Tunes

The Chinese love to play music whenever possible, especially for tourists. On the train, in the park, even in the classroom, these are places where you have no choice but to listen. As it turns out, the only class building on campus where they play music during breaks is the foreign students building. Lucky us! I think they'd play it everywhere, but most of the classes for Chinese students are four hours long (according to one of my teachers) with 2 possible five minute breaks if the professor feels charitable. The foreigners, on the other hand, are on a very strict schedule and predictable 10 minute breaks, so they strike up the band for us.

There are songs that play during every break. One I know from the Loony Tunes cartoons, the lullaby that always plays when someone suddenly falls asleep; very appropiate for the classroom. "da da daaaa, da da daaa, da da daaa daaaa, da daa daa." The other, my personal favorite, is a tune I knew but couldn't quite put my finger on until Mike said "I think that's the first song I learned on the violin." Indeed, it was Long, Long Ago of the Suzuki method. I guess they disguised it well by using a synthesizer to simulate a full orchestra lead by a harmonica. The tempo is the agonizingly slow pace my violin teacher once used to make me hit every note correctly.

At the enormous man-made nature park, our ears were assaulted by speakers in every telephone pole. I would say that The Kenny G style saxaphone definitely distracted from the illusion created by styrophoam boulders and pump driven waterfalls. The scale of the park was impressive. We walked around for a solid 2 hours and I don't think we saw even half of the landscape. But if I had designed the place, I would have done things a little differently. For one, I have a hard time figuring out why they didn't just leave some nature the way it was, maybe put some paths in to let people walk around, save a few million dollars and some authentic natural acreage. And at the very least I would have left out the speakers, or played some cricket and water noises for the people. That's just me though, and I have to say I enjoyed going there and chuckling about the ridiculous irony. I'll probably never understand why the music here doesn't stay in the elevator where it belongs.