As Shanghai gets over virus lockdown one thing missing is jazz, a part of Chinese citys music sce
An email interview with Shanghai jazz writer Hu Jiaowei – who contributes to the allaboutjazz.com website and other publications – illuminated just how much.
“Covid-19 totally caught us unprepared! Just like other places on this planet,” she wrote.
“I heard about what had been going on in Wuhan around the middle of January,” she added. “I remember several days before January 23 when Wuhan was sealed off, many people in Shanghai had already been wearing masks. We were all getting increasingly concerned about the situation there and also worried about ourselves. In my whole 28-year lifetime, I have never heard of [such] measures by the government, such as closing down the whole city. We immediately realised this time was really serious.”
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She wrote that, looking back: “The end of January and the whole [of] February was very tough for all Chinese, including the local jazz industry. … JZ Club was one of the first jazz venues in Shanghai to announce an event cancellation. It happened on January 23, the same day that Wuhan was sealed off.”Jazz at Lincoln Centre Shanghai and Blue Note China also closed as the situation’s gravity became apparent. So, how have Shanghai’s jazz musicians survived?
“The impact of Covid-19 on [the] jazz scene in Shanghai and China is very direct,” said Hu. “Musicians lost their gigs … so many of them have regular students, and some are on the faculty of conservatories. So economically, most of our jazz musicians – which were active on the scene before the pandemic – don’t have to ‘starve’. But it definitely curbs their income.
“And Chinese jazz musicians are mostly young. Many of them were born in [the] late ’80s and ’90s and [are] currently based in Beijing or Shanghai, away from [Wuhan]. I haven’t heard of any jazz musician being infected.”
For, just as in the United States and elsewhere, life in China has been dramatically reordered.
“I’ve found that different provinces actually dealt with this issue differently, even back in the peak period,” said Hu.
“But Shanghai actually was … one of the province-level administrations that had the most loose policy. We were not banned from going out, but the government repeatedly advocated us to [stay inside].
“If you go out any time during the day, there wouldn’t be any punishment actually. But everyone self-consciously wears a mask, even till today. And it’s also true that the city was almost emptied, for there literally was almost no one on the street.”
The quarantine in China has been lifted, said Hu, with Wuhan having reopened on April 8. Most other provinces ended their quarantines in February and March, she added.
A new kind of life is emerging, its gradual nature perhaps foreshadowing how the US might gingerly rebuild after the pandemic. “Recently, we are slowly getting back to normal,” she said. “The subway is getting crowded again – still less than before the pandemic.“Resumptions are taking place in the restaurant industry too. The authorities have issued resumption guidelines for different sectors. For example, certain limit of people sitting [at] one table, the mask rules, temperature checks at the entrances and so on.
“In Shanghai, we are basically able to do a lot actually, especially since the resumption in February. Everything is ‘almost’ getting back to normalcy. For me, the absence of concerts, and actually the whole entertainment activities, is the only thing that I don’t feel like getting back to normal.”
Hu said she became interested in jazz about a decade ago when she heard “Jasmine”, a 2010 album by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden. That drew her into the music, a bit of a leap from the classical piano training she had since childhood.
But jazz spoke to her in a way that no other music did. “It’s not just the freedom that I’ve been so much attracted to,” she said. “The diversity it has to offer is even enlightening to me.
“Back then, jazz was definitely not a mainstream music type in China – it still isn’t. You had to learn about the music by yourself, because there was very little possibility that someone was going to promote the genre to you, unlike our increasing jazz venues today.”
Yet Hu persevered, building her knowledge of the music and later deciding to write about it as “a way to express the listener’s feelings and understanding of music. I love jazz almost as an aficionado, so this fondness for writing – almost exclusively on jazz – just happens naturally.”
That she does so in both English and Chinese attests to her potential as a bridge between two cultures.
And what of the future of jazz in Shanghai?
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“Most of us are still uncertain of what ‘future’ means at this moment,” said Hu. “How far is this ‘future’ away from us now? Sure, the day will come when everything is back ... in show business.
“Many of us thought it was February, and then March, and then April. Now we are even unsure about June. Many jazz practitioners might have never thought about how connected China really is with the whole world, especially the US.
“Now we are aware of that.”
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