extablisment

发子他是摇滚乐在中国的开国元勋之一. 在早期的后天安门时代    这里是一个免费的链接听一些发紫的音乐

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Directions to Fa Zi’s:

Go down a country road under a full Autumn moon.

 

After the buzzing yellow taxi-packed streets end past Bei Da (Beijing  University) near the crumbling ruins of the Old Summer Palace, turn down the alley at the small market where the farmers lay their vegetables out on the flatbeds of their tricycles.

There’s an expensive private Communist Party hotel hidden there overlooking a row of populars beside the lake where old men wave around swords practicing martial arts into their retirement years.

 

Keep going.

The path now is only dirt grooved into a few ruts by Fazi’s Hummer-like jeep which, for 1994, is an astounding personal luxury.

On the far side is the one-room brick house of the tofu bakers who will stand and stare (while stoking their coal-blackened ovens and drying their cakes in the fields), accompanied now by fireflys bobbing.

As the Chinese countryside night envelopes you, you’ll approach a glen.  The high frequency pulses of the ciccadas pierce the dark.  It’s their warning to you:  “Ghosts here! Wai guo ren (foreigners) be careful!”

 

Don’t be afraid, keep going.

You’ll hear a distant gong explode with a shimmer into the evening air.  It’s then that you’ll make out of the pitch blackness a gate on the far side of the field, behind it a community of cabins.

At your feet look for a thick black power line threading through the grass.  Keep your eyes on it as you step onto Fa Zi’s farm property.   (Fa Zi’s dogs and sheep now bleating to greet you).

That electric cord goes over a wooden corral fence, through the door of a mud-brick house, and into the throbbing 100 watt Marshall stack of Fa Zi’s 1959 sunburst Gibson.

 

Sweet

As sweet a guitar as anyone would ever want, you can see it as you open the door.

In FaZi’s hands, it is  jangling out the chords to the sly historical song and metaphor for China’s changes,  “Fly Like An Arrow”      箭一样地飞翔.   Here in this little brick hut, Fa Zi sings for a crowded party of painters, musicians, foreign students, expat American businessmen, television producers, writers, university students, computer whizzes, heavy-metalers, record executives, friends and family.

They are all there warming themselves against the bitter cold of the encroaching Beijing deep freeze with beer, boiling tea and Fa Zi’s band, which when asked will kick into a rock with-Chinese-characteristics tribute to the place they call their home: Yuan Ming Yuan, the Garden of Gardens Arts Colony, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, circa 1994.

Welcome to Fa Zi’s.

 

FaZi  发子 (China 中国摇滚) is a folk rock singer-songwriter from China.  Specifically, his career originated in the late 1980's out of Yuan Ming Yuan, the "Old Summer Palace" of the emperor in Beijing. 

 

This Garden of Gardens was sacked by European armies at the end of the 1800's, and so when he set up his music and art studio there in the 1980's and 90s all that was left of it was some ruins and some of the gardens.

 

As a rock and roll pioneer, in the1980s Fazi lived up against one of the old mud brick walls of the the Old Summer Palace in a glen by a lake far from the authoritarian atmosphere which ruled greater China back then.

 

The music released by Extablisment on iTunes, etc was initially recorded on a hand-held tape recorder in 1994 by Kevin Salveson during the time he and FaZi formed a band and played shows all around Beijing.  (This was before the government shut YuanMingYuan down).  Because of that, and because of FaZi's powerful voice, the recordings are historically interesting if not of studio quality.

 

The versions available on Soundclound and iTunes are lower resolution Mp3 or aac files.

 

To purchase high resolution 24 bit DVDs with extra videos and songs (as well as some other goodies), click on the purchase link (Fa Zi's photo on the right) or visit the Extab Store.

 

The words "Fa Zi" a kind of English transliteration of his last name crossed with the word "father."  When the word "father" is turned into Chinese (and spelled with PinYin, the way to spell Chinese characters with English letters), FA ZI is supposed to sound like the english word for BaBa, but it can also mean "fortunate"  "hair" and "To send forth."

 

For more about Fa Zi including a longer biography based on the soon to be released non-fiction book by Kevin James Salveson, "Middle Finger Kingdom" as well as an excerpt from Hollywood's in-development FaZi movie script,  visit: