Throwback Thursday: The Golden Days of Beijing Live Music Legend Yugong Yishan

Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our eleven-year-strong blog archives to glance at the weird and wonderful of yesteryear.

"The Old Man Moves Mountains" or Yugong Yishan (愚公移山) is a Chinese fable about an elder who persevered in the most foolish of endeavors. The mountain by the man's house forced many a traveler to make a detour. So he decided to dig that summit away with his shovel, and somehow succeed in doing so. Interesting as that age-old tale may be, this Throwback instead focuses on the more recent past.

Nestled away near many of Beijing's most famous hutongs, Yugong Yishan has long been known as one of Beijing's best music venues. That is until recently. The dimly lit, cracked-wall livehouse has hosted world-renowned bands like Apocalyptica, CocoRosie, Toro y Moi, and others over the years.

And while it hasn't yet held a rowdy bash to mark its end, Yugong Yishan has been quiet for the last few months. So what is going on? No official comments about the future of Yugong Yishan have been released and, upon inquiry, the Beijinger has been refused an update. Only the constant last-minute venue changes for the shows, that started more than a year ago, hinted that the venue was going through troubled times. 

This year marks Yugong Yishan's nineteenth anniversary. That is a considerably long run for any establishment in our tumultuous city. Despite temporary closures and two location changes dotting the venues' timeline, it still stands. Just like the fable that it is named after, Yugong Yishan refused to stop working its way through unfavorable conditions.

Back in 2008, a documentary about Yugong Yishan was screened at... Yugong Yishan! The trailer for the film can be found here. It highlights many of the venue's best gigs up to that point and explains why the owners named it after the fable about the old fool. Director Joanna Vasquez Arong, a Beijing resident since 2002, began her filmmaking career with the feature-length movie Neo Lounge that explored the wild and exciting lives of a few Beijingers. 

Arong claims she saw the spirit of that old man in the mind behind Yugong Yishan, Lu Zhigang, a.k.a Gouzi. Therefore, she agreed that Gouzi's choice to name the livehouse Yugong Yishan was more than apt. She at once decided to shoot a documentary about the place. The filmmaker claimed she was not merely making a movie about music in Beijing, but rather about the spirit behind it.

While Yugong Yishan's prospects remain uncertain for now, we hope its team will be like that noble old fool, refusing to put down their shovels and leave that mountain. 

Images: Beijinger, d-a-d.dk, Youtube

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