CRI听力：Ai Jing

Today we'll go on with the bittersweet tastes in our show by another look at the life story of Ai Jing, the featured musician of this week's show.

Yesterday we paused at the release of Ai Jing's third album, "Moon Chasing". And this album brought Ai Jing to a relatively calm state, as well as brought about a time for reconsideration for her future development. She said the first album was luck for her to be able to stand in the middle of a bunch of the most fascinating musicians in Beijing. The second album, "Stories of the Yan Fen Street" was like an archive of her past life. But the third album prompted a leap of understanding in music. Then, she felt it's the time to learn new things for her own use.

Suggested by the conductor Seiji Ozawa, Ai Jing decided to go abroad for broadening her horizons. The first stop she chose was New York.

When Ai Jing first stepped into the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, she felt it was the right place for unfettered dreamers to gather together, melting their diverse cultures and values into a brand new one - one as typical as Manhattan the metropolis itself. Such a city does have its prime influence on Ai Jing's creation of music, as well as her life path.

Here's the song, New York, New York, which records Ai Jing's sentiments for the city.

(New York, New York)

That's the song New York, New York, and the city itself became part of Ai Jing's inspiration. But she doesn't want to involve the concern for nationalities in the song. Ai Jing says, it is written for all artists that struggle in New York while leave their precious works of art to the city.

In Manhattan, Ai Jing started to infuse unfamiliar but fresh ideas into her music writing. She would attend English lessons in the morning and write songs in a cafe in the afternoon. Her singing into a newly composed tune once was so unconscious unintentionally caught others' attention in the cafe. And the melody of her song Flower was born when Ai Jing was skating in Central Park. Wandering on New York streets, Ai Jing enjoyed being nobody.

At that time Ai Jing was a fervent collector of casual shoes. And it's quite common for her to encounter shoes actually made in China. Such situations somehow reminded her of the songs she heard long before, that is, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", and Elton John's "Made in the England". Thus she though about the idea of writing a song called Made in China. The result was the song we're hearing now, Made in China, by Ai Jing.

(Made in China)

That's the song, Made in China, by which Ai Jing wished to express her pride of being a Chinese in the melting pot of the United States.

In 1998 Ai Jing started to record the fourth album, "Made in China" in Los Angeles. She wanted it to be a pure folk rock project, just like what she had presented to listeners in her debut. Producer of this album was Li Shouquan, a highly respected folk singer songwriter from Taiwain in the 1980s. He kept on querying if Ai Jing bore a clear idea of the target listeners. Ai Jing acknowledged years later being outside of China while pursuing her music dream, she was actually cut away from the listeners back home and made music only based on her own interest. Such an innocent blind state, according to Ai Jing herself, caused her many problems. Yet she believed musicians are not to work for satisfying the audiences' need. They write and play to create new things which contain emotions and spirits like other artistic works. As a result, Ai Jing's unyielding attitude remained for a rather long period.

The album "Made in China" didn't come out on the Chinese mainland, but was released in some Asian countries including Japan, as Ai Jing was then signed to the Japanese arm of Sony Music. This aborted comeback to her homeland somehow led her to detour to taking up the hobby of painting. To Ai Jing, brushing on a big canvas enabled her the ecstasy of freeing her inner wildness and imagination.

Now it's the song called "Fish Can't Live without Water", which, according to Ai Jing, is the best love song she's ever written.

(Fish Can't Live without Water)

From 2000, Ai Jing didn't do anything relevant to music at all for two years. She kept on commuting between Beijing and New York, meditating on her mission for life and music ahead.

At the turning point of the century, she felt sort of lost in the encirclement of the general uneasy mood and the drowning electronic beats everywhere in New York. But in Ai Jing's mind, nature is the ultimate destination of presently devoted city dwellers. She incarnated her care and longing for the natural world by setting up the image of Pandy, a "panda angel" in her next project, "Dream or Not". Pandy is a personalized animal speaking out its longing for survival. And it also contained the message of wishing for peace on earth.

Setting up her mind, Ai Jing formed her own workshop, and for the first time did an indie album project. Cooperating with several local recording artists in London, Ai Jing finished the recording of the album, "Dream, or Not". In the course, she went through the harsh winter of London, and its austere loneliness. However, it's always a pure happiness of music that cheered her on. The album is regarded as a attentively bred flower, thus cherished heartedly by Ai Jing. The album probably bears a doomed uncertainty originated from its name, as whether it would be published on the Chinese mainland is still in question like a dream unfulfilled.

Before giving the answer, I'll first play you the song "Dream, or Not" first. And this is China Beat on China Radio International.

(Dream, or Not)

That's "Dream, or Not". Well, fortune finally visited Ai Jing, satisfying her dream of a comeback to the Chinese music scene. But Ai Jing says she was confused by the overwhelming atmosphere of treating music as an entertaining element. She asked, whether there's still the need for musicians to share their spiritual world and thoughts on life with the public? Is this another dream of her?

In Septemper 2006, Ai Jing released the album, "Ai on the Road", her first "best of" album. Ai Jing says the accumulation of experience and age definitely leads her on to ever more mature. Though music is still an inextricable part in Ai Jing's life, she just won't impose too much pressure on herself as to the pursuit of music. She says her first album "My 1997" was too high a starting line that somehow hardened her later career. But the decade did prove that Ai Jing is a woman of a strong will, but still tender inside.

Leave you with the song "Buffalo 66". Cheers and see you next week.

(Buffalo 66)