'Shanghai Nightscapes'

A view of the Shanghai skyline at night. The city has a long history of an active nightlife culture ranging from jazz clubs to — more recently — bars focused on mixology. Photo: Frank Langfitt/NPR

April 5, 20165:00 AM ET

FRANK LANGRITT

It's 9:30 on a Thursday night and Chinese and foreign jazz fans descend on the JZ Club in Shanghai's former French Concession. Glasses clink and the splashing sound of cymbals ripple through a cabaret setting bathed in soft red light.

Andrew Field, an American historian, says clubs like JZ represent a return to Shanghai's cosmopolitan past.

"You will see Chinese musicians playing with Western musicians or African musicians," says Field, who works at nearby Duke Kunshan University. "Jazz really became the soundtrack of the modern city, not just in Shanghai, but worldwide in the '20s and '30s. It was the musical language of the city. It was about speed."


I'm out on the town this evening with Field and James Farrer, a sociologist at Sophia University in Tokyo. They've written Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City.

Over two decades of research – which included a lot of bar hopping – the pair covered Shanghai night life from its colorful heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, to its resurgence, which began in the 1980s. Today, the city has more than 2,000 bars as well as music and dance clubs, according to Dianping, China's equivalent of Yelp.

After drinks on the club's rooftop terrace, we sit down with Ren Yuqing, who founded JZ. In earlier days, Ren, a bassist, says it wasn't easy to find places to play different genres of music.

"We all played in bars or restaurants, but the problem is you cannot play what you want," says Ren. "If you play a lobby lounge in a five-star hotel, the manager will say: 'You guys too loud, too loud, too loud!'"

Friends introduced Ren to jazz and 11 years ago, he opened JZ, which also has its own music school and riverfront festival. The club attracts an eclectic crowd, which this evening includes a group of female musicians who play traditional Chinese music.


What attracts them to jazz? "Jixing," they answer. That's Mandarin for "improvisation," something Chinese music – and society – aren't generally known for.

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