stargurl

Red China's rave scene a cultural revolution
But the Party still keeps an eye on the partiers

Joshua Ostroff
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

BEIJING — Throughout the rise and fall of imperial dynasties and the threats from many an evil "ism" — not to mention your friendly neighbourhood Genghis Khan — China's Great Wall has endured.

But even Mao might agree it has rarely looked this "ku," meaning cool. The stone-strewn sight is familiar, visual shorthand for China itself, but this time the throngs aren't taking photos. The sun is set to rise any moment and the hundreds happily raving are too busy dancing, waving their arms in the air like they just don't care — about Mao, about Communism or, truth be told, that the central government doesn't quite know, or likely approve of the fact that this party is even happening. This summer saw the third installment of what would seem to be an improbable series — Great Wall raves.

The dramatic days of Tiananmen Square are long gone, the 2008 Olympics are coming, and Red China is spinning like a record. These kids don't appear to need democracy. After all, why confront tanks when you can bust a move?

"The history of the location. Standing on the wall, looking around and having that generator pumping and the turntables and the sound," is what draws expat Timothy Ma, known as Chozie (read: Chinese-Aussie), a DJ so ambitious he has trademarked his pseudonym and is described on his Web site as both "the chosen one" and the "world's No. 1 Asian DJ."

Not suprisingly, he spends most of his time focusing on the future. But Chozie's eyes briefly glaze nostalgic while couched in his new digs at Club Vogue's newly expanded Red Room in Beijing's oh-so-hip Sanlitun district.

"That's trippy, it's a spinout, a bit of a rush. People were scattered everywhere. Literally scattered."

He's talking about one of the first events held along the historical barrier about three or four years ago. In China, even rave promoters like to follow time-honoured traditions.

While perhaps not yet moving at 33 1/3 revolutions-per-minute, the nation that tried to stymie Western-style rock music at the end of the last decade is seeing global rave and club culture take root in Beijing. And doing almost nothing to stop it.

The tale begins with Zhang Youdai, easily one of the most important figures in the Chinese music scene and China's most popular DJ. He first reached prominence on the radio a decade ago, at the tender age of 23. Slowly warming his bosses up to Western music, he would spin anything he deemed quality, from blues and jazz to alternative rock and techno, almost single-handedly bringing new forms to the masses.

But the radio is a detatched medium and Zhang soon got into promoting. After all, electronic music is really about audience participation. "It used to be I really hated dance music because I think it is all very commercial. But after 1990, you can hear more and more intelligent dance music and it became very progressive in the independent music scene," Zhang recalls, decked out in a posh suit to fit his posh location, The Loft, where a Danish jazz band is rehearsing for a gig.

He pauses, effuses some praise on the blonde chanteuese he's promoting, and returns to his story. After a trip to Hong Kong in 1994, where he was inundated with previously unheard trance and techno, Zhang found himself completely won over and decided to similarly educate Chinese clubbers.

The following year, with tongue snuggly in cheek, he began I Hate Dance, a "mobile techno club" that would change venues every weekend with Zhang and his posse of Chinese and international DJs in charge of music, decorations and promotion. "At that time it was very difficult, because nobody understood dance music in the rock scene. And for the people who listen to the club music, they only go to the disco dance for the very cheesy disco songs.

"They don't understand techno and house. But I tried to bring underground dance music to Beijing."

It was an uphill battle, though. In the early '90s, there were no venues for people to dance, outside of lame hotel discos. And when new dance clubs opened, in typical Chinese style, the were facsimilies of what already existed.

Not to mention very few Chinese were familiar with non-commercial dance music in the first place. It was — and, for the most part, still is — simply unavailable in the record shops. Even fewer people had been able to leave China and experience rave and club culture in Japan, Europe or North America. At the time, most couldn't even go to Hong Kong to catch up on world trends. And Internet access was hardly available in Canada, much less over here.

The beats were being muffled by the bamboo curtain.

Nevertheless, Zhang decided to move into promoting raves. But having never been to one, he based his first party entirely on information he had read in British DJ magazines. He invited his friends (which included basically the entire Beijing music scene) and held it in a large restaurant after hours, attracting about 400 people, almost exclusively Chinese.

