April 2005 - Page 2 of 4

Breakthrough In Xi’an

Sunday afternoon and one of the most excellent weekends I can ever remember having is wrapping up. I was booked by Carlberg (a beer company) a few weeks ago to play in Xi’an on Friday and Saturday. I hadn’t ever been there, but the city is famous as the home of the terracotta warriors and is one of the only remaining cities in China with an ancient 30-foot high wall surrounding the city and still intact. Played two of the best gigs I’ve ever had, Friday at a club called Kualala and Saturday at Top One. I went with Tony, a middle aged British VJ also hired by Carlberg, who happens to live in Chengdu also.

All around a classy trip. First class flight, limo to the hotel, Friday afternoon nap and sound check, and a great crowd. Played hip hop from 11:30-12:30 in the back room and mostly techno from 1:00-2:00 in the main room. When I thought it couldn’t get any better, Saturday night came up, and the club was twice as big. I didn’t even know that China had clubs this big – I never saw any in Shanghai or Hong Kong that were like this. One room, over 1,000 people. So packed that walked from one end of the room to the other takes 20 minutes. I think it would be impossible to have that place any more bumping than it was on Saturday night. Full throttle hands in the air dancing-frenzy shit for¬†120 minutes. Tony and I both took photos, but I haven’t checked them out yet. I was trying to get a good one of me in front of the huge crowd with everyones hands in the air, so I told Tony to time the shot to coincide with the tune that was playing at the time. We’ll see..

Bravo Carlsberg.

Kid Castle: Shuang Liu

Had my first day at the remote Kid Castle school yesterday, working from 9-6pm. It actually went much better than I thought it would. The plan was to give three demos, but two of them got cancelled, so I did a total of one hour of work in the nine hours that I was there. I pretty much hung out with Petrel and Terry all day long. Learned some new Chinese, including learning to write my first Chinese character, my name. Took a small tour of the city there, it’s about 30 minutes outside of Chengdu and there are no foreigners there at all.

Walking around there or in Long Quan is really interesting, because a lot of them haven’t ever even seen someone as tall as me. When I walk down a crowded street everyone is talking about me, looking at me, pointing at me. When I was walking through the park groups of people would look and point at me, plainly staring as I walked by, even if I was looking at them. Every time I’d smile and wave, and they’re always anxious to wave back and say hello. I really get the feeling that I’m welcome here, which is fantastic. Everyone is as kind here as anywhere I’ve ever been and it’s fantastic.

I finished Sperm Wars a week or two ago and I’m about 20 pages from finishing Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, so I’ll write reviews for these two on Amazon. Recently I decided that I want to write reviews for all the new movies that I see, but I don’t know where I’ll do that yet. I’d like to dedicate a page or a portion of my website to movie/book/album reviews, if not for other people then just for myself, but unfortunately I have all kinds of connection problems from here. I’ve seen Spy Game with Brad Pitt, Crimson River with Jean Reno, and Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack in the last few days, all for the first time.