It is becoming increasingly vital that Western people familiarize themselves with the culture of China. Recently, fears of China’s booming economic and military growth have colored much American media coverage of the world’s most populous nation, and the American public seems to view China with a growing sense of apprehension. While it is true that China has become an economic and military powerhouse with a less-than-stellar record regarding human rights, viewing China as a faceless threat rather than a culturally diverse and fascinating nation might allow irrational fear to shape our attitudes and foreign policies. In the interest of finding common ground with the Chinese people, we should seek out books that provide relatively unbiased accounts of those people’s lives.

Among those authors whose works describe life in modern China in a straightforward, humanizing way is Stephen Jones, a British ethnomusicologist who writes about life in northern Chinese villages in a style accessible to all readers of English. Jones gathers material for his writings by going to villages in northern China, interviewing musicians in the villages, learning to play their instruments and making recordings of musical events. Recently, Jones has published the books Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions (1997), Plucking the Winds: Lives of Village Musicians in Old and New China (2004) and Ritual and Music of North China: Shawm Bands in Shanxi (2007). His writings provide an intimate view into the lives of these musicians and into the social, economic and religious structures of the villages in which they work.

Readers can easily see the respect and fondness Jones has for the musicians with which he works as he describes how today’s musicians scraped by during the difficult years of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and how they find means of making a living in the capitalist madhouse of modern China. He colorfully describes their skillful musicianship, the competition among musicians for work, and the ways that musicians combine traditional and popular music in their performances. While Jones does display some anti pop music bias, he nonetheless acknowledges the importance of pop music as a means of retaining the relevance of traditional instrumental ensembles in north China.

Jones’ writing also provides fascinating descriptions of traditional Chinese rituals, such as funerals, temple meetings and weddings. These descriptions allow the reader to see how people observe emotionally charged occasions in rural China, demonstrating both the colorful nature of traditional Chinese ritual and the universal need for a social means of dealing with grief and celebrating special occasions. The empathy the reader feels for the mourners and celebrants after reading Jones’ description of these events engenders a sense of shared humanity that makes the perception of China as an unalloyed threat untenable.

One particularly valuable aspect of Jones’ writing is his insight into how political events have actually affected traditional practices in Chinese villages. While most Western scholars have written as if the Cultural Revolution put a complete stop to all traditional forms of religious ritual and music, Jones has found in his fieldwork that, while some musicians and ritual experts did stop performing and others joined state-funded arts troupes to produce politically correct music, others managed to continue performing traditional rituals throughout the difficulties of the twentieth century. This demonstrates that the Communist party was neither entirely unified in its anti-superstition stance nor was the central government powerful enough to enforce its will on all of Chinese society. Clearly, China is not a monolithic entity under the sway of the Chinese Communist Party; in fact, many cultural and even political activities can go on without interference from Beijing officials.

I strongly recommend Jones’ books to any reader interested in China, and particularly to anyone with an interest in music. His writing gives us a glimpse into lives generally overlooked by Western authors and almost never seen by Western tourists. These works can open our eyes to Chinese life away from the bustle of Shanghai and Shenzhen and the madness of Olympic-crazy Beijing, and demonstrate the resourcefulness, adaptability and humanity of village musicians in northern China.

Sources:

Jones, Stephen. Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.

Jones, Stephen. Plucking the Winds: Lives of Village Musicians in Old and New China. Chime Studies in East Asian Music, Vol. 2. Leiden, The Netherlands: CHIME, 2004.

Jones, Stephen. Ritual and Music of North China: Shawm Bands in Shanxi. SOAS Musicology Series. Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2007.