TheStar.com - Divine adventure
On the road with By Divine Right in rural China
In the land of Bethune, it's cool to be Canadian
JON CAMPBELL
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Jan. 3, 2004. 01:00 AM
SHIJIAZHUANG, CHINAThings got strange for Toronto rock band By Divine Right on their third night in China. Promoter, guide and handler Andy Zha came to the table with a middle-aged balding man smiling the smile of a star-struck fan.
"This is Mr. Xu," he said, not bothering to introduce the man's pistol-packing bodyguard. "He's one of the province's highest-ranking military officials. He wants to drink with you."
The five-piece band and their sound man were midway through a dinner last month spanning the international gourmet spectrum from pig ears to fruit pizza in Shijiazhuang, the fog- and smog-filled capital of Hebei province, three hours southwest of Beijing, and the site of BDR's first four shows of a national tour. The band was learning what all foreigners in China eventually learn: Chinese people love to drink with their foreign guests. They were also learning what all Canadians in China eventually learn: It's cool to be Canuck in the country where Dr. Norman Bethune is still considered a national hero and even more so in Shijiazhuang, the good doctor's final resting place.
The venue was Jin Shui An, the International Holiday Club, a new club with all the trimmings: computerized disco lights, a cabaret worthy of a Vegas venue, a sizeable population of nouveau-riche Chinese men toting pleather man-purses and a phalanx of tight-skirted waitresses.
Mr. Xu, "The General," as he came to be known, was blown away by the sight of seven foreigners, but he was particularly taken with guitarist/vocalist Colleen Hixenbaugh. Together they downed beers and waltzed across the club floor to the techno tunes pumping from the stereo.
"I like to think I saved some lives that night," said Hixenbaugh. At the very least, she put The General in a good mood; you couldn't wipe the smile off his face. He sent packs of cigarettes to our table "Zhonghua," our host told us. "The best in China." After that, The General would stumble over to the band's table every few minutes to raise his glass.
"Whenever I see the leaves turn red," he would say, "I think of Canada." A few minutes later, he'd return, a little lighter in his step. "I think of Canada," he would say, once again raising his glass, "whenever I see the leaves turn red."
By Divine Right has been playing, in various forms, since 1989, though the sole remaining original member is lead singer/guitarist Jose Contreras. The band has toured with Tragically Hip and currently, the single "Soul Explosion," from their fourth album, Good Morning Beautiful, is getting radio play.
Originally contacted by U.K. promoter Sonic Blue, By Divine Right wound up on a China tour after Sonic Blue's plans fell through. The Canadian embassy connected the band with Shijiazhuang-based promoters Huihang, who had led Canadian pop trio Wide Mouth Mason on a Chinese tour last year. The band received the Ministry of Culture's seal of approval for a seven-city jaunt, but that number was eventually reduced to four, with the band's first week in China spent in Shijiazhuang.
With no amplifiers and an electronic drum pad, Jin Shui An was, on the eve of the band's first scheduled performance there, unprepared for rock. So instead of playing their first show, the band spent the evening with The General watching a solo saxophonist perform Kenny G tunes, dancing girls in frilly neon outfits parading to techno remixes of pop music local and foreign, and a stream of beautiful women playing traditional Chinese instruments.
"My students," explained a man we called Sun, a smarmy, oft-drunk professor of music who joined the entourage in the guise of helping with issues of sound and equipment each time a pair of beautiful Chinese instrumentalists came on stage.
Five days, 10 banquet meals, several bottles of baijiu (grain alcohol) and no shows into their China trip, the band was getting antsy.
"They've been wining and dining us for the better part of a week," said drummer John Hall. "There's only so much hospitality I can take!"
"We haven't given these people the one thing we came here to give them," lamented guitarist/vocalist Brian Borchardt. "I feel kind of bad."
But it wasn't just guilt that was stressing them out. They had no idea how their high-energy live show would go over with a Chinese audience. They say their fourth CD, Good Morning Beautiful, released in China in March, is so polished that people who have heard it might be freaked out by their intense live set, which features fun-filled sludge rock, audience participation and a frenzy of feedback. In particular, they worry about the promoters, who have been treating them like kings without having heard anything beyond the album.
The press conference didn't allay their fears either: Most questions focused on trying to understand the band's sound.
"What kind of rock is it?" asked one soft-voiced woman as uncomfortable with uttering her words as the band was to hear them. "Is it like Scandinavian death metal?"
But there was salvation of a sort in the form of a couple from X Magazine, the country's foremost rock mag. "I like a lot of Canadian rock, like Neil Young and Bryan Adams. I love Bryan Adams!" said the female reporter, who, it was later revealed, was toting a Moffats wallet. "We met the Moffats in Shanghai. I love the guitarist!"
