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Beijing Follies
It’s a tough life being a journalist reporting for fearless
fRoots. But David Hutcheon’s on board for the sweeney
to Beijing to cover Sa Dingding’s latest album launch,
eat giant aquatic centipede and buy panda hats.
bought in the Forbidden City and wonder-
F
riday nights in Beijing are infa- I blame the editor: when the half-
mous for their traffic jams: you Mongolian, half-Han electro-folk star was ing if we will make the 7.30pm cocktail
can stand around a bitterly cold launched in Europe, he was one of the few reception. Therein lies the mentality of a
Tiananmen Square for hours to take notice. In the wake of her first journalist on a junket. If there is free drink
waiting for a taxi, and when you western feature, in fR293 in 2007, she won at the other end of the road, we’ll happily
give in to the hustler offering the use of a BBC Radio 3 Award For World Music, commandeer private transport and pay
his own car for what he thinks is an exor- played Womad, irritated some who dis- top dollar. At 7.29 we arrive back at our
bitant price, you are still unlikely to get agreed with her on Tibet and made the hotel, ready to slake our thirsts, only to
very far. This specific Friday night, howev- front cover of The Sunday Times Culture learn the venue is dry and that ‘cocktails’
er, belongs to Sa Dingding, and the 26- magazine. When Universal, her record had miraculously become ‘tea’. Grumbling
year-old, who came from nowhere at a label, decided it wanted a huge turnout about the discomfort and inconvenience
rate of knots and intends to stick around for the showcase to present Dingding 2.0, we have just been through, the embedded
in the fast lane, is launching her new the call went out for the cream of the hacks raid complimentary mini-bars, climb
album, Harmony. It might sound like a West’s media. aboard a bus and head to the show.
hairspray but it is really rather special.
Jonathan Ross must have been busy, The Reignwood Theatre gives the
for they got me – the person who inter- impression of being an old art-deco British
viewed her for fRoots. However, having cinema only slightly refurbished in the
written about her for every publication past century. Tonight it holds approxi-
that I could, I wasn’t particularly game. I mately 600, most of whom are media
sneered when Wrasse Records asked if I (wearing ‘Media’ stickers), competition
would go. “You want me to fly 5,000 winners (‘Guests’) or record company
miles, watch a one-hour show and grab a employees (‘Umgi’). There were also sup-
20-minute interview, then fly back, 46 posed to be fans, too, but 200 of those
hours after arriving in China?” That’s were locked out when the theatre staff
about the size of it, they said, but we’ll decided it was overcrowded.
throw in the Forbidden City, the Great
Wall and some shopping on your time off.
The thought of stocking up on cheap noo-
young crowd of Beijing trend-
dles broke my resolve.
setters, who appear more inter-
And so there I was, along with Ian T
he lights go down to a smatter-
ing of applause from the
ested in taking pictures of each
Ashbridge from Wrasse, a London-based other’s asymmetrical haircuts on their
Swiss journalist and, from the BBC, Sian phones than watching the video for Ha
Davies and Mark Cooper (the man Ha Li Li, in which Dingding grows antlers,
who made Tinariwen Uncut’s cavorts with butterflies and turns into a
album of 2009), stuck taxi- waterfall. The new album is all about har-
less in central Beijing, mony with nature, you see, so there is a
wearing a panda- message in the heavy symbolism.
hat souvenir
The star appears on stage banging a
large drum for the start of the same song,
wearing a multicoloured waistcoat and
skirt. She screams, the sound cuts, she
keeps singing but finally realises some-
thing has gone wrong and stares at the
audience. We stare back. Silence. Staring.
It could happen to anybody. You mean
I’ve flown 5,000 miles for a gig that lasted
Photo: Cathia Randrianarivo
30 seconds?
Take two goes without a hitch, howev-
er. The main point of interest is that
Dingding has scaled back on the extrava-
gant costumes that were a feature of her
first British dates. The kung fu monks have
been replaced by hunters from Yunnan,
the OTT dresses forgotten (except for a
brief affair involving something that makes
her look like Queen of the Snowgeese),
and the focus is now on her and her songs.
This is undoubtedly a good thing, for
Harmony is – apologies – a great leap for-
ward from Alive. While in London in 2008,
she hooked up with producer Marius De
Vries (U2, Madonna and Björk being
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