tim's experiment

Interesting reversal of roles this weekend. Usually I pipe and my wife takes the pictures or the video. This time she was performing in a concert in the Shatin Town Hall foyer and I was behind the camera – a rather alarming arrangement because I know very little about cameras. The concert was for groups of zheng (it rhymes with bung) players, in numbers ranging from one to about 12.  The zheng works rather well as an ensemble instrument. Oddly enough they have one problem which they share with bagpipers. One does not have a conductor. The leading player gives the signal for things to happen. But the instrument requires the attention of both hands. In pagipe bands everyone is standing up and the leader of the proceedings developes a very expressive foot. You play the zheng sitting down so the leading lady (I have never seen a male zheng player) gestures with her head. This will never catch on with pipers. We have to wear hats.

Actually this sort of musical event is going on all the time. People who think Hong Kong is a cultural desert do not get out enough. We are short of those mammoth artisitic enterprises like grand opera which used to be court entertainments and consequently are too expensive to live without massive subsidies to replace their lost royal patronage.  But smaller scale events are happening all the time. Hang around your local town hall and you will see a great deal of coming and going. In fact the recurring complaint in local music and dancing circles is of the difficulty of finding places to do it. Our beloved government provides a certain number of small rooms in town halls and sports centres where such things can be done. No doubt the number of rooms conforms to some ingenious formula which tells the urban planner how many such rooms will be required per million of population. If you ask me this formula needs to be tweaked a bit.