Old Jazz Band from Old Shanghai

This is a story of a legendary jazz band and how its music mesmerized us.  Photo by Jes Aznar. 

SHANGHAI, China - The thermometer, I suspect, reads four or five degrees Celsius. It is around 9 in the evening, on this cold winter night in Shanghai and my step counter says I’ve walked 11,000 steps already, a thousand more than required.

Twelve hours ago I was in the middle of Manila’s worsening traffic, navigating my way to the airport, to board a plane to this Paris of the Orient.

Landing in Shanghai around 4 p.m., I am brought straight to a posh nightspot, the tree-lined French Quarter, Xintiandi, which literally means the New Heaven and Earth, for a sumptuous Chinese dinner.

After dinner, we walk in the crisp cold winter evening, through the district’s quaint corners and curio shops.  At Nanjing Road, we revel under the dancing city lights glowing under a bright winter moon. 

Finally, we reach the famed Bund and we stand by the Huangpu River to savor the view of the city at night.

But by now, I am tired and cold and could really use a good night’s rest.

Oh, but our gracious host, Ambassador Carlos Chan, the Philippines’ special envoy to China, insists we should have some drinks to cap the night.

I can’t very well say no to a 75-year-old man who doesn’t look tired at all.

And I’m glad I didn’t because he was saving the best for last, right here inside the Peace Hotel, an iconic early 20th century gothic-style structure along the Bund.

It is known around the world as an art deco masterpiece while its amenities and interior were said to rival if not surpass European and Manhattan’s best.

The hotel, which originally opened on Aug. 1, 1929, is known as Asia’s center of glamor and glitterati for the rich, famous and nameless from around the world.

It is also a fitting home to a legendary group.

Indeed, it is here at the Peace Hotel’s Jazz Bar, a cozy bar with gothic chandeliers, where I find myself face to face with Shanghai’s legendary Old Jazz Band, playing live jazz music to a huge crowd.

Until tonight, I have never been up close with a world famous jazz group or rock band, one whose music could make one’s heart melt, feel warm all over and fall in love like a little girl.

They all look elegant in their suits and bow ties, as in the heyday of Shanghai jazz in the 1930s and 40s.

Stepping inside the bar is a trip to a different era, to Shanghai’s bygone days. The soulful music transports you. You hear the variety of rhythms, improvisation and the blues. The band makes you forget where you are; you get lost in the moment. It was a rabbit hole of sorts.

Indeed, nostalgia rules. And why not? The Old Jazz Band plays classic jazz, harking back to the 30s and 40s when most of World War II took place and had a profound effect on Europe and Asia. They play Beatles songs, too.

The Guinness World Records has acknowledged the band as the oldest in the world.

The band was official formed in 1980 but its members have been playing jazz decades earlier. Today, it is composed of six veteran musicians whose average age is 80.

Zhou Wanrong, the leader of the band, is 94 years old.

According to an article in the Shanghai Daily, Zhou was born in 1920 in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s Hubei province. He studied music at an institute named Juyuan in Wuhan’s former French concession.

It was in this school where jazz in China originated.

“I started when I was 14 and studied for three years,” he says.

However, in the 1930s, Wuhan banned dancing and jazz, so Zhou moved to Shanghai to form an all-Chinese band in what became the center of jazz in Asia.

In 2013, German documentary filmmakers Uli Gaulke and Helge Albers produced a documentary about the group: As Time Goes By, which followed the band from 2011 to 2012, including its gig at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam.

The band plays here every night. “We’ve been playing everyday since 1980,“ Zhou says.

The group has attracted a loyal following through the decades. US presidents Jimmy Carter and 

Ronald Reagan have traveled to Shanghai to listen to them.

We stay for more than an hour. I forget the time and the biting cold. I am just enjoying the music and getting lost in the moment. 

But soon it is time to go. It is almost 11 in the evening and I am sipping the last of my tea.

The musicians have packed their instruments and off they walked to a waiting private bus outside the hotel.

I don’t want to leave. But there’s no one on the stage now; the seats are empty, the spotlights have been dimmed. 

Then I realize that hearing them play even once is enough to make the music linger, to reverberate in the deepest recesses of my soul, echoing as we walk out into the cold on the Bund.

Notes from Heartbreak Hill

Curtains close. Music stops. Kisses end. Some good things never last. Moments, however intense, disappear with the passing of time.

Perhaps, ours disappeared with the cherry blossoms blown away by the February breeze or as we stood up there in the mountain that took my breath away. Or perhaps, in the middle of the night as dragons breathed fire and red lanterns lit up the night, you just decided that you would leave.  

Or maybe, you weren't ready or you couldn't. Or you simply just had to go. No goodbyes. 

It was short, sweet and forever etched in my heart. You have made your mark. I will find comfort in the possibility that we had. 

Who was it who said that one can never go back to the same place ever? We can never go back to the way things were. 

Not a day will go by without me succumbing to the misery of losing the “we,” the “us,” the “you and I." It has rearranged everything inside me into an incoherent, incomprehensible narrative.

There's no lesson in all this, no sense at all, just pain -- a deep, profound and lingering pain. 

