OPINION> Columnists
Muzak like a cancer grows in the Eden of silence
By Mark Hughes (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-03 07:55

Muzak like a cancer grows in the Eden of silence

A brook babbled its merry way over gravel and around boulders, stirring reeds and splashing stones. The silver birches glistened in a gentle breeze, shading us from a strong sun set in a cobalt blue sky. Wildfowl dabbed for passing morsels and fish glinted in the clear waters.

Occasionally, an egret rose majestically from its treetop perch and flapped languidly to another resting place to dream of a supper of fat carp dined on at leisure.

It was a scene from Arcadia, a land of milk and honey from which the woes of the outside world were banished. Or it would have been but for a dreadful intrusion: music was being piped from speakers set in trees at regular intervals. Or, more accurately, it was its diminished runt of a cousin, muzak.

Welcome to Beijing Olympic Forest Park, destination extraordinaire for fans of elevator music with its melodies so simple they can, and are, repeatedly looped back until you are brainwashed into humming them or you break free into the welcoming roar of the never-too-distant traffic. The cacophony of one of the ring roads presents easier, more understandable listening.

If the aural senses are to be assaulted at this beauty spot, a lung of greenery in the big, dusty, hot metropolis, why does it have to be with noises that make a heavily-sedated Richard Clayderman, that maestro of the musically mundane, sound inspired?

Why not at least a nod in the direction of the Middle Kingdom musical scores or the pastoral tradition?

At least they drew inspiration from the natural world and evoke the great outdoors in all its glorious majesty. Whoever thought that piping music to hikers in what must be one of the most beautiful and surprising venues in any city in any country, as if they were shoppers to be lured into unnecessary purchases, needs their head examined.

People who visit the countryside to enjoy nature in all its full glory are not going there to hear artificial auditory constructs. They want to hear bird song, the wind in the willows, cascading water or, even, the sound of silence.If they want muzak, they are welcome to spend a day in the lift at my apartment block.

Hu Jie, director of the Landscape Planning and Design Institute at the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Tsinghua University, rightly deserves awards for leading the landscaping of the Olympic Forest Park. The combination of hills, woods and water is a tribute to China's imperial parks and a marvel of good feng shui practice.

But I have yet to find a feng shui master who advocates a boxed set of the greatest easy listening tracks (250 yuan at a music store near you) to accompany his designs. Trickling water, wind chimes, gongs - yes. But The James Last Orchestra Plays An Arrangement Of Zhou Jielun's Best Hits for four hours is a definite no-no.

Where will the artificialization of nature end? Will future parks have plastic trees, turf and boulders? Will they be indoor, all-weather venues with clever lighting to simulate the sun, the moon and the sky? Or will virtual versions of them be enjoyed while the "consumer" sits at a computer desk plugged into some exotic software like the "vacations" people go on in the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster Total Recall?

Perhaps if we end up opting for the latter, as Mother Nature utters her last howls of anguish at man's concreting of the land, the false memories implanted into people's brains could at least be accompanied by the original, atmospheric Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack.

Of course life is experienced in one's head, but while we still have the full complement of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell, let's keep those senses intact in the natural world.

Nature has yet to be vanquished. She was invited to grace the Olympic Forest and has done so with admirable taste, deploying her colors, shapes and moods elegantly and with subtlety.

Pull back a palm frond at the northernmost point of the Fifth Ring Road and take a peek.

You may not see Adam and Eve but you will find the Garden of Eden, a veritable paradise on Earth.

Go there and explore its wonders, relish the peace and calm. Follow its trails. Stop and admire its vistas. Breathe in the fresh air. But make sure you take an iPod loaded with the true sounds of nature.

And bring me back the head of the park's music director on a platter so I can examine it.

(China Daily 07/03/2009 page13)