I went to Beijing’s MIDI music festival over the October festival: a miniature Glastonbury (tents and all), with angrier music and more meat-on-a-stick. The form of the event rung a familiar bell after English or American festivals – wide clean stages, a camera on a crane, sponsorship from HP. But the music was all China. And, in the words of a friend, ‘it rocked’.

At one moment in the night, I found myself listening to the tune of ‘Californication’, behind new rap lyrics in Mandarin. A fine song to nod your head to, and silently curse your terrible Chinese, ignorant as I was to what the rapper was talking about. So instead I thought: if the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s original was (among other things) about the cultural and lifestyle ‘pull’ California exerted on the rest of the world (‘dream of Californication’) at the end of the twentieth century (according to Californians…), then Beijing in the twenty-first is giving it a run for its money. This music at this festival – and the numbers of young foreigners coming to China for its modern not ancient culture – is testament to it.

The feel of the festival as a whole might have been imported from the West, but this song was a Chinese band making an American tune their own not aping it. It also reminded me that the phrase ‘across the pond’ is no longer about the US and Europe being the world’s two biggest players. There’s a new Pacific pond now.

I was too slow on the draw with my gadget to record the Californication cover, but I got the tune following it, which will give an impression of the festival. I’ll upload it as soon as I defang some teething problems with the internet connection in my flat.

Update: Here is the audio file: Midi

If you’re in Beijing, rise early in the morning when the city is quieter … be careful not to make any noise … and you can hear the faint sigh of relief which is wafted in the temporarily unsmogged breeze now the Olympics are over.

Here are two Chinese jokes which illustrate it well:

1. The chinese word for ‘to avoid becoming pregnant’ (biyun) is a homophone for the phrase meaning ‘to escape from the Olympics’ – a pun ready for the picking.

2. “At the closing ceremony, IOC president Jacques Rogge announces that the Olympics were so successful that they will be held in Beijing again in 2012, instead of London. The news sends millions of Chinese into a faint. Even the doctors swoon. Only the police are strong enough to withstand the news, and shout in unison: ‘Go to hell, Rogge!’ ”
(Hat tip: China Rises)

Now it’s all over, China lives (to quote an allegedly Western fabrication of an ancient Chinese curse) in interesting times.

Curious what the Chinese thought of London’s 8 minute skit at Sunday night’s closing ceremony? Here are a few titbits I can share having been in the sweaty audience:

1. They love David Beckham. BIG cheer.
2. Next to no-one understood who the lollipop lady was.
3. Most were puzzled why the little girl was walking across the backs of the dancers. Does everyone in London walk like that?
4. Even those who speak English couldn’t understand what the hell Leona Lewis was singing (b.t.w., I wonder if she lip-synched?).

Online, one netizen was impressed Britain only spent £2 million. Most of which, I venture, went to Beckham for kicking a football all of twenty yards. But here’s my pick of the comments I read:

i especially hated the outfit of the leona lewis and the gal playing the violin. i wud have rather enjoyed elton john singing on his piano.

There’s time yet, come 2012. I think we’re desperate enough.