VIII Unspoiled Brats - Temple Band: All I experienced was an important teacher.

Temple Band, an important representative of China's underground rock-and-roll bands. Its vocalist and guitarist is Li Qun.

I'm going to talk about one of the saddest things I have ever encountered in my entire life. It is also something that I have never encountered before. The memory is really profound. It was a few years ago when our entire band ended up in the police station, then the detention center and then the drug rehabilitation center for smoking, smoking marijuana. Altogether, we stayed for nearly 200 days.

Originally we were just bored, and it was a friend who lit it. We were just kids on the road, smoking. We didn't smoke a lot. We just thought it was very hip, very rock and roll, something very crazy. So we smoked on the road. Then when the police found out, they cuffed him and dragged all of us out too. We all went in.

After we went in, the police said they had never encountered this type of incident and figured all we did was smoke some leaf. It's not as if marijuana is a drug. Later, the police said it was fine, and we asked: "Is it serious?" He said: "It's fine. Meth and heroin only get a few days each." When he put it that way, we didn't pay too much attention and spent half a day signing all kinds of papers. When we asked when we could leave, he said: "You'll be on your way soon." We stayed the entire night. We all initially thought (everything was fine), and didn't bother looking for guanxi or friends because everything was fine and we could leave the next day. Then when the next day came, after several hours, we ended up in a detention center, 15 days. The thought of 15 days! (But) he already tricked us into signing the papers. The entire gang started to panic, but it was no use. We had already signed, 15 days, so be it. Then we went to the detention center.

My understanding and all my problems, and also everything I experienced, became an important teacher for me. Let's talk about when I first came to Beijing. When I first came to Beijing, I didn't know many people and one friend helped me a lot. He helped me find an apartment. He is the friend who introduced me to Teacher Lu Xun for classes. At the time I lived in a remote village in Fengtai. It was close to the Beijing World Park. You had to take line 937 to the last stop, which was called Yangfangcun. There were frequent murders in that village, but it was all according to my landlord: Someone died again recently, don't go taking random walks, and so forth.

Later, after I had lived there for about two years, but I can't recall clearly. I also moved three to four times in that village. In the end, I lived in an apartment that was in the middle of a vegetable field. The building was a standalone, but it had a yard. Thieves came by often, though they couldn't steal much because there wasn't much worth stealing.

I consider both landlords my friends. They were both pretty good people. The first landlord often ate kebabs and drank beer with me. I also ate their vegetables freely, since they planted them themselves. The old lady was really nice and quite a good person. She had a Sichuanese son-in-law, meaning the husband was living with the wife's family in Beijing. I suffered quite a bit there too. I starved and froze because the house was rundown and poorly constructed. It had a thatched roof and iron-grated windows that exposed big gaps. If you poured half a glass of water inside the house, it would freeze in about half an hour. I had a dog as my companion. It was called "Dong Dong." I found it. Sometimes I wouldn't come home for a days, and it would go hungry too.

When I return home, when I am the most broke, that is when I suffer the most, in Beijing. At the time I remember telling a lot of people, at the poorest, I had one yuan of steamed buns over three days. At the time, one yuan bought five steamed buns. It's cheaper in the village. The puppy and I shared one yuan of steamed buns. But it was not picky, and I was quite happy too. Later, I moved to the city. I moved to the city because I wanted to open a shop, a tattoo shop. But that shop was in a basement, and wasn't very good as a studio. I suppose I had a place to live and a studio. Not long after the store opened, I remember SARS happened. Business was supposed to be bad, but my business still did ok. But it certainly wasn't doing very well. After the last big job, I had no business. Then when there was no alternative, I smoked all night, smoked two packs (maybe) one pack, I forget. Anyway, when I woke up in the morning, I took my hand drum and ran to the Anzhenqiao Bridge underpass. In China, it's hard to be that person, especially a drummer, who goes out and sings for a living. But I had no other choice. I had no money to eat. I had to pay rent. I forget if it was 500 hundred yuan or some other amount, so this was really my only choice. Fortunately, less than five minutes after I arrived there, a young person gave me five yuan. I thought, not bad. There are people who can accept this in China, whether he likes it or not. That day I met the guitarist of my band. The first thing he said to me was: "Hey! Dude, did you sing here originally?" Actually, he had been singing there all along, and that's how the two of us met. When we started talking, we discovered we had mutual friends. Still, we weren't very familiar, but we decided to be friends and from then on, we started our singing career as a duo. We have basically sung in all the underpasses in Beijing, the ones in Dongcheng district and also Beicheng. Dongsishitiao, Dongzhimen, Anzhenqiao Bridge. We've been to the north side, north fourth ring road, the Zoo, Xizhimen...

Our daily income wasn't a lot. The most the two of us earned was probably around 100 yuan. But these are industry secrets and I don't think I should be telling everyone. At the least, we might not make anything, or maybe one yuan. The two of us needed to buy cigarettes, to smoke cigarettes. We bought the cheapest cigarettes. If we didn't earn any money, we could only eat bing for one and a half yuan. In this way, on good days, we would have a good meal. But it was all just to make ends meet. I owed my landlord several months rent. I have owed every landlord rent. At the most, I have owed two months rent. When I moved away from the village, my landlord was quite good to me. All I did was replace the electric meter and pay 100 yuan. Then he let me go.

Later, inexplicably, I met the other band mates. Now all the band mates continue to make music. We've gotten into a lot of mess since then. But in the beginning, I still didn't feel I belonged to this circle because I still thought of myself as a child. I didn't understand this at all. I guess nowadays, I have some cognizance and can sense what I should do in my own profession. Maybe it's performing my duty well or achieving a greater potential within my duties.