01 "I've been singing from 1993 until yesterday"
↑It would feel weird if I didn't sing for a day or two
"I've been singing from 1993 until yesterday," Jiang Zhimin said: "If I don't sing for a day or two, I feel weird."
In college, Jiang Zhimin showed great musical talent, sweeping the overall championship of the Campus Singers Competition in ethnic, American and popular songs for four consecutive years. "It's like there's a switch, and it's flipped over for popular, and then flipped over for ethnic, and then flipped over for Americana." He made the gesture of flipping the switch, figuratively speaking.
Jiang Zhimin
Founder and owner of Lotus House Music Bar in Chengdu; longest working bar singer in Chengdu, and now on stage every day; China's top male singer in terms of number of audiophile albums and total sales.
After graduating in 1995, Jiang Zhimin joined a company in Longquanyi. He had to commute between the outskirts of the city for a part-time residency. Each day, he would hitchhike to Xinhua Park, ride his own bike back to Sichuan University, work out at the gym for an hour, leave the house at 8 o'clock sharp, eat a bowl of three-tael omelette noodles with three eggs, and then run to the first show at 9:30 pm. Usually he had to run five shows a night, and sang at almost all of the "big venues" in Chengdu at the time - Focus, Roaring Lion, Fengxing, Oriental Charm, and Hongfan Tribe ...... - until the early hours of the morning. The dormitory of Yang Fei, who graduated a year after him, once became a stronghold for him. Busy, stressful, no place to live, serious sleep deprivation. He held on to this life for three years before he finally quit his job and became a resident singer for good.
Then Jiang Zhimin had long hair and a strong body. "I was more 'martial' when I was young," he says, "and when I ran into impolite guests on stage, I had only one state of mind: 'fight'. In the seven years I ran the show, I probably averaged three fights a year." But he is also one of the most dedicated: not only is he a good singer, but he often takes the initiative to go to the computer city to find CDs and VCDs to update the song library; he is a righteous person, and he also knows how to have a good relationship with the boss. Some venues are difficult to operate, and occasionally owed a month's salary, he will simply wave his hand, do not want. It may be because of this bold, in the age of twenty-something, people will call him "old Jiang".
One day in 2000, at the age of 27, Jiang Zhimin suddenly realized that he had lost his voice.
While it was a shock, it was a wake-up call for him. He realized that he could no longer play the field. It so happened that a friend said a bar behind Fairview Gardens was going to be transferred, so he took a stake as an actor-shareholder. It was September 2000, and the bar was called Pretty Friends. Although he only worked in the bar for half a year, it was the beginning of Jiang Zhimin's career as a bar owner. In the years that followed, he was involved in the management of several bars before he finally came across a courtyard in Jinli in 2004, which became the Lotus Residence.
02
Lotus in Jinli
On December 16, 2004, Lotus House opened in Jinli.
The name "Lotus" was originally chosen because it is a very neutral and peaceful name that is easy to remember. And most importantly, the feng shui master had a look at it. Later, on reflection, this name is still very interesting. Because the lotus flower in ancient Chinese culture occupies a very important position. And the lotus flower blooms in Jinli, become the highlight of promoting the nightlife in Jinli, quite a bit of '锦上添花'." Jiang Zhimin said.
Jiang and his partner, Liu Shaobo, completed the initial design of Lotus. Lotus started out as a lounge bar, and after a few months it was adapted to its current format of live performances of popular songs. Later, Wang Zhengliang and Zhao Qin joined the band, along with Jiang Zhimin, Old Demon and Yang Fei, to support the performances at the Lotus residence, and also took on the responsibility of selecting singers for Lotus.
In 2004, a major event took place in China's entertainment industry: Hunan Satellite Television launched China's first talent show, "Supergirl," which opened the era of variety shows in China. At that time, Jiang Zhimin probably would not have expected that more than a decade later he could already say with confidence: "The top ten or winners of many large domestic competitions, 'Lotus' out of at least 50 percent of the Chengdu region."
In 2006, Tan Weiwei was runner-up in the "Super Girls' Voice"; in 2007, Wang Zhengliang took part in the "Happy Men's Voice", and in 2014, he was on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala with the song "Where has the time gone"; in 2009, he was the first runner-up in the "Happy Women's Voice". In 2009, Yu Kewei won the fourth place in the national "Happy Female Voice"; in 2011, Yu Jiali won the ninth place in the national "Happy Female Voice". In addition, "flower flower" of the generation of Yue, "China's good song" of Liu Runjie, etc., China's good voice of the Deng drum, Li Wenhao, etc., were "Lotus" a member.
These singers who went out in the talent show will take the time to return to Lotus every year. "Because this side is his home, his starting point." Jiang Zhimin said.
