Report from the Street

If all you know about China is the news reports about a repressive government, you might expect to come here to be greeted by a bleak landscape with smoggy air, a beaten-down and repressed people, police everywhere and perhaps soldiers with machine guns. Not so. I’m here to report that the streets are clean, the trains run on time, the people seem lively and lighthearted and there’s not a single homeless person in sight. 

 

Last night I went to a jazz club in Beijing looking out at a beautiful lake with many such clubs and restaurants around it. Sitting there listening to a high-quality Chinese quartet play their original music, there was the familiar buzz of conviviality, sociability, sensuality, lively chatter, beautiful women and handsome men and that atmosphere of freedom in its many faces that jazz personifies. It had the cultural vibe of New York, Paris, New Orleans, Berlin and old Shanghai, those iconic places where the arts thrive or have thrived. 

People hungry to express themselves, to gather and talk, to revel in the freedom of each other seeking to find themselves. 

 

I’m not saying that all is rosy here. (Though the air is impressively clean compared to a mere ten years ago and the sun shines bright.) The iron fist of government in places where it doesn’t belong is real and of concern. But from my limited point of view, it can’t reach all the way into the soul of the people and is doing some good work (clean streets, clean air, keeping things running smoothly, etc.). The growing interest in jazz is a good sign as a symbol of the yearning to be free and wholly express oneself, as is the parallel interest in Orff Schulwerk. 170 teachers in my two recent workshops and more on a waiting list turned away, while I’ve done some Saturday workshops in the U.S. where 20 people show up, if that. 

 

Some of the finest and inwardly freest people I know come from places where outer freedoms are curtailed—Turkey, Iran, China, for example. They are well educated, intelligent and keep a great sense of humor. Whereas in the United States, we are free to say or do whatever we like and look what so many actually say on Twitter and Facebook, what so many actually do (like certain Republicans in the limelight shooting their dog, having sex with minors, paying off porn stars, beheading a whale, spending 500 million dollars that could go to schools on a yacht— and weep. Our streets are filthy, we’re stepping over the homeless, our values are so confused, our ignorances purposefully manufactured and celebrated. Some will only consider voting if a rock star tells them to. I had the weird thought that if the worst happens (it won’t!) and we dismantle democracy and embrace the fascist dream of the Project 2025‘ers, perhaps we too might wake up and finally value and fight for our freedoms when they’re gone. But let’s not test out that thought. 

 

Meanwhile, I hope that inner and outer freedoms may meet one day soon in China, Iran, Turkey and other places and that places with the latter liberties may continue to consciously cultivate the former. It has been a most marvelous two weeks with these most delightful people. (9/1)