interview@mask9
http://www.mask9.com/node/41688
Media:MASK9
Reporter:May
Interviewee:Greg Bojanek,Zen Lu
Date:19 October 2011
Venue:Iberia Center for Contemporary Art(Beijing,China)
Videos from Nanjing
Posted in ChoP China Tour 2011, News | 
Tags: chop, ChoP Tour, Grzegorz Bojanek, Kim_Nasung, Nanjing, nmls, Zen Lu | 
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Made in China
The tour ended a few days ago. We landed at Okęcie airport in Warsaw on Wednesday 26th at 9PM so I got home after around 11 PM. I needed a few days to get rid of jet lag and to find myself in Polish reality. Those were crazy two weeks on the other end of the world. China is a completely different place but I must say that I like it. During the tour we travelled more that 3000 km from city to city by trains, we played 6 gigs and ate a lot of doufu and peanuts – all during 2 weeks in 4 big cities. I think that the best performance of the tour was at Electronic Music Week in Shanghai but I also liked the performance together with ErDao in Wuhan. Maybe we will use something from the recording of this concert on our ChoP vol.7 album. Cooperation with Nini in Beijing was also very interesting and fruitful.
I must say that I really like Chinese electronic music, cause it differs from European music. Maybe it’s beacuse of the influence of traditional Chinese music, or the influence of the whole rich culture of China, or maybe it’s simply becasue life there is different? Speaking of traditional music – I really like the traditional Chinese instruments, if I had more money and more space in by mag I would probably buy some gongs, erhu and of course – a guzheng! 
but I bought a hulusi so I didn’t come home with empty hands.
I’m really glad that I took part in this tour and I would like to thank all of you who supported us!
PS. I took my analog cameras to China and made “a few” pictures. When I’ll develop and scan the films I will upload them to the blog.
At the end I’m putting a picture from our hostel in Nanjing where Zen made a little advertising of our tour 
Posted in ChoP China Tour 2011 | Tags: Beijing, ChoP Tour, Nanjing, Nankin, Pekin, Shanghai, Wuhan | 2 Comments »
KungFu Panda always plays Guzheng
I really don’t know what to write in order to summarise the whole tour. It is very difficult to sum up two weeks of crazy experiences, tastes, meetings and of course concerts in only one post. The whole trip gave me a huge amount of positive energy and amazing adventures. I think that all concerts were good. My favourite concert was the first one - Shanghai Electronic Musik Week. Amazing space, interesting sound setup (the sound surrounded the audience) and many friendly people. The only strange thing was the time of the concert… I have never played a gig at 1:30 PM. But the amount of people who came to the venue was a positive surprise! Other projects were also very interesting. I’m still thinking about concentrated Zheng and his Buddha Boxing set and amazing free improv from Shanghai - The Great Time. The next concert worth mentioning was our last gig in a very nice club called Wuhan Prison. This concert will stay in my mind for a very long time (it is difficult to explain but I think the video will give more light).
Apart from musical things - the trip was also very nice. For me the most important thing was a purchase of Guzheng in Beijing. Most of the gigs in the second part of the tour I played with my new instrument - or my “new wife”, as Zen called the instrument.
Sightseeing - it is obvious - China is beautiful.
Food - I could write for a long, long time - pretty amazing!
To sum up - I miss China, hard doufu, bacon in a sweet soy sauce, trains which travel 300 km/h (or more!), and something in the air which is only there!
Nie do końca wiem co napisać podsumowując całą trasę. Bo niby jak w jednym poście zamknąć dwa tygodnie niesamowitych doświadczeń, smaków, spotkań i oczywiście koncertów. Cały wyjazd to ogromny ładunek pozytywnej energii i cudownych przeżyć. Myślę, że wszystkie koncerty udały się. Moim faworytem jest koncert, który zagraliśmy na samym początku, czyli koncert na Shanghai Electronic Musik Week. Niesamowita przestrzeń, bardzo ciekawie rozwiązany dźwięk i masa sympatycznych osób. Jedynie godzina była dla mnie zagadką… jeszcze nigdy nie grałem koncertu o 13:30. Ilość osób, które pojawiły się na koncercie była bardzo miłym zaskoczeniem. Pozostałe projekty bardzo ciekawe. W głowie został mi bardzo skupiony Zheng i jego Buddha Boxing, oraz kapitalne free improv z Shanghaiu na sam koniec. Kolejny koncert o którym warto wspomnieć to ostatni koncert, który zagraliśmy w bardzo sympatycznym miejscu zwanym Wuhan Prison. Doświadczenia z tego koncertu zostaną w mojej pamięci na bardzo długo, myślę, że głównie z powodu totalnej abstrakcji panującej w przestrzeni podczas koncertu, który miałem przyjemność grać z Zen Lu. (ciężko to opisać, ale myślę, że wiele wyjaśni się jak skończe video).
Poza muzycznie wyjazd również bardzo udany…!
Dla mnie najważniejszym punktem programu był zakup Gu Zhenga. Udało się dopiero w Pekinie.
Większość koncertów w drugiej połowie trasy grałem już z moim nowym nabytkiem, albo jak mówi Zen z moją drugą żoną.
Zwiedzanie wiadomo! Chiny są piękne.
Jedzenie! Mógłbym pisać i pisać! Pyszne!
Podsumowując…
Już tęsknie za Chinami, za twardym tofu i boczkiem w słodkawym sosie sojowym.
Za pociągami jadącymi 300 km/h i tym czymś w powietrzu co jest tylko tam…
Posted in ChoP China Tour 2011 | Tags: ChoP Tour, Grzegorz Bojanek, Kim_Nasung, nmls, Zen Lu | 3 Comments »
Broken Heroes Never Drink Cola
I am pleased to know that everyone came back home safely, and we finished the ChoP Tour in 2011.
