pre-Olympics security crackdown, which had halted performances at many bars, including the Stone Boat.
Onstage in front of a room packed with partyers of every race, I lost myself in the music, pulling the crowd in even as I paid them no mind. I was in it for myself, not entertaining anyone. It felt like I had crossed a threshold, vanquishing any remaining inhibitions. On the slow blues “Hold On to What You’ve Got,” I dug so hard into my solo that it felt like I might push a string through the fretboard, and I sang Johnny Copeland’s lyrics with a raw intensity and naked emotion that surprised even me.
You’ve got to hold on / Hold on what you’ve got . . . You know the grass might look greener way over on the other side / but you better believe me when I tell you, that just might be the devil in disguise.
These lines were clearly written about romantic love and the temptations of adultery, but my emotions led me to a very different reading. Were we releasing our grip on something wonderful for the lure of the devil in disguise? That fear enlivened everything I did. I suddenly felt like a man on borrowed time, and I threw myself into life with heightened intensity.
After the show, I walked out into the hallway to talk to Woodie. Lu Wei and Zhang Yong were looking at me oddly.
“I told them about you leaving,” a subdued Woodie said. “They are really shocked and sad.”
We were standing in a cramped landing atop a staircase. Cheers was on the middle floor of a building hosting several rowdy bars. Drunken Westerners spilled up and down the stairs, drinks in hand, smoking cigarettes, chasing skirts, talking loudly. I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Lu Wei and Zhang Yong and sort of shrugged and smirked, a half-assed way of communicating, “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. I hate it, too.”
“Please,” I told Woodie, “tell them that I am not giving up on the band and I do not want them to, either.”
“It’s not a problem, Alan,” Woodie said. “These guys are not going anywhere.”
The next day, he sent me a text message: Your singing was fantastic last night.
Thanks, I wrote back. It felt like something happened. I went to another place. I don’t know how else to explain it but I’m glad you heard it, too. It wasn’t just in my head.
Definitely not. What happened is now you’ve got the blues! Write a song about it, man!
There was something to what Woodie was saying. I had reached a new level of connection to my emotions, which were running hot and deep. But there was something else, also: faced with the reality that this would not last forever, that it could end too soon, I was determined not to leave anything on the table. I had always held back a small part of myself, because letting it all go and laying yourself bare makes you vulnerable. It can be scary out there, but my only remaining fear was regret—that I would get back and know that I could have done this a little better.
I did not have a lot of vocal range. I could barely sing “Happy Birthday” in tune. But I could connect with people emotionally by singing with soul—singing as if I had no choice but to sing—and I was going to do it every time Woodie Alan took the stage.
Chapter 28
Games People Play
The Olympics were looming from the day we arrived in Beijing. Anticipation of the Games was so omnipresent for so long that it sometimes seemed they would never actually happen. During our entire stay, “the Olympics” was the answer to any question about any development anywhere in Beijing, two simple words that explained why anything was happening. Then, overnight, the Games crossed some invisible line from distant metaphor to real event.
On July 1, 2008, Olympics traffic lanes appeared on the Airport Expressway. English-language signs sprouted all over the city, directing visitors to hotels, venues, press centers, and tourist attractions. Blue-shirted volunteers were everywhere, ready to answer anyone’s questions in Chinese or English. The monorail to the massive new airport terminal ran right by the Riviera, with empty cars flying by on test runs. The planting spree that had turned the side of Beijing’s busy roads into verdant green space continued, with huge teams planting shrubbery at busy intersections.
The Riv, too, had embraced the Olympics spirit, suddenly festooned with flags representing various sports, with the back entrance bearing giant letters spelling out the Olympics slogan, “One World, One Dream” in English on the right side, Chinese on the left. Across from the front entrance, a huge lawn decoration, at least twenty-five square feet, read “Beijing 2008” below giant Olympics rings.
Patriotism surged, with cars now flying small Chinese flags. Vendors all over the city were selling Chinese, American, German, British, and Australian flags, which were popping up all over Riviera.
I was hired as a full-time NBC employee for three weeks, and I got lost when I tried to find the International Broadcast Center (IBC), in the heart of the sprawling Olympics Green, for the first time. That was fitting, because my
three years compiling an insider’s knowledge of Beijing were often useless during the Olympics, which actually didn’t take place in Beijing, but in Olympics land. It was an entirely separate universe whose heart was the twenty-eight-hundred-acre Greens.