The Stories of Comfort Women

One of the most difficult stories I've covered and written is the continuing story of the comfort women.

They are the Filipinas who were raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers, members of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. They are euphemistically called comfort women as they were forced into sexual slavery during the war.

Every time I talked to them, I often had a difficult time listening to their painful stories. But as a journalist, I just could not ignore such stories, no matter how painful they may be. It is my responsibility because I am privileged to be born at the time when they are still able to tell their stories. It is an honour to bear witness to their stories. I fervently hope that they would finally be given the apology and compensation they very much deserve.

Happy 2016!

And so it is. 

flowers from my mini garden

Nepal. One of the highlights of our 2015

Nepal 

Nepal

Nepal

Nepal 

Korea 2015

the Lumads of Mindanao

Another year has come to a close. I cannot thank the universe enough for a year filled with much love and blessings. 

2015, like 2014, has been kind, indeed. 

It is a year filled with stories, photographs, travels, hugs, kisses, flowers, Oscar moments, long drives, a blooming mini garden and bells. 

As we enter another year, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the new year would continue to be filled with only the best. 

Namaste everyone! Have a great 2016! 

From Brazil to Quiapo: Informal Market Worlds

I am happy to share this newly published atlas on the informal markets of the world, which includes my story on Quiapo, published by NA1010 PUBLISHERS.

Thank you to Peter Mortenbock of the University of Vienna, the brains behind the project. I am honoured to be part of this. 

Scenes from the 24th EJAP Journalism Awards Night

We won! My fellow Star reporters and I won in this year's EJAP awards. Yehey! Thank you EJAP and to the esteemed panel of judges.  Read about the awards night here.

It's always good to see long lost friends

This is me with my trophy 

Here with my amigas, Alena and Lenie

Pananampalataya

It is quiet in the confession booth, except perhaps for the whispers of sinners seeking salvation from strangers in white robes. Men and women, thieves, vagabonds, adulterers, lonely mistresses — sinners they all are — will kneel and confess their acts before they do it all again, in another time, another day.

There is a soldier, slumped on his back, perhaps dead or dying, perhaps wounded or too weak to stand. His gun-wielding comrades are by his side. They are in the middle of a battle, or the war has just begun. All are fighting for their lives.

In a place named Tacloban, after the world came to an end when

 Super Typhoon Haiyan struck, a man stands in the middle of the chaos. He has almost nothing, no shirt, no bags, no home; just a black rosary he wears around his neck.

This is faith, held deeply by nearly every man, woman and child in this predominantly Catholic country of 100 million people. There is sometimes no rationality or reason but faith, nevertheless, serves its epistemic function here in this country where more than 25 million Filipinos are mired in deep poverty. It is an end to contradictions or at the center of ironies.

Faith is expressed in many ways and the differences are stark and telling. The ways are varied, as they are endless.

And the different ways by which Filipinos hold on to their faith are vividly captured in a collection of images by five Filipino photojournalists: Jose Enrique Soriano, Veejay Villafranca, Jake Verzosa, Carlo Gabuco, and Jes Aznar.

The result is Pananampalataya --the Filipino word for faith -- an exhibition, which is part of the inaugural PhotoBangkok Festival, an ongoing international photography festival in Bangkok, Thailand.

Pananampalataya is presented by AsianEye Gallery, an online gallery that aims to raise the profile of veteran and emerging Asian photographers and to encourage collectors from all over the world to discover and appreciate their vision and works.

“Any simple attempt at describing the belief systems native to a Filipino is likely to be inadequate. The Filipino photographer is unique when juxtaposed with the rest of his Asian and Western counterparts. The artist comes from an archipelago composed of 7,107 islands in Southeast Asia, and is greatly influenced by the country’s history of popular struggles. One unparalleled historical factor which explains the distinctiveness of the Philippines in Asia, is its prolonged history under direct colonial domination. Colonialism in the Philippines began in the sixteenth century, as in Latin America – 300 years earlier than most Asian countries. The worldview of Filipinos reflects a strong Hispanic and Christianized influence, with the Catholic Church contributing to this. The Filipino is the fruit of this integration. And what is integral in this integration is the faith (pananampalataya) of its people - a faith in a force (tadhana) that determines the destiny of its people,” according to the exhibition notes.

Pia Artadi, the Filipina behind AsianEye, says she wanted to show the world the unique talent of Filipino photographers.

“I wanted to portray how strong the work of Filipino photographers are and unique all over the world,” Artadi says.

On the subject of faith, Artadi says its universality remains profound and that she wanted to share Filipinos’ practice of faith to a wider audience that in the process, they may find a common ground.

She says the gallery is proud to be part of the inaugural Photo Bangkok Festival.

Piyatat Hemmatat, director of PhotoBangkok 2015 said the festival, which would go on for two months, aims to elevate the development of the creative community through the next generations.

“As we believe that our country is full of passionate creative artists with promising photographic capability and potential, it is inevitably now that all concerned parties come together to work hand in hand in creating an integrated platform that leads the works of Thailand’s photographers to an international stage,” he said.