Just a day before the interview, Jiang Zhimin had just received an offer from a famous talent show but did not reply. "I have my own team and circle of life to fall in, and a lot of right friends, do not want to take the risk." He said.
03Two Lhasa
In 1996, Jiang Zhimin happened to read a book called Yu Chunshun's Solitary Trekking in Tibet. The Shanghai native's legendary experience of walking through Tibet on several occasions got him excited, and finally in April 1998, Jiang Zhimin embarked on a solo journey to Lhasa.
He chose to ride a bicycle. He rode a green Phoenix bike that couldn't change gears and cost him two hundred and eighty dollars. In those days, there were no tips to be found on the Internet. He asked Gui Feng, who had ridden to Lhasa in 70 days in 1987, for advice. In Jiang's eyes, Gui Feng is "the real godfather of Chengdu's bar industry," and the PUB Beer Hall he founded in the late 1980s can be called the Whampoa Military Academy of Chengdu's bar industry; the half-dozen beer halls that followed rewrote the history of Chengdu's bars.
Jiang Zhimin, a very righteous brother, as a college alumnus and younger brother and sworn brother and partner of me, and he has more than 20 years of uninterrupted friendship and all kinds of love. He is very helpful and is mostly surrounded by various brothers who are taken care of by him. He and I were both campus singers when we were in school, and he always sang like nobody's business, whether it was in the cafeteria, the bathhouse, downstairs in the girls' dormitory or on the track late at night....... It got the admiring stares of the female students and the hateful looks of the male students, and I was one of the hated ones... ...Later, after getting to know each other, I realized that this nasty person was actually quite good, and very good! That friendship has continued to this day, and will surely be for life as well.
Unfortunately, Jiang Zhimin's first trip to Lhasa ended abruptly in Mangkang due to lack of preparation.
After leaving his "beautiful friend" in March 2001, Jiang Zhimin decided to complete his unfinished journey to Lhasa. This time, he asked Yang Fei, the two prepared for a month, each spent 984 yuan to buy two Jiante's basic mountain bike, they installed their own racks. They were followed by a flag, and at each post office, they asked staff to put a local postmark on it.
After nearly a month of riding, they finally arrived in Mozhu Gongka. Riding on the rare flat road, they saw spotted geese and yellow ducks in the river, countless birds flying over the river, new and wonderful. Then they saw the top of the Potala Palace from afar, obviously still 20 to 30 kilometers away, but clear as day.
The moment they arrived at the Potala Palace, Jiang Zhimin immediately dialed Guifeng's phone. The caller asked him, "Are you guys feeling a little lost?" Jiang Zhimin was shocked, "How do you know!"
"Because he had the same experience and understands the hardship very well," Jiang Zhimin said, "It's like climbing a mountain, when you get to the top it means you have to turn back because you don't have anywhere else to climb. When we reached the Potala Palace, the whole journey of fatigue and joy rested, and it was time to put an end to this journey."
The two trips to Lhasa touched Jiang Zhimin greatly. He saw how small and isolated people are in front of nature. When he returned to Chengdu, he was less calculating about many things. "I can't talk about this kind of thing, and you can't feel it completely", he says, "You have to walk it yourself to get it. Walking probably doesn't feel as much now, because there are so many traveling companions you can meet along the whole path."
Six months later, Guifeng passed away in a car accident.
04Human Brain Hard Drive
Before I met Jiang Zhimin, I mistakenly thought he was proud and unapproachable, given his experience and previous impressions from afar; but unexpectedly, he was serious but talkative, and almost one of the most cooperative and willing interviewees I've ever met. So even though his phone was ringing off the hook during the two conversations, which added up to nearly four hours, with people he was working with, friends of friends, or employees who wanted to borrow money, each time he hung up, his phone was ringing off the hook. But every time the phone hung up, he was always able to pick up where he left off and continue as if nothing had happened, answering all the questions he was asked and answering them with great patience and care. When I was mesmerized, he could always remember the outline of the interview for me and take the initiative to move on to the next topic. Of course as a perk of interviewing the singer, I got to hear a lot of melodies.
With so many people calling him, I accidentally discovered the fact that most of the phone numbers he called were not in his cell phone directory.
"I've got about a couple hundred phone numbers that I'm familiar with from the circle drop, and I've basically memorized them all." He recited a set of numbers off the top of his head and said, "This is your Mr. Du's number."
I was stunned, "Won't you forget it?"
He had a monster look on his face, "It's on a hard disk."
Du Bing
I am a person who likes to make friends, and some of them are like brothers, Jiang Zhimin is certainly one of them, he is straight, quick, righteous, of course, although I don't know the music, but Lao Jiang's songs can always move me, vicissitudes, deep feelings, very manly; and there is one thing very important is that after we met until now, no matter how our respective lives change, the feeling between me and Lao Jiang has never been the same. The feeling between me and Lao Jiang has never changed, he is the kind of friend that gives you the feeling that you can **** in times of trouble.
