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November rain brings a cold shock and heavy metal nostalgia

I told him I spent an afternoon with Leonard Cohen many years ago. I might as well have said I used to go drinking with Rimbaud

The cold air of Beijing came as a shock, as if the remainder of the autumn had been cancelled without notice to make way for winter. Photograph: Wu Hao/EPA

Denis Staunton's face
Denis Staunton in Beijing
Fri Nov 17 2023 - 06:00

After a few days in the relative warmth of Shanghai, the cold air of Beijing came as a shock, as if the remainder of the autumn had been cancelled without notice to make way for winter. Fallen leaves were everywhere, banked up against the trees along the footpath, swept in by navy-uniformed workmen with long brooms made of small branches.

The capital felt dark and austere after the glamour of Shanghai with its fierce commerce, smart shops, international art shows and modish cafes and bars.

“Feel the culture of Shanghai, so different from Beijing,” a Beijinger told me before I went.

“Shanghai is a fine, petty bourgeois, southern Chinese city, the frontier and experimental field of reform.”

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Over lunch in Shanghai, a friend and his mother were talking about his mother-in-law, who has practically moved in with him and his wife since the birth of their first baby a year ago. She has made friends with neighbouring grandmothers, parading the child along the street in his pushchair and accepting compliments for how big he is.

Her husband stays at home in the far north of China close to the Russian border and spends as little time in Shanghai as he can manage.

“I have read about capitalism all my life. Here I have seen it and it is hell,” he told his son-in-law.

The change in Beijing’s weather came a few days before I left for Shanghai when the temperature plunged during an afternoon downpour, never to recover. That evening, I went with a young friend to watch her boyfriend playing in a band in the Haidan district, near the elite Tsinghua and Peking universities.

She and her boyfriend, who was on keyboards, are both in their second year at college and they met last year in a physical education class. Mop-headed and handsome with big glasses, he came over to chat before the show, touching her arm as he praised her accomplishments while she blushed and looked away.

I had met the band’s lead singer, the boyfriend’s roommate, a few months earlier when he had long black hair down to his shoulders but now it was gone and he looked a little geeky with short hair and glasses.

“I thought people wouldn’t treat me as a serious person,” he said.

I knew he liked heavy metal and his WeChat profile picture had shown him shaking his long hair during a metal concert before he switched it for the famous photograph of Arthur Rimbaud at 17.

He thought nothing too heavy would be right for what was essentially a variety show this evening so they would perform Guns N’Roses’ power ballad November Rain. They had hired a drum kit from the basement rehearsal space they practised in and the singer drafted in a high schoolfriend from a different university as lead guitarist.

The boyfriend wore his long camelhair coat, a wool scarf and huge headphones onstage as he played the keyboards and the others wore big shirts over t shirts and wide-leg jeans. The instrumentalists played well but the singer was a revelation, his voice soaring but with a crack of anguish as he sang of lost love.

Afterwards, while the singer and the guitarist returned the drum kit, my friend and her boyfriend told me about the university where they all live on campus, four or six to a room. They didn’t complain about the lack of privacy but they were unhappy with the canteen food which was overpriced and not very good.

The singer, who had just got his drivers licence and hired a car for the night, offered me a lift home. On the way back, the car stereo was playing Waiting for the Miracle and I said I had spent an afternoon with Leonard Cohen many years ago in Berlin.

I might as well have said I used to go drinking with Rimbaud. Speaking slowly, he asked me to confirm what I had just said before telling me how much he admired Cohen and asking me to tell him everything I remembered.

I asked him about Chinese heavy metal bands and he named a few of them and played something by one of them but said he was surprised it was not more popular as a genre.

“There’s so much pressure. You can really let go with that music,” he said, looking rueful.

“My hair, I only had it for a year but sometimes I feel nostalgic for it.”

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