It was Beijing's first "rave" and was a mild success. Momentum, however, was difficult to maintain. "People were asking, `which band is playing?' No band. `So what is the party?' A DJ. For them it was nothing special," he says.

Then a Swiss DJ collective called Cheese arrived in town and had an easier time of it, appealing to the many foreign students in Beijing already familiar with the culture and jonesing for decent house music and Western-style parties. "It was like a real rave," says Mauro Marescialli — a Roman expat, immersed in the Beijing music scene for nearly seven years and currently working for the entertainment Web site Chinanow.com — of Cheese's first old-school foray.

"It took place in a dismissed factory, pretty big, lots of people, music pumping. But around half past midnight the police came and everything was interrupted."

That's just how the new China works. In order to accomplish anything, you must have connections at all levels, from police and tax officers to party officials. Not to mention the local criminal-mafia types emerging from China's economic evolution.

"It's kind of a joke," Marescialli says. "Socialism and communism are abstract concepts. What counts right now, and probably counted before but was hidden under a layer of ideology and propaganda, is money, power and control. That's what this country is about. So to organize a rave party you have to deal with a pretty repressive amount of authority or semi-authority."

Cheese had good customers but weak connections, and besides, it wanted to expand its audience by bringing in local Chinese. That's why they came here in the first place. So they joined forces with Zhang — cleared it with "local" authorities — and soon delivered the first, now legendary, Great Wall party.

But in the years following, raves (sometimes using a bait-and-switch technique to lure Chinese by inviting live acts to the party) were sporadic and commercial discos still dominated the Beijing nights.

Until about a year ago, that is, when Club Vogue opened. Too cool to bear a sign or a street address, it ushered in a new era in Beijing club culture. And through its almost immediate success, forced other clubs like the Velvet Room and The Loft to lift up their levels. While certainly no superclub in either size or scope, Vogue still bears all the hallmarks of international club cool — smoked glass, clean lines and shiny metals, not to mention intelligent lighting, a chill room with couches and various nooks and crannies for added privacy. And the crowd is a mix of laowai (Russians, Americans, Brits and assorted Europeans) and locals.

Foreigners dress as expected, all baggy pants, tight-shirts and the odd spinning glow stick, while the Chinese offer a mix of office wear, slut gear and one odd girl in a pink birthday dress and a blonde wig. The music, refreshingly, ranges from progressive house and psy-trance to dub and breakbeat, pretty much covering the spectrum on a continent that has never lost its infatuation with the lamest beats house has to offer. As far as China goes, it just doesn't get any hipper.

The day-to-day management of the club has been handed over to YumChaCha, an Australian crew led by Chozie. They began as a Sydney-based crew, famed for mixing East and West (the name itself mixes yum cha — to drink tea in Chinese — with the cha cha dance step) at so-called Asian dance parties, holding several events at Australia's sole superclub, Home. Eventually they decided to take their concept of "transcending cultural boundaries though dance music" a wee bit further.

"We went on an initial logistics tour of Asia. Hong Kong, Kula Lumpur, Singapore. Beijing was the last stop," Chozie explains.

Intrigued by the possibility of helping guide a pre-adolescent scene, and still bearing good memories of his previous visit several years before, they made a proposal to take over at Club Vogue and came on-board. Since then they've helped start up a second club, Trendsetters (which hosts a Sunday Dayclub running until people go home) and helped bring in such high profile DJs as former world heavyweight Paul Oakenfold and techno pioneer Derrick May.

But in a population of 12 million, the scene is still relatively small. Boasting maybe 1,000 people on any given weekend compared with up to 20,000 at the discos playing Chinese Hi-NRG and likely 100,000 singing — shudder — at the ubiquitous karaoke bars. Part of the reason is that, for Chinese, clubbing is still quite expensive.

"It's not for `the people,'" Marescialli explains. "It's only the elite who can afford 50 Reminbi (about $10) to go to Club Vogue or 300Rmb (about $60) for a Great Wall party. But at least there is a mix of people, it's not only foreigners or Chinese."

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