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Qin Siyuan, an artist of half Chinese descent, has collected hundreds of Beijing sounds over the years, including shouting, loudspeakers, police whistles, cars and horses... These voices are records of life in different periods in beijing, connecting the past and feelings. The city is advancing by leaps and bounds, and the sound is hopeful, but people will always be bound by some echoes from the bottom of their hearts.
Hear four o'clock with fireworks
The time I went to Zhangjiakou to record the pigeon whistle, it was a sunny day.
At 4:30 a.m., Qin Siyuan got up, packed up, put on the recording equipment, drove north, and went straight to the home of Hou Chunlin, the producer of the pigeon whistle.
In the cold spring, Qin Siyuan wrapped himself in a storm jacket and climbed onto the roof of the Hou family—a spacious and unobstructed place suitable for recording. He placed the two tape recorders separately and held up a microphone a meter long in his hand to the sky. A dozen pigeons with whistles rose in the air, and the wind swept through the whistle holes, making a crisp and bright sound.
The pigeon whistle, also known as the pigeon bell, is made of bamboo, reeds, gourds and other materials. Although it is called "whistle", the shape is much more elaborate than that of ordinary whistles. According to the different shapes, it is mainly divided into four categories: gourds, joint tubes, star rows, and star eyes. Regardless of the type, the wearing method is the same: the whistle nose is inserted into the gap in the tail wing of the pigeon, and the lead wire is fastened underneath, and no matter how fast the pigeon flies, it will not loosen.
Bean juice scorch circle bell and drum tower, blue sky white cloud pigeon whistle, old Beijing people love to raise pigeons, but also love to listen to this pigeon whistle. Nowadays, there are few conditions for raising pigeons, and the pigeon whistle has also declined, but the memory will not fade easily. Regarding the film and television dramas in the old Beijing, the pigeon whistle is indispensable. Like many people, Qin Siyuan believes that there is no second voice that can better represent old Beijing.
Collecting pigeon whistles is Qin Siyuan's long-cherished wish since he began to collect beijing sounds. Shouts, ringers, whistles, over the course of a few years, he collected more than a hundred voices, many of which had disappeared or were about to disappear from the city. They will all enter Qin Siyuan's "Split Sound" Sound Art Museum.
Figure | Qin Siyuan at work
Qin Siyuan's association with the voice of old Beijing was in 2013.
That year, Beijing's first Hutong Museum was located at No. 24 Shijia Hutong. This courtyard was originally the residence of the famous Republic of China writers Ling Shuhua and Chen Xiying. In the 1940s, Ling Chen and his wife traveled to The United Kingdom, and Chen Xiaoying, an only daughter of 15 years old, also went with her parents. Since then, Chen Xiaoying has studied and worked in Britain, and has married the famous sinologist Qin Nairui, and the son of the two is Qin Siyuan.
Qin Siyuan was born in the United Kingdom in 1971 and returned to Beijing with his parents for three years at the age of 8. When he was studying Chinese and civilization at the University of London, he came to Beijing again as an exchange student. At a time when underground music was growing barbarically, Qin Siyuan and his friends formed a rock band, served as the lead singer, and usually rented a courtyard in the hutong, looking at the ancient city through the gap between pioneers and traditions. Perhaps since then, the theme of "sound" has planted seeds in his heart.
In 2002, Qin Siyuan officially settled in Beijing to engage in contemporary art, but he could not return to his old home. The yard, which lost its owner, was used as a public property in the 1960s and 1970s, and later, Chen Xiaoying transferred the property rights to the state. Its strategic location and rich cultural heritage have made it chosen as a museum to present the history of Beijing's hutongs.
Hu Xinyu, the museum's chief curator, found Qin Siyuan. He wanted to know how Ling Shuhua and his family lived here, and there was a basis for recovery.
In Shijia Hutong, Hu Xinyu met Qin Siyuan. His face was thin and well-defined, and he knew at a glance that he had Western ancestry, but he spoke pure Mandarin. The two of them strolled in the spacious courtyard, looking at the hall where his grandmother had hosted Tagore, Qi Baishi, Xu Zhimo and many other cultural figures, and the room where his mother lived when she was young, Qin Siyuan told Hu Xinyu that he should set aside a space here to contain the sound of the hutong.
He found scholars and screenwriters who were familiar with the life of old Beijing, and a collector who could make more than a hundred kinds of shouting sounds, and recorded the shouts of tourists selling sugar gourds, buns, casseroles, apricots, cherries, etc., the sound of ringers such as foot bells, sugar gongs, tiger braces, and the bells of the old Beijing camel caravan. Qin Siyuan found that although these voices were still on stage at the temple fair and occasionally invited to be displayed by the TV station, they were not completely annihilated, but they had never been specially recorded and sorted out in this way.
