Underground Chengdu: the live-music scene and best bars for jam sessions, dance, reggae and some fun in the Chinese city
Musician Wu Zhuoling is our guide for a tour of the Sichuan capital’s indie music bars and clubs, where you can find musicians playing rock, acoustic, jazz and electronic music, or just jamming together
In China, Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu is considered a second-tier city – a “small” central metropolis of around 14 million that can hardly hold a candle to Beijing and Shanghai, the country's artistic, musical, cultural, and political capitals.
For the Chengdu musicians I meet on a recent visit, that’s just fine. Not everyone aspires to the flippant cool, and competitive classicism, of China’s eastern cities.
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On a Sunday night I head out to Chengdu’s Wuhou district, a laid-back area, noted for its large Tibetan community, in its southwestern quarter near Wuhou Temple. Prayer flags hang in shop windows below signs written in the flowing Tibetan script; the heady scent of incense billows from open doorways as men and women from villages in the Hengduan Mountains and the Tibetan plateau pass in traditional dress, looking somewhat out of place in the modern city.
I’m here to meet Wu Zhuoling, a self-taught musician, singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist who performs as a solo artist and as part of the indie electronic band Wednesday’s Trip, and who has agreed to share some of her favourite haunts.
There’s Beijing and Shanghai, and then there’s Chengdu … We have a more relaxed atmosphere, and there are a lot of parties
Wu, 40, has enjoyed a productive career in the Chinese music scene, putting out seven albums and EPs, and touring China and Europe. In 2005 she hitchhiked to Lhasa, where she translated books and wrote songs for two years, and soaked up Tibetan culture.