The Portfolios

We are about to leave for the train station – on our way to Beijing for the holiday – but before we go I thought I would relate this small story.

Avid readers of this blog (both of you) will recall Xianyi selling one of her photos to an ad agency late last year, and the small amount of trouble it took to extract payment from said agency. The person who finally paid us sent the money along with a very snooty and rude email which stated that we should never write him again, not even to thank him for the money. Feeling somewhat humiliated, I posted our email exchange on this blog as a way to exact my revenge.

Knowing the small and narrow readership of this page, I never thought I would actually get what I was after – publicly shaming the person who had snapped at me. There was no way, I figured, that my tiny little corner of the blogosphere could ever make its voice heard across the vastness of the internet. O me of little faith.

I received this email a few weeks ago:

Hey Rindy,

Long time no email.

A coworker of mine discovered your blog, and in it they found the email exchange between you and me from 6 months ago. I didn’t even realize that you had posted those emails to your website. The link got circulated around to a couple of coworkers, and to be honest, it’s a little embarrassing that they can read that email of mine. I did act out of line, and said a couple of things that I shouldn’t have, but I’m hoping that there are no hard feelings.

Would it be possible if you took that down from your site? I would really appreciate it.

Wow. I am still amazed that this happened. After half a day’s thought, I decided to be a nice guy and remove the post. As Jarrett put it to me, it has served its purpose. And so it has been deleted. But never have I felt the power of the blog like this. We think we are small independent units floating around the universe, but actually the things we say and do have great meaning, and they can be felt by everyone around us. It goes back to Xianyi’s philosophy: “The world is small, so don’t be an asshole.”

These are the things I love about China.

When I got on the elevator in my building this morning there was a man inside about 60 years old. The first thing this man did was let out a loud belch. Then, seeing that I was carrying my umbrella, he asked me, “??????” – Is it going to rain today? The overcast sky had caused me to look up the weather online before I left, and it said there was a chance of showers, so I said, “???.” He kind of laughed at this even though it wasn’t really funny, and then said, “????.” I thought about this – yu fang wei zhu – and had no idea what it meant, only gathering that the yu must be “rain” since that’s what we were talking about (I was wrong). So I did what I always do when I don’t understand someone: grunt an “en”, the universal expression for “right” and smiled at him.

Some other people got on the elevator and our conversation stopped (is this a universal thing? Do your elevator conversations with strangers cease when other strangers “interrupt” by getting on?) and I thought about the man’s words. They sounded suspiciously like a cheng yu – a Chinese idiom. They were four characters – the standard – and they seemed to impart a wealth of meaning in their economy. I wanted to figure it out.

When we reached the lobby and alighted, the old man picked up right where he had left off, and immediately confirmed my suspicion. “???????????” – We Chinese have another saying – “????.” You bei wu huan. I asked him the meaning and he said, “It means, if I’m prepared, I’m not scared!” We both laughed at that, because it truly was funny.

Now I have looked up both these cheng yus and will try to apply them somewhere down the line. The first, ????, literally means “prepare, defend, be the master,” but in its use translates basically to “prevention first” and is used in a lot of health campaigns. The second, ????, means just what the man said: “There is no danger when there is preparedness.” Words to live by, ninja.

About a month ago I saw Ziggy Marley at the Yunfeng Theatre here in Shanghai. I love reggae music – used to be part of a reggae band, and I still write reggae songs for my blues band – but I didn’t catch a ticket for Ziggy for two reasons. First, because I didn’t want to spend the money. Second, because in the back of my mind I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t be – what’s the word here – genuine?

There is a line of thinking that says Bob Marley was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to reggae. The best, obviously, because he put reggae on the map and became an international superstar. But also the worst, because he was so celebrated and triumphant, and in his untimely death became a lionized legend – and the thinking goes, no one will ever be as great as Marley again. Meaning reggae is doomed.

Some say it has played out that way. The eighties were tough times for reggae. Despite the success of Black Uhuru, with famous rhythm section Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (who played with many, many reggae groups), fewer and fewer people seemed to pay attention after Marley’s death. As the eighties became the nineties, and especially as we moved into the 21st century, reggae has been making a comeback on the strength of artists like Toots Maytal, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Burning Spear and Eek-a-Mouse.

Bob’s oldest son with his wife Rita, Ziggy Marley first gained popularity as the leader of the Melody Makers, a band he formed with his siblings. That got old pretty quickly, however, and for the last few years he has been establishing himself as a solo artist. He came into Shanghai with a ten-piece band (including a Chinese-looking guitarist, who I’m not sure is a full-time member, two backing vocalists and himself), fresh off his success at the Grammys, where his recent album, Love is My Religion, took the award for best reggae album.

Ziggy played lots of songs from the album, including the title track, which I found particularly uplifting. “I don’t condemn, I don’t convert.” Also beautiful and inspiring was “A Lifetime,” as in “A lifetime isn’t enough to love you, a lifetime isn’t enough to live.”

During the show I took a break and caught up with some friends. In a circle of conversation there was a German guy I’d never met who agreed with me that the concert was going well, but complained that Ziggy was “just playing his dad’s stuff.” My first reaction was that Ziggy was splitting it 50/50 between his own and his father’s songs – and that was fine with me! They opened with a great Ziggy tune – I don’t know the name – which talked about the “children of Palestine” and right after that launched into a killer “Positive Vibration” that really blew the crowd up.

Thinking about the German’s comments, I realized that had been my fear coming into this whole thing – that Ziggy’s music wouldn’t be genuine. That somehow it wouldn’t be a good concert. I suppose I had the image of the Melody Makers in my head. I was totally wrong. Ziggy brought some of Jamaica’s finest musicians to China to show us what Roots, Rock, Reggae is all about. As for critics’ complaints that Ziggy plays Bob’s stuff, my retort is: who else is more qualified to play it? And don’t the people still yearn for it? You bet we do.

There were times when I doubted myself in this conviction. Ziggy’s lead guitarist played most of the show wearing a menacing screw face. He seemed to be thinking, I can’t believe I’m playing “Jammin” for a bunch of white kids AGAIN. But you know what? He doesn’t have to play in Ziggy’s band, does he? As a great man once said, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. And there was a special moment in the middle of a forbidden riddim when this same dude broke it down and started toasting over the beats – to the crowd’s roar.

And when they did the epic “War–>No More Trouble” medley that epitomizes the struggle for justice in all the world, I was a full-blown Rastafarian shouting out the words of Haile Selassie himself as Bob had arranged them.

It was a night the GRP should have celebrated together. Props are due to Dave Hoya for calling me up and saying, “I’m in line to buy tickets to Ziggy Marley and I’m getting one for you.” It was a lesson I won’t forget.