{"id":2482,"date":"2010-02-19T02:14:42","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T18:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/?p=2482"},"modified":"2012-11-18T18:30:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T10:30:26","slug":"sipping-tea-with-fu-qiang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chengduliving.com\/sipping-tea-with-fu-qiang\/","title":{"rendered":"Sipping Tea with Fu Qiang"},"content":{"rendered":"
Note: This post is about an old friend and local personality who has recently relocated his business, an art and music shop, to the Yulin neighborhood in Chengdu<\/em><\/p>\n The first time I met Fu Qiang, he was sitting in a dusty bar in South Chengdu rolling up a smoke. We shared a quick appraising glance and then I went to sit down next to him. That was more than eight years ago.<\/p>\n Born in the 1960s, “Fu” is an old school Chengdu cat – somewhere north of 40 years old, and an encyclopedia of avant garde Chinese music and traditional Sichuan customs. There is something about his generation that gave birth to a cutting-edge type of observer that also acts as a repository of culture and etiquette that the younger kids have a hard time reproducing.<\/p>\n Fu remembers the old days when heroin flooded the streets of second tier cities and Cui Jian<\/a> was at the center of a musical revolution. In those days, before the State was able to grasp what was going on, people like Fu had access to a whole range of information and media. It was a time of unsurpassed freedom and unchained energy, the 1980’s were, and when that spirit was crushed in 1989 guys like Fu found themselves a bit adrift. Society turned away from the deeper, spiritual consequences of Opening Up<\/em> and focused on material gains and national cohesion. Fu and his repository hibernated in self-imposed exile.<\/p>\nPainting a Picture<\/h2>\n