In his "hard disk", there are more than a few thousand numbers that are not related to each other. "I probably have the biggest collection of songs of any singer in Chengdu," he says, "probably at least 3,000 Chinese songs from 1993 to now." With the changes in popularity, he has been refreshing his song library for more than twenty years. From early Hong Kong and Taiwan songs and school ballads to rock to Power Train and Zhang Huimei to post-2000 R&B, he counts the changes over the years, with strings of notes coming out of his mouth from time to time. "The most recent updates are 'Nan Shan Nan' and 'The Night of Ulan Bator,' " he says, "I went to Lijiang in March 2015, and a friend took me to a living Buddha's studio in Shuhe, where I heard 'The Night of Ulan Bator,' and I listened to it four times, and came back knowing it. "
"Actually, to learn a song, you have to study the author's thinking first. If you know how he thinks, you are 80 percent successful." He said.
05Singing to yourself
The music in Jiang Zhimin's life is now divided into three parts: routine performances at Lotus, recording one or two audiophile albums a year, and a number of commercial performances in and around Chengdu. "Of course, the most important thing is the Lotus show, because it's a stronghold, and that's where all my friends from abroad come to see me. It is also an outlet for me to vent all my emotions." He said.
Many people who work in bars are more or less selfish, in order to always be surrounded by friends, or to always have free alcohol. Jiang Zhimin's selfishness in making a bar, on the other hand, is that he can always have a stage with the perfect musical team and sound equipment to take the stage and sing at any time.
In my artistic youthfulness, I asked the rude question: does singing in a bar become "oily" after a while?
Jiang Zhimin said, "Some bar singers sing 'oil' because they don't sing for themselves, but for their customers, to mix up their paychecks and cheat the applause."
Didn't Jiang Zhimin ever get tired of singing bar for more than two decades?
"Never," he said, "The same lyrics and melody, sung by different people, have different emotional fullness and depth. Even the same person, at different times, the song will present a different sense of picture. In the relentless repetition, the virtuosity actually grows subconsciously."
"In the second semester of my fifteenth year, I fell in love with a girl in my class. One day she suddenly asked me, "Do you know Qi Qin's 'Flower Sacrifice'? I said I wasn't very familiar with it. She said it was a beautiful song. As a result, when I was sixteen, I sang 'Flower Ritual' all summer."
"In 1992, I learned Zhou Hua Jian's 'Let Me Rejoice and Let Me Sorrow' and sang it to a brother who knew a lot about music. It turned out that he told me I sang it in a mediocre way, which devastated me. He said, "Let Me Rejoice and Let Me Sorrow" is a love song. How can you sing a love song well when you haven't even had a real emotional experience? I think he was right. Then I couldn't possibly get a girlfriend just to sing it well, so I just had to familiarize myself with the song first and try to mimic Zhou Hua Jian's emotions." It was a song he sang for another full year.
06No one changes on their own accord
"If I don't open a bar anymore, I want to open an antique store." Jiang Zhimin said suddenly.
"In fact, people are not active change, there is a sudden event, or encountered a situation of last resort, naturally changed," he said, "For example, some people say you learn antiques, it can sharpen a temperament, I began to learn." Since 2002, Jiang Zhimin has collected a lot of treasures. Because there is no time to organize, filled the whole room.
"When a curio store owner how good ah, every day to make tea, friends to drink. I also want to open a boutique teahouse, share good tea and grow some orchids."
"But I can't stop now." He added.
To see Jiang Zhimin live, we went to the Lotus House. The singer in the infield seemed to be singing an Eason Chan song, the melody spilling through the walls. Jiang Zhimin was excited to introduce the treasures he had collected from all over the world and hidden in the courtyard. Dragon pillars from the Ming Dynasty, flower tables from the Qing Dynasty, and doors from the Republic of China, to name but a few. The most spectacular is a row of mid-Qing saucepans, often dozens of randomly scattered in the corner. "In fact, single put is the most beautiful, placed together but do not feel it", he did not not regret, and saw traces of bumping, muttered: "the little ones to me broken? Or is it an old injury ah?"
I couldn't bear to say: "Just put it in the yard, bumped and touched how unfortunate!"
He replied with an aggrieved voice: "I bought more than a hundred of them, and the family has moved more than thirty of them over!" But he was quick to reassure himself, "There's nothing you can do to protect it with these things, unless you use imitations. Just leave them here naturally, there's a process of extinction anyway."
