A Random Saturday in Shanghai

Part of the transition from "settling in" to "real life" is the appreciation that there are times at which things aren't happening.  Much of real life is the negative space, the moments, hours, and days in between plans and obligations that make up the more substantive parts of our lives on which we report back to friends and family.  It is the process of filling that negative space productively and enjoyably, while at the same time not putting undue pressure on one's self to fill it, that has always been an area of difficulty for me.  I often consider time spent without "a plan" to be time wasted, and this leads to an unhealthy and cyclical inability to fully enjoy free time.  It has started to be especially true here, where I put even more pressure on myself to "get the most" out of my experience.  I'm in China, I shouldn't be spending my days doing what I do when I'm in New York or Washington, D.C., right?  I should be out there, living it up, soaking in the language and culture that brought me here.  It's sort of an unrealistic goal -- that language and culture consumption happens most effectively when it is done through osmosis, not actively.  There is a balance out there, between filling my free time with productive and fun things to do while also being able to enjoy it when all the music stops and I'm just here, in Shanghai, spending a Sunday afternoon doing relatively little of note.

Yesterday began as one of those days, essentially devoid of plans, and me feeling slightly disappointed that I didn't have anything "worth doing" to do.  I did some laundry, went to the gym, and remembered that a free weekend in Shanghai didn't have to be, by default, different from a free weekend in the US.  I then dragged myself out, and went to the Shanghai International Beer Festival on the Bund.  I had assumed this was going to be a corporate, over-priced, expat-trap, and so I had some misgivings about making the schlep out to the river.  And it was indeed chock full of expats.  I had the bizarre sensation, very common in Shanghai, of seeing many familiar faces, people I had met once before or maybe not at all.  Expats flock like sheep to the same spots here; it's part of the reason I've tried to limit my exposure to "the scene."

Still, the setting of the festival alone was worth the trip:

Not pictured here are the three tables that were lined up on the riverside, set up for beer pong.  Franco and I ended up playing a game with two of his friends -- I think it has to go down as the most scenic game of beer pong I have ever played.

After the festival, I joined Franco at our local music dive, where he and his band had a gig.  They playing in a celebration of Mongolian arts and music that was being put on by a friend of theirs.  As part of the celebration, two Mongolian musicians were in town, and The Horde (Franco's band) actually played a few songs with them.  Anyone with a general appreciation for music would have been pretty impressed with the result.  Having never heard any of the songs before, the two Mongolians sat down with Franco and Tom, and, purely by ear, started playing with them.  As band-groupie and unofficial manager, I got to sit in on the 10-minute practice session (the only chance the Mongolians had to get to know Franco, Tom, and their music).

I'm going to embarrassingly butcher the spelling of their names, but it was something along the lines of Hongar (who went by Hoggie for short) and Ogdu.  Hoggie is the guy in the second picture - he's playing a horse-head violin.  It's basically a long, two-stringed violin.  The strings are apparently made out of horse-hair, and there's a carved horse head at the top which you can sort of see in the picture.  It makes a sort of sitar-y sound, but Hoggie was able to make it harmonize beautifully with Tom's guitar and Franco's mandolin.  Ogdu is in the last picture.  He's throat singing.  For those who haven't heard throat singing before, it's fairly impossible to explain with words.  The best description would be the look on the audience's faces when they realized that some of the music was coming from his throat, and not the three string instruments next to him.  His range of pitch was outrageous, from incredibly high to the lowest of bass.  One probably doesn't associate Mongolia with its music (or really anything, if you're me, having never been there).  But if these two dudes are at all representative of Mongolian music, it's something worth getting into.

All in all, a fun and unplanned Saturday in Shanghai.