Going Home
A funny thing happened yesterday.
I had ordered a pot of Irish Breakfast tea in a little tea shop in Port Moody called Café Tea Muse (a wonderful place to visit, by the way, if you're ever in the area — it's on St. Johns between Buller and James, on the North side of the street). The shop owner had just brought me a china teacup, a porcelain teapot, a tea warmer with a tealight candle in it (imagine, a tealight candle used for warming tea — I thought it was just a name), a strainer, a spoon, a bowl of sugar, a little pitcher of cream, and forgive me if I'm forgetting anything else but it was a veritable museum of tea accessories. . . . I had leaned back in a comfortable reclining chair, and let the aroma of the tea tickle my nose, when I suddenly took notice of a Kenny G song on the overhead stereo.
A couple of disclaimers here. Typically I don't notice Kenny G songs. Actually, I often do anything I can not to notice Kenny G songs (usually by not listening to them at all, if I can help it), because I more or less consider him to be a vulgar cheapening of all things jazz. In fact, Kenny G is the White Zinfandel of the jazz landscape, as far as I'm concerned. The Kraft Processed Cheese Food Product of the instrumental music world.
No one's supposed to like Kenny G. Kenny G's sole purpose in life is to allow people who absolutely hate jazz to feel momentarily gratified in the feeling that there's one thing remotely jazz-like which their sensitive stomachs can keep down. Gerber Jazz for Infants 6-8 Months.
Okay, you get the idea. I can stop now right? "Yeah, that Kenny G guy sure can belt them out. He's one hip cat." Yeah.
So, as I was saying, this Kenny G song caught my attention, and I was simultaneously horrified and perplexed as to why I would even take notice.
The little mental search algorithm which typically accompanies experiences like this began to churn away, and within about 30 seconds, it hit me.
It's the Closing Song!
Alright, let me step back a little further.
Last summer, when I'd only been in Beijing for a couple of days, I'd made a late night run down to the supermarket at the end of the street to buy some ice cream or house slippers or a notepad or some other Beijing necessity — I don't remember which it was on this particular trip. I barely squeaked through the door before they closed at 11pm, and as I was rounding the aisle that contained what I was looking for (I think it was indeed ice cream, actually), a recorded message began playing over the in-house PA system, something to the effect of, "Thank you for shopping at ChaoShiFa. . . ." (a supermarket chain named "Supermarket" — you've got to admit that's pretty ingenious) "We will close in 10 minutes. Please pay for your goods. Have a good night." This message was accompanied by an appropriately sleep-inducing soprano sax song which was either Kenny G or a pretty close approximation of him. I found the announcement mildly amusing, but didn't make much of it (aside from needing to pay for my ice cream and to leave, of course).
Things soon became a little more interesting, however. While at the PanJiaYuan Ancient Objects Market, at 5:30pm, a half hour before they closed, suddenly an all-too familiar song began to fade in from an unseen loudspeaker system. Same song. No message this time, but the intent was clear.
"Is this song the universal closing song for all of China?!?" I asked.
"Possibly," replied my traveling companion, dryly.
"Kenny G must be really raking in the royalties if that's the case. Don't you think?"
"Considering this is China, the piracy capital of, like, the universe . . . uh . . . no."
"Good point."
This wasn't all, of course. Oh no. The Carrefour Supermarket. The Silk Market. A cafe or two. And for the grand finale, on the train from Hangzhou back to Beijing for a weekend visit later in the summer, in a hard sleeper car stacked three high with open bunks of people (quite a climb for those of us who were on the top), when it was time for everyone to get quiet so that people could get to sleep, along came . . . you guessed it . . . The Closing Song. It was astounding. I'd still like to know what kind of media blitz was required to convince every business owner in China to acquire a copy of this song and employ it for such uniform purposes.
At any rate, back to the present, there I was in this little tea shop, and The Closing Song had come back for a visit.
I couldn't stand not knowing, and so, when I paid for my tea about 45 minutes later, I asked the shop owner if he could find out the name of the song for me. His English was limited, and my Korean consists mostly of "hello", "tea", "ribs", "chicken", "dumplings", and "thank you", so it took some gesticulating to get the point across, but soon we were looking through the track list of a made-in-Korea compilation of easy listening songs searching for anything Kenny G related, and near the end of Disc 1, there it was. "Going Home."
"Going Home," he said.
"Going Home," I answered.
"Going Home," he repeated.
"How very appropriate. Now it all makes so much sense. Well, sort of."
Well, not really. But at least the choice of which song to play at the end of the day in every single business in Beijing has some kind of logic behind it. . . .
