Ugandan hip hop artist Xenson felt fine in the Raiding Africa base camp Xiaopu Village, but for his movie he also needed some cool urban culture. So we researched the hot and cool places and took the bus, the subway and some taxis to Big City Beijing.
We left the Village for the City
Officially, the location of the Li Xianting Film School, which brought us to Songzhuang and more specifically to the old rural corner Xiaopu Village, is in Beijing, but nowhere near the city centre. Going there takes one hour if you have a car and can avoid rush hours, or two hours by public transport. We explored the good and cheap busses and subways on our trip out of the village and took the easy way by taxi back.
It all went quite smoothly and it made us wonder why so few city slickers were willing to come down to our nice village.
Xenson posing in front of Beijing Subway Map
Yes, Beijing is a big city (gigantic, in fact), but some of the typical big city things are hard to find. For instance graffiti, the free expression of the young illiterate night animals of any metropolis, is conspicuously absent. Only on some more or less official graffiti walls you may find some pieces, which are actually quite good by any standard.
Pan, a friend of a friend who showed us around, commented on the sparseness of unofficial urban culture that can only be understood in this context: 'Nothing in China is Big'. It became the quote of the day and why not of this project as a whole. We may think China is big and will soon be the biggest, but for Pan - she is helping to launch a Beijing version of the famous Berlin techno club Tresor - it is only just beginning.
Beijing Graffiti (Photo: Sherman Ong)
To find this serious piece of graffiti we had to ask around and the same goes for another wish of hip hopper Xenson: he wanted to meet a Chinese hip hop group and maybe even have them jam with other musicians, including himself. The word was that the only group people could think of was out of town for a tour. Anyway they would be back in time for a photo shoot. Xenson’s jamming with local musicians had to wait for another occasion.
Beijing Rap Group B-Boys (Photo: Sherman Ong)
Same story for Xenson's idea to do something with street and break dancers. We found them and met them, but there weren’t too many of them. Their studio would only open later in the day so we went to the nice expat bookshop Bookworm for some books we could read, some coffee we would like and some wine that was worthy of the name.
And our artist took a well deserved nap.
Xenson taking a nap in the English Language Bookshop Bookworm in Beijing
The Street Dance Studio was a nice place. It reminded me of the school where I took my daughters for their ballet lessons. Neat and harmless. The boys and girls all dressed up in the right shoes, the right hairdo, the right spectacles, the right socks, the right T-shirts, the right bra straps, but it all had very little street feel.
Waiting for their turn at Street Dance Studio Beijing
It’s a phenomenon you see quite often in Asia (Japanese boys and girls are great at it): copying a fashion - here it is urban black American culture - becomes an art in itself and in fact more perfect than the original. In this case - American street culture - it is not about perfection at all (but about the secret of cool) which is inimitable by definition.
In front of Beijing Street Dance Studio
Our critical Ugandan street culture expert (you can learn a thing or two from an urban African about cool) decided not to bother and we left the neat dancers without filming them. We hit the road and the night of the city. Pan took us clubbing.
Pan and your blog writer in the Beijing club Lan
The picture below I actually took the night before. The Beijing clubs were no match for our favourite Songzhuang club Raying Temple. The Raying Temple is worthy as a location for Wong Kar Wai and Andrej Tarkovski together. It is part of an old but still functioning series of fish ponds. Deep below the club is black water that contains - or so they told us - huge fish that were fed with whole ducks. Inside, the club looks like a Western whorehouse and it smells like an Amsterdam coffee shop. Here Xenson found his musicians to jam with. We had a great night out. With a Raying Temple around the corner you do not miss the big city that much.
Xenson jamming and Sherman filming in Songzhuang underground club Raying Temple