A few years back, I moved to Northeast China...
I did a 3 month stint in Indonesia, filming their underground scene, wrapped some b-roll for my second film in Korea and Japan, and moved here afterwards.
Harbin, in Heilongjiang province. It's negative 30 degrees all winter, basically, polluted as hell, and brutal over-all. Basically, Siberia. Summer's are dry and hot, and nice. However, there's not much going on as far as music, aside from a few classical concerts, lots of beer, and street food.
There are many reasons for a city of 10 million to not have a music scene. Mostly, China. However, it's so far up to the Northeast, almost in Russia, that tours don't get up here nearly as much as the south. It's just...not a thing. I'll spare all the details for now.
I wander the streets taking photos, and exploring this strange city. This will be a long over-due home for food photos, stories, and weirdness from up here. I'll be here until June 2018. That's the plan at least, and then I will dive deep into something else in Asia that I'll discuss later. This dive, it was supposed to happen this December, but I need to stick here a bit long to be responsible.
Anyways...after about 8 months of nothing happening, we decided to push hard and book a few shows. The first fell into our lap. We finally got a bar on the main "bar street" of the city that understood what we were about, and they agreed to have shows. Perfect. So it went. The second was all local with Shaun's band, and a Russian band. The third...well, we booked it at said bar street, and China intervened in a way China often does. The show was cancelled.
Then this happened. A noise act called P.R.C.M (中國絞肉機) a few nights later. Moving shows can be a disaster. I am AMAZED at how this went down. Six acts performed in just over three hours. Artists from Yunnan province, Changchun, Switzerland. Live visuals. A kraut rock band. A lot of people showed up. They actually put money in the donation hat. I have seen hundreds of rooms totally clear out for more tame things than much of last night, but everybody stuck right where they were, all the way until the end. I can't begin to describe how happy it all made me. It really meant a lot.
I have taken a few trips for pure noise-seeking purposes. One was to Chengdu, Sichuan province. The other was to Indonesia and Malaysia, a second time. They were both amazing. You can read about those trips in detail here :
http://www.theworldunderground.com/blog
My Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are where I do many of the posts I will go back and re-do here, over time, and going forward, so you won't see those past music related posts in the link above, though I highly recommend you peruse that.
Moments stuck in time, food photos, and stories to come.
Cheers.
- Yingling