National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Editor's Note - last year our friend, artist and musician Jie-Song Zhang, approached us with a story about his experiences with Bejing's hip-hop underground, and the constellation of artists, radicals and regular kids that gravitate towards that scene's orbit. It's been a long time coming, but we finally got the goods - this is the first in a series of blog posts and galleries from Jie-Song documenting hip-hop culture in Beijing and youth culture in China. Take it away Jie-Song...

My name is Jie-Song Zhang, and I'm an international art director, as well as an electric violinist/vocalist for the avant-garde Hip-Hop group, the Stone Forest Ensemble, based in New York City. In fall of 2010, I returned to China, the land of my birth, to perform at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, by invitation of the USA Pavilion to represent American culture to the world. After the Expo, I traveled to Beijing, in part to visit family, in part to re-connect with the Beijing underground Hip-Hop community, and in part to hold meetings for a campaign I am producing to connect artistic and cultural communities, worldwide (Emerging Face of a Nationless World). This blog is a series of vignettes describing my experiences on this trip, the Chinese underground Hip-Hop movement, the shifting landscape of Chinese youth culture, and the "idea of China and America", amongst other things.

LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY HERE

"When the world discovered Hip-Hop, the world was shocked. Stunned. It was too crazy. Too dope." - Wang Bo aka MC Weber; Beijing, China

I hadn't spoken to Wang Bo for about three years, since summer of 2007 when he invited me to perform with his then band, Beijing Live Hip-Hop Experience, a heavily Dub and Reggae influenced unit backed by a former rap-metal rhythm section and featuring two MCs. To see a young Chinese yelling "Rastafari!" into a mic, followed by the skillful sewing together of Mandarin tones to flow as singing-style rap, will alter your mental conception of China far more sharply than any printed article, any political expert discussing "Chinese social change".

Wang Bo met me on the corner of a long street heavily populated by restaurants and near endless chains of red lanterns, round and well lit, dangling only slightly above-head like stars that, having become fat and lazy, sank towards the earth. I thanked him for the meeting, to which Wang Bo responded ying gai de, which means "supposed to", an expression the Chinese use to signify that, between friends, between family, between members of a shared community, there exist things we do as a matter of duty, as a matter of to do any less would be dishonorable. He was accompanied by two friends, both carrying very casual body language beneath loose-fitting black clothes; one wore a black top-hat. "They're both b-boys", Wang Bo says, before leading me down the street and into the entrance of the Hu-Tong where he lives; "we're going to a small restaurant by my house". It was November in Beijing, and memory reminds that the walk was a cold one. On the way, Wang Bo asks me, "How's America? I hear things are really luan these days"? Luan means "messy" or "disorderly", and is the term the Chinese use to describe personal, social, or political situations that are troubling or not peaceful. "America has been luan for a long time", I responded.

To properly understand a person standing before you, it is necessary to understand the nature of this person's origin - to be able to compare where this person is from to where this person has arrived. As I looked upon the face of the current underground Hip-Hop movement in Beijing, in the black pupils of its distinctly Chinese eyes, I would often see swimming cloud-like as memories do, the story of Hip-Hop's birth in the United States.

Hip-Hop was a child born of hardship, delivered to the world from the womb of concrete surfaces that was the South Bronx of New York, in the mid 1970s. Hip-Hop was a child of black American parents, his blood a river from Africa, famously rich in those minerals that encourage rhythm, movement, and expression. Hip-Hop grew up and became known to the world, ultimately because he showed that it is perhaps those with empty hands and an abundant heart who have the most to give to humankind.

There are many different species of culture, but each one exhibits a plant-like growth in its spread throughout a society: the seeds of a culture work their way into the soil of those hearts that are fertile amongst the people, the roots form, and in time, the culture's distinct physical characteristics blossom across the surface of those it inhabits. In the Beijing winter, I was witnessing a springtime for Hip-Hop, the flowering of over-sized jackets and baseball caps tilted sideways; of hypnotically nodding heads and exaggerated hand gestures; of a fresh outfit being thrown across the shoulders of a very ancient soul.

Ci is the rough Chinese equivalent for the American Hip-Hop term "homey" or "fam" - one that indicates a closeness of relationship. Ci is derived from CiJu, which means "porcelain": it signifies a bond that is both durable and fragile.

"Zhang JieSong, ci, let me tell you, since the last time you were here three years ago, the number of kids interested in Hip-Hop has grown bigger and bigger", says Wang Bo, "but as far as the people doing it, doing the work, it's still us, the ones you see right here".

Those gathered into the private back room of the restaurant were all part of the labor force building Beijing's burgeoning underground Hip-Hop movement. Among them were Chen HaoRan, Jia Wei, and Meng GuoDong, whom I'd also met in 2007 - they comprise China's most recognized underground rap crew, Yin San Er (Yin S'ar, with the Beijing accent). A small HD TV fixed into the wall aired the fourth quarter of a Lakers blowout victory over the Sacramento Kings. "Sacramento Bu Xing", remarks Chen HaoRan, indicating that the Kings were a weak ball-club. Bu Xing translates to "can not".

I would later discover that this small restaurant served as home base for Wang Bo. His being a central figurehead of Beijing's Hip-Hop community and one of China's most influential MCs, meant the restaurant was also a vital rallying point for the entire underground movement.

Classical Chinese thought devotes a significant attention to a study of wu shu. Wu meaning "military" or "martial", shu meaning "discipline" or "method", the two characters stand together to signify "military arts" - the way of combat, whether staged by the interacting fists of two individuals or the armies of two warring states. Studies of wu shu reveal the nature, science, and technique of combat: the importance of positioning, of outward appearances, of opening moves, of striking, defending, reacting...

Combat is a form of art; art is a form of combat. Communication is both art and combat. Words often travel between two people as soldiers, marching boldly or advancing clandestinely to conquer or defend a piece of the territory bound by a relationship. Sentences are often thrust forward, muscular and forceful, like an arm that directs a tightly bound fist, in order to affect the posture of a person standing before you.

On this day, Wang Bo sat across from me, wearing a yellow and black shirt with 'Jamaica' written across the front, flanked on all sides by his Beijing Hip-Hop comrades. For the two of us, this first push and pull of thoughts after the distance of three years was also a matter of establishing position. In speaking to me, Wang Bo was also gesturing to the outside world as to the significance and momentum of the underground Hip-Hop movement in China; and in responding, mine was an effort to not simply measure where I stood with an old friend, but also to find a firm foothold in a place and time of China's shaping history.

This was the first in a series of conversations we held at the restaurant, each over a plate of fried rice or a shared bowl of tomato-egg soup, two sons of Beijing comparing their impressions of Hip-Hop and the battlefield that is the world; two artists arising from schools of thought as different as those of Wu Dang (Wu Tang) Mountain and Shaolin Temple, but identical in their life long cultivation of this ancient and mystical discipline that is art - the power of using image, sound, movement, and language to deconstruct and rebuild the feeling of the world. Our conversations were most often a friendly but competitive sparring, a rhythmic fist-fight of moving language, with skillfully coordinated combinations of words sent back and forth to strike and parry, our both concentrating to maintain a clean footwork in the flowing patterns of thought, our both taking moments to study and admire the developed style of the other.

In 2007, when Wang Bo and I first met, it was very much the same way. At a later conversation, I would ask him if he remembered what we'd discussed three years ago. He said:

"A person can forget another person, but an artist can never forget another artist".