We looked again at the thunder bamboo, which only sprouted this year, the magnolia, which will bloom in March, the pomegranate, which bears lots of fruit every year, as well as the red maple, the ginkgo, and plants of all colors. How much less exciting I would have seen without my host's introduction! I was almost ashamed of my ignorance.
We entered through the door to the backyard, and a wave of sound greeted us. I saw a statue of the Goddess of Mercy set up in the window, as if looking through it into the interior of the bar. A window was two worlds, and one and the same. The one inside was packed to the rafters, and Jiang Zhimin was instantly overwhelmed by endless greetings.
A few moments later, the intro of 'Nanshannan' played, and through the blue light on the stage was the back of Jiang Zhimin. He actually seemed more at ease on stage than off. He sang three songs, ranging from ballads to Li Zongsheng to Leslie Cheung, and his voice mixed with the lights and clamor flowed out, easily filling the entire Lotus House. I suddenly realized the extraordinary ease with which he faced me, a stranger, in the interview - for him, under the lights on the stage, in the eyes of the people, is the real life.
END
Q&A
Q:How many years have you lived in Chengdu? 1991 to now, 25 years.
Q:What attracts you most to this city? The slower pace of life, the city's great inclusiveness, and the deeper cultural heritage.
Q:What is your favorite city other than Chengdu? Why? Kyoto. Because it is clean and warm. There are so many relics and legacies of Chinese Han, Tang and Song cultures there.
Q:Who is a friend you recently met? What attracted you to him or her? Mr. Kwok from Hong Kong. What attracts me most about him is that he is well versed in the tea ceremony, flower ceremony and incense ceremony, and he is a great insider of Japanese iron pots.
Q:What book or movie have you been reading lately? The Wilderness Hunter.
Q:Do you have a restaurant or small store that you frequent for dinner? Why? Lotus Square in Broad and Narrow Alley. Firstly, the roast duck is more authentic than Beijing, and the accompanying new-school Szechuan cuisine is very sophisticated; secondly, I'm a major shareholder (to help advertise Lao Du).
Q:What are your latest travel plans? Da Nang.
Q:Recommend three places in Chengdu that you think are the most worthwhile to visit, other than attractions. Send Xianqiao Antique Market. Taikuli. Lotus House.
If Yang Fei is subtle, Jiang Zhimin is much more bombastic. He had many identities, each one clear and protracted. As a businessman, he is in charge of the entire Lotus House; as a musician, he has released more than a dozen audiophile discs; and also as a bar singer, Jiang Zhimin has been singing for more than two decades, from 1993 until yesterday, without ever stopping, and even more so, without ever getting tired of it. Because for him, under the lights on the stage, people's eyes watching, is the real life, his songs, only sing to themselves.
"Caught Jiang Zhimin this human brain hard disk, love detective nature to make good use of, shamelessly asked him to comb down his memory of Chengdu performing arts bar development pulse. I've added a few more bits and pieces from the Internet, and I've taken the liberty of organizing them as follows:
In 1992, Hei Gen and Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared.
In 1993, M-Town, a large variety show bar, was launched, with excellent sound equipment that cost 10 million dollars in its day. It was one of the few bars in Chengdu's bar history to charge an admission fee, and M-Town's heyday lasted two or three years before it closed in 1996.
During this period, a series of small bars appeared, mainly in the south of the city, including the Moulin Rouge and the Red Onion.
After 1995 Chengdu's bar scene entered a mini-boom, with a number of iconic bars appearing, including Red Tribe, Newcastle, Jurassic, Sun Palace, Red Square, Sagittarius, Blue Ribbon Brewpub, New Orleans, and Temptation.
The really big climax began around 1997. In that year, Return Lounge was founded and became the best bar on Renmin South Road and the biggest disco in Chengdu. At that time, those who had the ability to compete with the Return Lounge were Focus and Xinlei Club near Mom's Hooves. In addition, this period also appeared the wind line, roaring lion, Oriental charm, MeiGaoMei and other excellent bar.
A new half-dozen beer halls opened on Fangcao Street around 2000. The owners were the same half-dozen from the PUB Beer Hall: Gui Feng, Zhou Xu, Wu Zhong, Liu Shaobo, Zhou Yadong and Zhao Lu.
Red Age opened in 2001.
In 2002 Zhao Lu founded Empty Bottle, which became the largest performance bar in Chengdu at the time. In the same year, Chen Tie founded Music House.
In 2004, the first slow-rock bar, MIX, opened, followed by BABI. It was followed by BABI, and in the same year, Lotus House emerged as the first slow-rock bar in Jinli.
In 2008, expat bar 88 appeared. Since then, Muse, Bencent and later bars in the Lan Kwai Fong area have been established.
The last two years have seen the rise of alternative bars. space opened. space is back in the M-Town mold of twenty-three years ago, and on a much larger scale.
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