Figure |" Alley Sounds" exhibition room
Shijia Hutong Museum has one more "Hutong Sound", in this exhibition room of less than 10 square meters, the audience puts on headphones, you can enter the four hours of old Beijing and fireworks. It is a courtyard where jokes and jokes were once in the courtyard, forming an interesting supplement and contrast, reflecting Qin Siyuan's point of view: traditional culture is not only in the elegant intention of scholars such as qinqi calligraphy and painting, but also in the lively and vivid city.
Explore the relationship between people and the city
In the bell alley at the foot of the Drum Tower, 57-year-old collector Aaron is checking his treasures one by one: the bell of the rickshaw, the drum of the antique, the head shaver's head...
Aaron is an authentic Beijinger, who has lived in the old city for generations and has not moved his nest for more than three hundred years. Xu is because of this bloodline, Aaron has been good since childhood. At the age of 12, he exchanged two apples for a copper coin from his classmates.
Contact loudspeakers were made in the 1980s. In the "ghost market" where antiques are bought and sold, Aaron finds a metal drum. Bystanders told him that this was used by antique dealers in the streets and alleys of old Beijing. With a knock with a metal stick, the drum sounded, and the people in the door of the house knew that the person who collected the antiques was coming. Aaron found it interesting, so he bought it and began his career collecting various loudspeakers.
Pictured | Aaron and his collection of loudspeakers
After receiving more objects, Aaron became interested in the shouting of the vendors carrying the burden in old Beijing. His parents used to be businessmen and were familiar with these sounds: the tone of selling sugar gourds and selling sour plum soup was different, and the cries of rouge gouache and needles and threads even had a special name: Call lady. Aaron and his parents learned a lot of shouting and selling, and then looked around for advice from the old people in the alley. He has a good memory, a bright voice, and learns to look good when he listens to others sing twice.
The shouting sound recorded by Aaron for the Shijia Hutong Museum has a long Beijing accent, exuding a bright and festive energy, and it is known to be the voice of Beijing City alone.
Every city has its own voice, and as early as 2005, Qin Siyuan realized this.
At that time, Qin Siyuan was working at the British Embassy in China and was responsible for cultural affairs. He curated a project called "Urban Voice", inviting a number of British artists to China to create according to the sound environment of the city. In Beijing, one of the artists, Peter Cusack, did a call for it over the radio: Your Favorite Beijing Voice.
The audience's enthusiasm for participation exceeded expectations, and the answers were diverse. From the sound of taxis ringing watches to the bells of the telegraph building and the sound of dates, the artists searched for and restored them one by one. Later, the project extended to Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, and the sound became an invisible dimension, reflecting the different lives and temperaments of these cities.
When invited to serve as a consultant for the Shijia Hutong Museum, Qin Siyuan revisited the voices recorded in 2005. To his surprise, they came alive as ever, bringing him back to the scene he was recording. "Sound and human memory are tied together, like a time machine, can transfer people to another era, feel the emotions of many years ago." 」 So, he decided to do "hutong sounds".
After the "Hutong Sound" was completed, Qin Siyuan also wanted to continue to record more interesting sounds in Beijing, including the sounds of the moment. He learned that Peter Cusack had been working on a project called "Your Favourite London Sounds" for more than 30 years, and that he had an album of the same name that contained the sounds of the city that Londoners love: the sound of trams passing by, shopping at convenience stores, the sound of beer pouring into ice and splashing foam.
Qin Siyuan believes that Beijing, which is as old and charming as London, should also have such a sound portrait. But he is not a nostalgic person, collecting sounds, hoping to leave a record of the times, use them as a medium, and evoke the feelings of the audience, such as "about memory, about emotion, history, about the relationship between people and the city", just as he left England for many years and still can't forget the heavy prompt "Mind the gap" when he arrived at the London Underground.
The bells of the bell tower, the sound of the old man throwing the whip in the park, the sound of shaking empty bamboo, the sound of the ice cracking of the Forbidden City, the most delicate life texture of the city and the times, are in these often unnoticed sounds.
The journey to find sound is not smooth, especially those that are disappearing. In the past, the vast majority of the goodsmen who had been sold along the street were ancient, and Qin Siyuan had sporadically found them in his old age, and his voice was old and could not restore the crisp brightness of the time. As for the camel caravan, they could not enter the city for a long time, so Qin Siyuan had to go to a desert near Beijing to find camels.
In order to record the pigeon whistle, Qin Siyuan looked for nearly two years. In 2018, he got acquainted with Zhang Baotong, a famous pigeon whistle producer, and went to visit with great interest, but found that the Zhang family was in a downtown area and could not record at all. Zhang Baotong introduced Qin Siyuan to the Black Bridge Village where his apprentice was located and tried to record once, but the effect was not ideal. When Qin Siyuan went again, he found that Heiqiao Village had been demolished. After several tossing and turning, Qin Siyuan finally arrived at Zhangjiakou and recorded the pigeon whistle at the home of another apprentice of Zhang Baotong, Hou Chunlin.
