STREET hawkers and vendors calling out their wares, chirping cicadas, and pigeon whistles — these lost sounds of old Beijing street life and more can still be heard at a Beijing museum. By touching a screen in a small room at the Shijia Hutong Museum in Beijing, visitors can hear more than 300 old Beijing sounds that gradually fell silent due to its rapid development into a modern city. “Sharpen scissors and knives!” “Delivered to your doorstep! Blush, powder and embroidery needles!” Most of the sounds in the museum are hawkers’ cries. “Families living in hutongs used to buy most of their necessities from peddlers traveling through streets and lanes,” said Colin Siyuan Chinnery, the initiator of the sound project. Before the advent of supermarkets and convenience stores, merchants roamed through hutongs, the city’s labyrinth of traditional alleys, delivering goods and services to people’s doorsteps. Each of them had a unique noisemaker or chant for announcing their presence. “The peddling is loud but has a nice rhythm to it. I can feel people’s humor, optimism and energy through it,” said Li Ruting, a 28-year-old female traveler to Beijing from the southern Chinese city of Nanning. Old Beijing was a city of distinctive sounds. For visitors like Li, the museum recreates the city’s past life. Wang Lin, 26, came from the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. He was shocked when he learned that camels used to be the main vehicles carrying coal, silk, rice and other life necessities in Beijing 70 years ago. “I didn’t believe it until I heard the camel bells in the museum,” Wang said. “It must have been fascinating for people to see camels in their daily life.” “Most sounds of old Beijing are gone. That’s why I want to record it. Old sounds can still evoke people’s memories,” Chinnery said. As an artist living in China, 48-year-old Chinnery started the sound project in 2013 when the government of Dongcheng District sought his opinion about turning his grandmother’s old house into a museum. Majoring in Chinese culture at the University of London, Chinnery has spent many years working in the British Library on a project related to Dunhuang, an important component of the Silk Road culture. In 2002, Chinnery returned to the city. When Chinnery lived in Beijing as a child, the sounds of pigeon whistles emanating from Beijing’s streets left a deep and memorable impression on him. “I’ve never seen that in other countries,” he said. However, fewer and fewer pigeons with whistles can be found as time goes on. Therefore, Chinnery is developing a database of different the sounds that were once heard in the old alleyways. It took him a long time to find a 94-year-old former street hawker and record his shouts to advertise his goods and services. To recreate the original sound of camel bells, Chinnery went all the way to the desert and recorded the sound there. “Sounds can deliver messages about culture, history and personal feelings. I hope more people join me in preserving the vanishing sounds of Beijing and share their auditory memories,” Chinnery said. (Xinhua) |