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The Free Maverick Cafe

In Beijing things get built so fast, you never know what you're going to find when you step around a familiar corner. Our part of town is no exception. Gail and I often return to our apartment full of astonishing news.

"My God!" I might cry. "Did you see that new block of stores that just opened up? It appeared out of nowhere! I swear, there was nothing but open field there last week!"

Or sometimes the process works in reverse. "Do you remember that restaurant we used to go to? It's vanished!" Gail will tell me. "The entire building's gone, demolished overnight!"

Often it is difficult for us as foreigners to make any sense out of this bizarre constructing and deconstructing of Beijing buildings. I have gotten so I am prepared for anything -- perhaps I'll come home one night and find that our entire university has disappeared. Nevertheless, it was a surprise to return from shopping one afternoon and focus my eyes on a most unusual sight: A building, where a gym had been located the day before, now had a little picket fence in front of it and was covered with multi-colored graffiti -- in English, no less. The word "punk" was written prominently in green letters above the front door. "Jimi" with an electric guitar was painted to the left of the door. "Not Worth A Rap 1949" was yet another cryptic and somewhat unsettling message that had been drawn upon the facade of this unlikely building, along with other mysterious words and phrases such as "About the Girl," and "Easy."

What was going on here? If you are in New York City, you might expect to come across a building like this -- but believe me, not in Beijing, and certainly not in our quiet, far northern edge of the city. I was standing with my mouth open, studying the multi-colored facade, when two young men I happened to know --Sar and Bongo -- came bounding out the front door. Sar is a student in his final year at the university, and Bongo -- as he likes to call himself -- is a teacher of computer science. They are real characters, lots of fun, and I have always liked them.

"Hey, Robert! What do you think of our new cafe?"

"This is yours?"

"A few of us got together. It's a punk bar! Do you know what a maverick is?"

I put on my best English-teacher's voice. "The word comes from the American West," I explained. "It refers to an unbranded range animal, usually a horse. But it has come to mean, more generally, a nonconformist. A free spirit."

"That's it!" Sar assured me with a radiant smile. "This is the Free Maverick Cafe!"


Gail outside the Maverick Cafe

 Tonight was the grand opening and Gail and I were warmly invited to attend. Unfortunately we had plans that evening, so it wasn't until the following weekend that we made our way down the road to our neighborhood's newest addition. To be honest, we figured we had better get there fast before it disappeared. The interior was small but quite nice: there was a bar, a few tables, and the room a corner of where a few instruments and amplifiers had been set up. There were perhaps customers, nine guys and ten one brave girl. The could, creating a dim and nine guys were all smoking cigarettes as fast as they unbreathable fog.

"Robert, play some music with us!" Sar called to me, gesturing me to the "stage." Both Sar and Bongo are aspiring musicians and I had played with them several times in the fall --Sar on guitar, Bongo did drums, and me, whenever I joined them, on a small electric keyboard that always sounded like it was underwater. Our repertoire consists of three songs: "Kansas City," "Hotel California," and "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Not a huge repertoire, but if you ever have a chance to hear us, you might say that it is three songs too many.

I don't mean this to sound unkind or patronizing, but Chinese people simply do not have a feel for Western music, and Sar and Bongo are about the worst musicians I've ever heard. I say this with a certain loving nostalgia, because in my youth I once wanted to be a musician, and I was in some bands that could make a person howl and cover up his ears. I figure that this is simply a part of a young person's journey through life, to play in a terrible band. When Sar, Bongo, and I get together, however, we take this principal to new heights. Sar's guitar is never in tune, Bongo is a drummer who marches entirely to his own beat, and as for me, on my underwater piano -- I sense I am playing an entirely different song than the others, probably due to a massive communication breakdown. Nevertheless, we can stretch out a tune like "Knocking on Heaven's Door" to half-an-hour, sometimes even longer when we are particularly inspired.

After completing our brief repertoire, I sat at a table with Sar drinking beer, and I asked him how the cafe was doing.

"Not great," he admitted with a sigh. "The people here are into sentimental music. They don't like punk!"

It is true that Kenny G. is about as avant-garde as things get at our university. Are Sar and Bongo simply ahead of their time? Who knows? Maybe China will catch up with them one day. Meanwhile, week by week, I keep expecting the Free Maverick Bar to vanish from the landscape. But remarkably, it is still there, graffiti and all, a far outpost on the student frontier.

Next week: "Guanxi"

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