A taxi dropped me off at a security checkpoint at the farthest point away from the IBC. Late for a meeting and hustling along under a hot sun I decided to hitch a ride on the next vehicle that appeared. That was a garbage truck. The two friendly drivers were amused by my plight and delighted that I could speak Chinese. I showed them the IBC on a map and they nodded and rumbled off. They delivered me to the front door, where I thanked them before hopping down to join the stream of journalists disembarking from a bus.
For the next sixteen days I was wrapped up in a parallel universe, alternating between two worlds as I covered events while also reporting on the Games’ impact in Beijing. Rebecca and I crossed paths a few times, covering the same event for the first time in our careers— unbelievably, it was women’s weight lifting.
Bands around Beijing were also busy, after months spent trying to line up shows during the Games. With no way to know what my schedule would be, I booked three high-paying corporate events and kept my fingers crossed, rushing to them from events at the soaring landmark Bird’s Nest Stadium. Twice, the other guys played an instrumental set while waiting for me to arrive.
The last gig was a black-tie hotel ballroom soiree for the British Olympics committee, featuring several gold medal winners and a who’s who of British business bigwigs. We were all dressed in new black suits—the first such clothes Lu Wei and Zhang Yong had ever owned. When I handed Zhang Yong his share of our $2,500 payday, he smiled and thanked me, with a look of awe.
“This is the most money he’s ever made for a gig in sixteen years of performing,” Woodie explained.
I was very happy to have made that happen.
For the closing ceremony, I was back in the streets, reporting on how the event was being viewed in Beijing. I strolled through old hutong neighborhoods and watched parts of the ceremony on TVs in restaurants and in little corner shops. The whole city felt like a party waiting to happen, but with nowhere to go. Huge TVs in public squares were black; the government had decided not to host public viewings, apparently concerned about large gatherings.
Late at night, I got in a car and headed across town and heard huge explosions coming from behind me. Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw fireworks fill the sky. I told the driver to pull over. I climbed out, joining hundreds of people standing in the lanes of a normally busy road, blocking a highway on-ramp. More residents emerged from the surrounding neighborhood to get a good view of the official closing of the 2008 Olympic Games.
The fireworks went on and on, the longest, most elaborate display I have ever seen. “Beautiful!” exclaimed someone in the crowd. “The best!” said another. A guy to my left turned to me and said, simply and accurately, in Mandarin, “Chinese people have the best fireworks.”
The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air as a massive series of colorful explosions signaled the grand finale.
And then it was over. The smoke hovered and drifted in curlicues and clouds as the crowd began drifting back to their neighborhood and traffic resumed pulsing by. I thought about a few parties I had been invited to, before telling the driver my home address. Enough already, I thought. I had to file a final post to NBC.com’s Destination Beijing blog and then post-Olympics life in Beijing would commence.
I had outlived the clocks. Now my real countdown had begun.
Chapter 29
Big in China
I had envisioned the moment when the digital countdown clocks turned off as a time to relax and enjoy some valedictory time in China. But with just a few months left in Beijing, I went into a hyperactive state. I lived with a manic intensity that had me playing gigs every weekend, recording tracks at night, mounting two tours outside Beijing, traveling to India to visit relocated Beijing friends, and heading to Lhasa, Tibet, when the Chinese government suddenly granted us visas.
Woodie also had been busy, booking us all over China. First up was a trip to Xiamen, a southern port city that was the closest point on mainland China to Taiwan. We would headline the Beach Festival, held on the shore overlooking the Taiwan Straits. After two festival performances and one club gig there, we’d head to Changsha, the capital of Hunan, the home province of both Mao Zedong and Lu Wei. A chain of nightclubs celebrating their anniversary booked us into all three of their venues after searching online to find “Beijing’s best band.”
We left with a bag full of hastily pressed five-song CDs labeled “Beijing Blues Tour 2008” and flew to Xiamen together. We were joined by Jacob, Dave’s family, and three other Beijing bands, a veritable rock-and-roll circus. A festival rep met us at the airport and I felt a surge of excitement loading our gear into the minibus: we were a real band, on the road in China.