I use a title of Greg’s new song as the title of this post, becasue many friends and me really like this track: “Broken Heroes Never Drink Cola“. Greg isn’t the broken hero and sometimes he drinks Cola (like all of us used to do). I think Broken Heroes only drink VODKA, cheap VODKA (probably Chinese).
We said goodbye in Wuhan, and at that moment I felt dismay. Although I wanted to go home, I don’t like to say goodbye, I think I’m a very emotional person. We lived together as a family for 2 weeks, experienced a lot of hardships and joy: we were dragging heavy luggage and shuttling between the four cities in China (over 3200 km). Sometimes all people stayed in one small room. We had amazing train journeys: 9 hours and again 11 hours; turbulent and huge crowd, traffic congestion, dirtiness and chaos and super huge cities, noisy days and nights… everything seems very crazy in China nowadays, and I think this was a special experience for all of us!
Actually, I didn’t visit those cities in the same period, I couldn’t imagine when I looked at these crazy changes in today’s China. I feel very lucky to live in a simple and quiet of the city relatively.
Shanghai is Greg’s city, he knows everythings in Shanghai: metro, food, the bund, chopsticks… our tour manager likes to drink Cola cause he’s not a broken hero, and he always hates fish, so we missed a lot of delicious fish. But everyone liked eating Doufu, peanuts and pork!
I think Nanjing is Piotr’s city. He bought the Tea Box there, nice design, good quality and low price. We even used it to make the Kungfu Tea in Beijing. Drinking tea is a good way to relax with your family or friends: boil water, wash cup, make tea, drink… you become quiet and relax in these seemingly complex process.
I was very happy when Kim_Nasung bought mini Guzheng in Beijing. We talked about the instrument many times and I’m glad that foreigners like Chinese traditional instruments so much. And I should help Mat to look for Guzheng. I hope I could help all guys during the tour in China. In fact during the concert at VOX livehouse in Wuhan Kim_Nasung played a perfect live-set ,I really liked the sound – Kung Fu Panda playing Guzheng !!
Anyway, we had a perfect 2 tours in 2011 and I hope we would have a new tour soon in the future.
Posted in ChoP China Tour 2011, News | Tags: 2011, Beijing, ChoP Tour, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan | No Comments »
Shanghai EMW – once more
Here are some videos from Shanghai Electronic Music Week:
14.10.2011:
Improvised Solution - Grzegorz Bojanek & Piotr Michałowski
Unfortunately we can share only the version which was recorded off the air…
Tai Chi Pushhands - Kim_Nasung & Zen Lu
Buddha-Boxing - Zhang Jian
Yuyuan Garden Market
On the last evening before departure from China we went for shopping to Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden since it wasn’t so far from our hostel. It is a very nice place – a lot of old looking traditional buildings with numerous shops – sometimes spoiled by modern brands signs like Starbucks. Too bad that we didn’t had too much time to visit the whole place. We all wanted to buy some tea accesories so we found a small shop and started the bargain. As we’ve seen before prices in China aren’t stiff – if a shopkeeper says that something costs 500 RMB then probably you will buy it for 100 or even 50 RMB if you know how to negotiate. Beata (who came to China with us as a tourist) wanted to buy a tea set in a box which cost 480 RMB but after some some talking, leaving the shop and returning (this sequence was repeated a few times) the price ended at 120 RMB so she bought it. I also bought 2 small tea cups for 7 RMB instead of 20 RMB which was the original price. We also found a music shop which had a really nice and cheap gongs but when we returned to buy some of them, the shop was unfortunatelly closed (or we couldn’t find it in the labyrinth of small streets) . Maybe it’s good that it was closed cause I had already bought a Chinese instrument before – Hulusi. After shopping we went back to the hostel to pack our bags and take a rest before the flight back home.
Photos aren’t best cause they were made with a cell phone. Nobody had energy to take a good camera.
Wuhan Prison – Last Concert in China
It was our last concert in China. Some of us were really tired and ill (high temperature!) and couldn’t come to Wuhan Prison – Folk Hand. There were only three of us: Zen, Mat and I. I played a 20 min. solo set and than Zen and Mat played a nice duo. Zen wasn’t using his laptop now and I played a guitar. But first I had to buy some strings, than clean it (it was really dirty), and tune it several times. But than the sound was quite nice.
There were quite many people (at least 20) and 2 interesting, drunk guys: one from Africa and one from China. They were dancing and it was very funny. Finally they wore the helmets and started dancing like Daft Punk! Finally the barman took them out and “played” kung fu. Interesting experience…
View from the window
It was amazing to live on the 25th floor. But I could see the tremendous development of the city of Wuhan. All around the huge skyscrapers were built. In 2009 in front of the VOX Club there was a huge building, but now it was destroyed and they started building a new one, even bigger. The rapid development of Wuhan can be seen everywhere. (From the 25th floor I could also see the poverty of some parts of the city – incredible contrasts!)
Live in VOX Club Wuhan
The concerts in VOX Club Wuhan are really nice because of the big stage. It was Sunday and it was raining heavily, but still many people came to see the ChoP Project. It was nice, because there were people we met the same day in the book shop. Actually we did not tell them that we are musicians, but they guessed that and came to see us from Hankou (on the other side of the river), to Wuchan. Nmls played some IDM music, than he had a duo with Er Dao. Than Greg and Zen played a “Buddha” version of Greg’s track “Broken Heroes Never Drink Cola” (As we noticed in all restaurants and pubs there are looped tracks, so the decision to play this version was obvious). Finally Kim Nasung played his new toy! In the end the whole ChoP crew played a short drone live-act. And that was it! (But the concerts are not over. Today we are playing an extra show in a renovated and nice Wuhan Prison, which now is much bigger than it used to be two years ago!)