Sound checks are often stress-filled exercises in chaos, but the problems seemed to be amplified on the afternoon of the band's first gig. Sound man Joe Dunphy had to persuade a gaggle of alleged helpers who were doing everything in their power to not do anything to help move the sound board out from its inaccessible hovel and into the main room. It was soon revealed that one of the main spokespeople for the sound crew, whose breath stank of day-old alcohol, was the drummer from the house band and unrelated to the sound crew. After an hour of back and forth, Dunphy finally got to work, while eight pairs of eyes, few of which seemed to match with a pair of helpful hands, watched him from nearby.
Meanwhile, rented equipment arrived sporadically, and the band, navigating the maze that the stage had become thanks to the presence of upwards of a dozen onlookers, scrambled to set things up and find power outlets and converters.
At one point, while Dunphy was trying to track down various pieces of equipment, and his translator, Andy, struggled with terms like "graphic equalizer," a deep and loud voice shouted across the room with the weight of an important question: "ANDY!" It was Professor Sun, and the room quickly quieted down to hear his question. Beside him, lead singer/guitarist Jose Contreras was wearing a mischievous grin. "What's a `party animal?'" shouted the professor.
And so went By Divine Right's first sound check in China. "I figured it would be crazy," said Borchardt. "But not this crazy."
Despite the initial chaos, the band's first show was an unmitigated success. A pair of erhu (a two-stringed Chinese fiddle) players joined the band for two songs, one By Divine Right number, and "Cotton Eye Joe"; the dancing girls from the cabaret show joined the band on stage, and eventually, so did members of the audience.
It became obvious that some elements of rock are common across cultures.
"When we do `Soul Explosion' back home," said Contreras, "we invite people to come up and dance. It looked pretty much the same here."
Some things, however, are solely local: At the end of the band's set, a middle-aged fan came bumbling up on stage with a beer in his hand. He bit the cap off, spat it out and proceeded to chug it to show his admiration.
"I've never seen anything like that before," said Hall. "But that's rock 'n' roll."
Three more shows in two Shijiazhuang theatres followed their club debut, and the band quickly found that their pre-gig worries were unnecessary: The audience had just as much fun as the band. Halfway through a show at a theatre that was somewhere between relic of and tribute to a 1950s political hall, a heavily made-up 11-year-old girl took to the stage and, after dancing to a BDR number, did a karaoke version of Taiwanese pop star Sandy Lam's "Weathered The Cold Wind For You."
Fans kept back by security guards held their ground in front of the orchestra pit to dance, and occasionally ventured on stage to hand the musicians flowers, give them a hug, or pose for a photo. Guards got into the action as well, as several of them alternated between holding the line and snapping shots.
Shijiazhuang, with its odour of industrialization and air full of the remnants of buildings perpetually being demolished and rebuilt, is not the kind of town to spend a week in, and after the last show, everyone was itching to move on. But getting out of town proved to be harder than expected.
It seemed simple enough: After the band's last show, another in a string of banquets would see a host of promoters, sponsors, theatre owners and assorted folk cheering and overfeeding the band. After dinner, a bus would take them to Zhengzhou, the site of a gig the following day.
The promoters knew Shijiazhuang's infamous fog might close the highway to Zhengzhou so they'd formulated a plan: Dunphy and this reporter, the grizzliest and, presumably, scariest-looking of the bunch, would explain to the highway patrol that it was of utmost importance to both of our nations that the bus get through. The argument was that with nobody else being allowed on the highway, it would be a safe, slow, ride. The flipside that there was, perhaps, a reason the authorities had closed the road wasn't discussed.
At 12:30 a.m. we hit the road in fog so thick, we wished for pea soup. We were walled in. It took two bus drivers and three promoters all lifetime residents of Shijiazhuang several minutes to get a reasonable guess as to where we were at any given time. Predictably, the highway was closed and The Plan didn't work. In and out of brief bouts of sleep, the committee discussions on our whereabouts and chances of moving on could be overheard as we circled the city deep into the night, ending up at the train station for the second time at 4 a.m., where it was evident the train was the only way out of town. In the wee hours of morning, the band spread its 22 pieces of gear in the alley behind the train station and prepared to hop aboard.
From Zhengzhou, the band headed to Wuhan and Hangzhou for a total of eight shows in four cities over 17 days. While all agree the band's China shows were a success it's hard to argue with dancing fans aged 5 to 70, high-energy post-show autograph sessions, and gift-bearing fans nobody had settled into a sense of normalcy. Daily banquet dinners and lunches, 2,000-seat theatre shows and screaming fans are not everyday occurrences for the band back home.
"I feel like those Playboy bunnies that were helicoptered in to the jungle base camp in Apocalypse Now," said Contreras. It is a fitting image for this group of five rockers out of their element, in parts of China few people, Chinese or foreign, ever see. But each member of By Divine Right talked about not only coming back, but also about their role in helping to clear the path for other bands to come through China.
"The title track on the upcoming album, Sweet Confusion, is about the highs and lows of touring the sweet and the confusion," explained Dylan Hudecki. "The bus ride (out of Shijiazhuang) was definitely the confusion. But what gets you through is the little kids bouncing up and down to their first rock show, and the older guys nodding their head along to their first rock show. And, hey, we're in China!"