I had ordered a pot of Irish Breakfast tea in a little tea shop in Port Moody called Café Tea Muse (a wonderful place to visit, by the way, if you're ever in the area — it's on St. Johns between Buller and James, on the North side of the street). The shop owner had just brought me a china teacup, a porcelain teapot, a tea warmer with a tealight candle in it (imagine, a tealight candle used for warming tea — I thought it was just a name), a strainer, a spoon, a bowl of sugar, a little pitcher of cream, and forgive me if I'm forgetting anything else but it was a veritable museum of tea accessories. . . . I had leaned back in a comfortable reclining chair, and let the aroma of the tea tickle my nose, when I suddenly took notice of a Kenny G song on the overhead stereo.
A couple of disclaimers here. Typically I don't notice Kenny G songs. Actually, I often do anything I can not to notice Kenny G songs (usually by not listening to them at all, if I can help it), because I more or less consider him to be a vulgar cheapening of all things jazz. In fact, Kenny G is the White Zinfandel of the jazz landscape, as far as I'm concerned. The Kraft Processed Cheese Food Product of the instrumental music world.
No one's supposed to like Kenny G. Kenny G's sole purpose in life is to allow people who absolutely hate jazz to feel momentarily gratified in the feeling that there's one thing remotely jazz-like which their sensitive stomachs can keep down. Gerber Jazz for Infants 6-8 Months.
Okay, you get the idea. I can stop now right? "Yeah, that Kenny G guy sure can belt them out. He's one hip cat." Yeah.
So, as I was saying, this Kenny G song caught my attention, and I was simultaneously horrified and perplexed as to why I would even take notice.
The little mental search algorithm which typically accompanies experiences like this began to churn away, and within about 30 seconds, it hit me.
It's the Closing Song!
Alright, let me step back a little further.
Last summer, when I'd only been in Beijing for a couple of days, I'd made a late night run down to the supermarket at the end of the street to buy some ice cream or house slippers or a notepad or some other Beijing necessity — I don't remember which it was on this particular trip. I barely squeaked through the door before they closed at 11pm, and as I was rounding the aisle that contained what I was looking for (I think it was indeed ice cream, actually), a recorded message began playing over the in-house PA system, something to the effect of, "Thank you for shopping at ChaoShiFa. . . ." (a supermarket chain named "Supermarket" — you've got to admit that's pretty ingenious) "We will close in 10 minutes. Please pay for your goods. Have a good night." This message was accompanied by an appropriately sleep-inducing soprano sax song which was either Kenny G or a pretty close approximation of him. I found the announcement mildly amusing, but didn't make much of it (aside from needing to pay for my ice cream and to leave, of course).
Things soon became a little more interesting, however. While at the PanJiaYuan Ancient Objects Market, at 5:30pm, a half hour before they closed, suddenly an all-too familiar song began to fade in from an unseen loudspeaker system. Same song. No message this time, but the intent was clear.
"Is this song the universal closing song for all of China?!?" I asked.
"Possibly," replied my traveling companion, dryly.
"Kenny G must be really raking in the royalties if that's the case. Don't you think?"
"Considering this is China, the piracy capital of, like, the universe . . . uh . . . no."
"Good point."
This wasn't all, of course. Oh no. The Carrefour Supermarket. The Silk Market. A cafe or two. And for the grand finale, on the train from Hangzhou back to Beijing for a weekend visit later in the summer, in a hard sleeper car stacked three high with open bunks of people (quite a climb for those of us who were on the top), when it was time for everyone to get quiet so that people could get to sleep, along came . . . you guessed it . . . The Closing Song. It was astounding. I'd still like to know what kind of media blitz was required to convince every business owner in China to acquire a copy of this song and employ it for such uniform purposes.
At any rate, back to the present, there I was in this little tea shop, and The Closing Song had come back for a visit.
I couldn't stand not knowing, and so, when I paid for my tea about 45 minutes later, I asked the shop owner if he could find out the name of the song for me. His English was limited, and my Korean consists mostly of "hello", "tea", "ribs", "chicken", "dumplings", and "thank you", so it took some gesticulating to get the point across, but soon we were looking through the track list of a made-in-Korea compilation of easy listening songs searching for anything Kenny G related, and near the end of Disc 1, there it was. "Going Home."
"Going Home," he said.
"Going Home," I answered.
"Going Home," he repeated.
"How very appropriate. Now it all makes so much sense. Well, sort of."
Well, not really. But at least the choice of which song to play at the end of the day in every single business in Beijing has some kind of logic behind it. . . .