China's Jimi Hendrix? The Guitar Work of Zhou Chao 周朝

A couple of months ago I became acquainted with the guitarist Zhou Chao, who plays every Monday night with his band at the Melting Pot at 288 Taikang Lu in Shanghai.  Zhou Chao's guitar work is deeply rooted in folk and blues styles.  Lately he's been experimenting with a more free-form blues with a lot of wah-wah thrown in.

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An Interview with Greg Girard, Shanghai-based Photographer and Author of Phantom Shanghai

Greg Girard is a professional photographer who has made Shanghai his home for the past nine years. I first met Greg in 1999.  In 2000, Greg and I were both photographing the city in flux, documenting the rapid changes as the old city built during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was being bulldozed to make way for the new city of the 21st century.  

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Project Dementia Goes to Shanghai: An Interview with Wu Jun and a Night @ 4Live

While in Shanghai I was able to kill two birds with one stone, or as they say in Chinese, 一举两得 .  Three birds really, since I also reuned with my family, but that’s another matter.  While Sat and Sun were reserved for the CET fieldtrip (see my previous blog), Friday July 20 was a chance to reengage with Shanghai’s live music scene. 

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A Stroll through the Shanghai Night

Last night a dinner engagement with an old friend fell through and my wife had her own dinner plans with former colleagues, leaving me in the city center with two hours of empty time--a precious commodity in Shanghai.  I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Shanghai nightscape.  From Xintiandi 新天地, where my wife and I had gone to have a cup of coffee, I strolled into the darkening evening, heading Bundward.  

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All of Shanghai Under one Roof

One of the highlights of my week was seeing the play “Under a Shanghai Roof” 上海屋檐下, written by the famous playwright Xia Yan 夏衍 （1900－1995).  Xia Yan, ne Shen 沈乃熙， was born in the Zhejiang city of Hangzhou.  He took part in the May Fourth demonstrations in 1919 and traveled to Japan in 1920 to study, where like so many other young idealistic Chinese students, he was introduced to Marxist theory.  He joined the Guomindang in 1924 and after the “failed revolution” of 1927 he entered the Communist Party. 

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Shanghai: A Day in the Life

I read the news today oh boy…wait, I didn’t have to read the news, because I’m here.  In China, at last!  After several months of beta testing, this site finally goes LIVE.  Yes, folks, I’ll be here for the next several months, your roving reporter of the CHINA SCENE.  Though I’ll be busy the next few months, especially after the Dartmouth FSP program kicks off this September, I fully intend to keep posting my impressions and reflections on what’s going down in the P R of C as it revs up for the OLYMPICS.

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Strange Cities: A Multimedia Site on Old Shanghai

Three years ago, while researching the history of jazz music in Shanghai, I discovered that one of Shanghai's most famous bandleaders from the 1930s, a White Russian named Serge Ermoll, had migrated with his family to Sydney.  It turns out that his son, also named Serge, is a very accomplished jazz pianist and quite well known here in the jazz community.  His granddaughter, Tatiana Pentes, has taken her family history and constructed a wonderful multimedia website incorporating some of her own original collection of photos and documents from her grandparents. 

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Frederic Wakeman, _Policing Shanghai_/ A Review

 Here's my next installment:  a review I wrote back in grad school (with slight revisions for this site) on what I consider to be one of the best studies of pre-Liberation Shanghai done by any scholar.  Fred Wakeman sadly passed away not long ago.  An homage, long overdue, to this outstanding historian and person is in the works.

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