A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I first saw Shan­ren almost a year ago exactly at Jiangjin­jiu Bar. One year on, and the only thing that was dif­fer­ent was that instead of stand­ing crammed up at the back near the door, I was sit­ting on a stool right next to the stage within spit­ting dis­tance of the inim­itable Xiao Budian. Jiangjin­jiu is still a cramped lit­tle venue, and even though I didn’t turn up as early as I wanted, it meant that instead of being shuf­fled over to make room for late­com­ers, I was the late­comer who got to sit closer to the stage because of it. And to be quite hon­est, Shan­ren is the sort of band that needs a big­ger stage, not because they fill it with noise and enthu­si­as­tic gui­tar solos, but because it gives Xiao Budian room to move.

Gen­er­ally, I try not to have favorites within a band. I like to give the whole band love and rec­og­nize them as a group. But some­times, one per­son sticks out more than the rest, and in Shan­ren that per­son is eas­ily Xiao Budian. Read more