You gotta have faith

Two strangers in a café, sitting on opposite sides of a coffee table. One Chinese, one American. The American is reading a Jane Austen novel while she quietly warms herself up with a bowl of soup, some croquettes, and a hot chocolate. The Chinese woman idly thumbs through raggedy fashion magazines from the café’s bookshelf and sips a mug of tea.

This was the opening scene for a surprising evening in the quaint-if-overly-touristy Lijiang, China. My traveling companion was uninterested in forging out into the cold night for food, so I found myself alone on a couch in a small and friendly bistro that had already proven itself worthy of my hunger the day before. Much to my surprise, I was soon joined by a lone Chinese woman, about my age, who asked if she could sit on the couch opposite me.

Her name was Jin Jin, which I'd been told is the word for “faith” in Chinese, although it turns out that her name had different tones, different characters, and therefore an altogether different meaning. Jin Jin was also traveling with someone – her sister – who didn’t want to brave the cold, and so like me she was drawn into the café for some sustenance. After exchanging a few spurts of conversation over the course of half an hour, Jin Jin asked me if I like live music. I couldn’t deny that I did, and so she invited me to go to a bar with her where there was a local band playing. Despite being completely wiped out after a long day, I felt like this was an opportunity not to be missed. My feeling turned out to be right.

Jin Jin led me through the twisting alleys of old town Lijiang, a place that rivals the best of mazes, until we finally reached our destination. The bar was nondescript from the outside, but once inside I realized I’d been led to somewhere truly unique. The place boasted the traditional architectural style of the Naxi, the dominant indigenous group of the area, which meant that when we settled into a couch near the stage I found myself looking up at a cloudy sky from an open courtyard. Rather inexplicably, I also found myself staring at a bicycle that had been mounted to the giant pole that reached up for the sky from the courtyard’s center. There was a pit fire, and the stools, chairs, and couches surrounding it were littered with a cast of characters that could only be described as counter-culture. The stage, set off to the side and little more than a raised platform big enough for three musicians and their instruments, soon came alive with the youthful band playing original songs and fronted by a golden voice who Jin Jin clearly had a crush on.

There’s something magical about a scene like this – crisp, cold night air, a bonfire, interesting characters speaking a language I don’t know, and a live band with obvious talent that is well-loved by the crowd. It has a kind of quiet energy that can’t be replicated in large venues or with generic cover bands, a pulse that crackles and sparks like the fire that warms the onlookers. This was one of those moments when I was reminded of the power of good music to transcend language barriers and communicate feeling.

Jin Jin, three sheets to the wind after half a beer, confessed to me that she had come here every night during her vacation in Lijiang to hear this band play, and asked me to teach her how to say “the music is intoxicating” in English (of course, this was not the only thing intoxicating her). Her enthusiasm and uninhibited love for this music and this place was not only engaging, it was contagious. I too loved the music, loved the crowd, loved Lijiang.