Picture | pigeon whistle
Qin Siyuan once solicited the voices of the public on the Internet, but few responded. In the process of finding sound, he seems to be engaged in a scramble, a race against the rapid process of urbanization, a race against the continuous demise of tradition, and a race against the increasingly numb senses of urbanites, trying to leave some mark on more sounds before they are annihilated.
Sound nourishes the city
The real beauty of life is difficult to copy and simulate, and once it disappears, it is difficult to appear. Sound, that's it.
People are accustomed to visually observing the city, and video, pictures and other video records are only simple visual narratives, few people stop and listen quietly, what remains in their minds is the roar of cars, noisy markets, noisy construction sites, and the sound characteristics of a city are gradually passing away.
Qin Siyuan wanted to keep the real voice he had. In 2018, he met a collaborator who was willing to provide a venue for him to build a "sound" museum. The sounds that had been stored only on his computer finally had a place to live.
Open in May this year, "Split Sounds" includes a variety of sounds: natural, singing, musical instruments, etc., and will also explore the principles and forms of sound in the form of interactive games. The sound of old Beijing is a unique exhibition hall, and more than 100 kinds of sounds will be combined with visual, physical and other forms to present the past of this ancient capital.
The larger, richer sound museum, though, is the city itself. Usually, Qin Siyuan likes to go to the Temple of Heaven Park, which is lively all year round: people sing Peking Opera, pull erhu, throw whips, and are full of life, and he is happy when he hears it.
Sound is part of the environment and the outward manifestation of life. In the process of searching for sound for many years, Qin Siyuan has been thinking: What kind of sound environment should we live in, and what kind of city can nourish people?
In a place like temple of heaven park, Qin Siyuan found part of the answer. When doing "Urban Voice", he brought British artists here. He felt that only in this way could he know what life in China's city was like. The sounds of playing made him happy, "you can feel the happiness and freedom of man." ”
Later, singing was banned for "disturbing the people". The ticket holders had to go to the more remote Longtan Lake Park. Qin Siyuan rushed to Longtan Lake and recorded the sound of Jinghu, the sound of three strings and the sound of singing. Also expelled were the street performers who used to be seen from time to time. Qin Siyuan worries that after more and more voices gradually disappear, the richness of life will weaken and civilization will lose its color. "Civilization is very complex, not to say that it is quiet and civilized."
Hu Xinyu rented a courtyard in Zhonglao Hutong as an office space. The winter sun fills the yard, and the branches with fallen leaves are distinct, as if they were still the same as in the old days. But outside the courtyard, the alley is quiet, and after years of relocation and transformation, the sound of the previous hot alley has disappeared. The American writer Michael Meier documents a 2005 beijing hutong in which "grandmothers pushed a jingle bell cart filled with vegetables bought from the Tiantao Market." The all-black 'flying pigeon' bike constantly rings its bell, reminding people to get out of the way. A peddler was peddling around with a stack of newspapers, and a mynah in a birdcage on the side of the road immediately comically imitated his shouting", such an ordinary alley strange sound is now difficult to hear again.
"Why people like hutongs, because it's cute, and its scale is the scale of people," Hu said. Walking in an alley that is only a few meters wide, you can see the eaves when you look up, and you can reach out and touch the treetops. Those simple and kind shouts, laughter, and even intimate neighborhood relations can only grow out on such a scale of life.
Modernization has inflated cities and towered towering buildings, but the scale of people's bodies has not changed, and they are still the same as for thousands of years, and they will instinctively approach the standard of life that suits them. Qin Siyuan released a video of looking for the old voice of Beijing, many foreigners also like it, and will leave a message "from the heart to feel kind." In fact, what makes them feel intimate is the once cordial and pleasant life behind those voices.
How can cities be habitable and nourishing? Qin Siyuan and Hu Xinyu invariably mentioned one foundation: freedom. "With freedom, people will be creative", and the voice and cultural expression of public space have more possibilities; Hu Xinyu believes that people should be allowed to "choose their own way of life independently". People who like hutongs can live in hutongs, rather than being forcibly relocated, and people can place themselves in their favorite living scales and spaces.
Zhang Baotong, a famous pigeon whistle maker, still lives in a bungalow on Xuanwumen West Street. In order to facilitate the raising of pigeons, he has refused to move into the apartment. Twice a day, the pigeons in the loft wait for their owners to come and release themselves.
Pictured| a pigeon raised by Zhang Baotong
At 4 o'clock in the winter afternoon, it was nearly dusk, and the sky was as brittle as glass. Zhang Baotong climbed onto the roof, opened the pigeon cage, and more than a dozen pigeons flapped their wings, like huge magnolia flowers, circling straight up. One of them wore a pigeon whistle, and when it flew, the whistle sounded, penetrating the noisy car noise around it, which was particularly clear and long.
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Written by | Rowland
Edit | Zhang Xinming