We climbed off the bus at the festival grounds, and I stared in awe at the giant stage on the beach, with the Taiwan Straits lapping onto the sand thirty yards behind. Rows of bleachers extended far down a boardwalk lined with food and crafts vendors and flanked by Corona beer concessions and giant sand castles. We were escorted to a giant poster featuring the names of all the performers, with “Woodie Alan” in three-foot-high letters. The promoter handed us markers and we signed as cameras whirled.
After a noodle dinner, we were escorted to seats in the front row of the roped-off VIP section to watch our openers, a hip-hop pop band with two young women singing in English and mugging for the cameras. A full moon lit up the beach, and just before we took the stage, hundreds of lanterns filled the air, sent aloft by candles creating little hot air balloons. They drifted up and out into the crashing surf, a haunting and beautiful scene.
Dave and I said good-bye to our families and rose to join the band on the side of the stage. As I walked away, Jacob called my name. I bent down to talk and he crooked his arm over my neck, pulling me close. “Good luck, Dad,” he whispered in my ear.
We were used to being packed tight onto tiny stages, so it was disorienting to be spread widely across this giant space. When they placed my microphone several steps ahead of everyone else, I felt distinctly, profoundly alone. I had always avoided distinguishing myself from anyone in the band, but now the spotlight was being thrust on me.
I couldn’t understand everything the MC said in his introduction, but I heard my name and caught this loud and clear: “Beijing zui haode yuedue: Woodie Alan!” (Beijing’s best band: Woodie Alan!)
I stepped up to the mic and swallowed hard as the crowd of five thousand Xiamen residents cheered. I blinked into the blinding spotlight and cursed myself for tossing off my sunglasses just before walking out.
I offered up my Chinese introduction about music making us all one people, then nodded to Lu Wei, who kicked off the “Beijing Blues” beat. We wobbled off the ground but righted ourselves and began to soar. The Chinese songs, a novelty item in front of our expat crowds, drew these listeners in. I roamed the big stage egging Dave and Woodie on with their solos. Jacob leaned against the front of the stage filming with my camera and smiled at me, flanked by Dave’s sons.
Most Americans thought that having a blues band with three Chinese guys sounded like a punch line, but this was no joke. Few Westerners seemed to even know that guys like my bandmates existed, because they were outside the normal China narrative. They were not migrant workers or struggling peasants. They were not political dissidents or corporate go-getters.
After three years in China, I was annoyed by how many Americans still believed one of two diametrically opposed stereotypes: China is a raging dragon about to gobble us up; China is a land of faceless peasant drones riding bikes in Mao jackets. The truth is, China is a huge, fast-changing, incredibly diverse place; there was no way to summarize it and I ran away from anyone who tried. There were bars and rock clubs outfitted
with great sound systems and knowledgeable soundmen all through the country, and more and more events like the Beach Festival were being held, but it still all felt new and exciting to everyone, which lent these performances added energy and edge.
Pulling back into the hotel late at night I saw another side of China. The huge karaoke clubs that flanked our hotel had been stolid white buildings during the day but were now lit up with garish flashing neon. Cabs and private cars were lined up in front. The hotel lobby was filled with Chinese businessmen and heavily made-up, scantily clad working girls from the clubs waiting to get rooms.
The Loevingers returned to Beijing with Jacob for the start of the workweek, and I was alone in Xiamen with my three Chinese bandmates. The next afternoon, Woodie and I set out to buy some tea. Fujian is a famous tea-growing province and I had been enjoying the local product, especially Tie Guan Yin, or Iron Buddha. As its name implied, this tea was strong but smooth, and I wanted to take some home.
We walked to a strip of tea shops, which are ubiquitous all over China and even more so in Xiamen. I headed for the closest, biggest one, but Woodie insisted we check them all out first. He zeroed in on a small shop where two young women sat at a round table picking stems out of tea leaves.
“Hello, little sister,” he said, sitting down. One of my favorite things about the Chinese language was the extensive vocabulary delineating someone’s precise relationship—“my father’s oldest sister’s second son”—and the way in which it was polite to call strangers by family names. A young woman could be “little sister” and an older man “dear uncle.” Many young people had abandoned these traditional greetings, but Woodie embraced them, which I found charming.
We lingered over tiny cups of tea, which the clerks continuously refilled.