My column

Finally, I think Beijing Daily is going to publish my column. This is my third installment. I think I will be famous soon. Just kidding. No, seriously.

A World According to i-pod

American students listen to music every single minute, no matter whether they are working, studying, eating, jogging or sometimes even sleeping. In the past several years, Apple’s i-pod has become a ubiquitous school gear besides the backpack and notebook. If you also get this little metal box with white earphones, congratulation: welcome to the “cool-kid” club!

However, buying i-pod is not the only monetary investment. Music costs money too. For most students living in a dorm setting in China, pirated versions of music CD usually comes handy. The ultra-cheap price hides the real market values of the music. American students live in a totally different world. They would never suspect a plain-looking lady holding a baby on the street is actually a vendor of illegal disks. Talking about life experience……

Anyway, as the poorest among all demographics, college students usually get around by illegal downloading. The university has recently tightened the rules and several of my friends have received a warming email for their misbehaviors. However, this cannot stop brave souls from trying, as students exchange CDs and swap hard drives. Just in case my university is looking over my shoulder right now, I am here to declare that all the music in my i-pod is indeed legally procured. And conspicuously, I’ve lost all my receipts!

Some students in my dorm are hippie types. They seem to know the names of all rock bands and the histories of how each song was made. They go to all kinds of live performance, as if it is a ritual of coming of age. A big nerd as I am, I often suspect that not every performance is as fun as they describe. This reminds me that I used to always question the quality of pop music concerts in Beijing, although I had never been to one actually.

When we cook, two big speakers face the kitchen and blast loud music. Sometimes it is even hard to chat with people two feet away. People will sing along when the music is familiar. At one time, we kept playing the musical “Rent” over and over, and the kitchen would produce all different pitches of “five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year?” I figure the composer is a mathematician. Sometimes students get all hyped up, and they will do some happy dances along with the music.

American students’ love affair with the music is probably seeded early in their children. Churches are the art center of local communities, and a lot of kids participate in the chorus. Schools never force-feed students with academic materials, so students freely choose singing and dancing as their life inspiration. Recently, “American Idol” TV program has set up a dream workshop. Singing well, you are Kelly Clarkson. Singing awful, you are William Hung. Either way, you get a record deal and gain fame over night.

My taste of music has been changing under the influence of my friends in my dorm. The 3,600 songs in my i-pod have recorded the shifting landscape of the music dear to me. Some early favorites have been shuffled aside, and new songs gain prominent locations in the play-lists. After some painstaking research, I have found three tricks that, if I play masterfully, would make you well respected by cool kids in America. First, repeat after me, “I HATE Celine Dion!” (or even better, say, “I am over Madonna now.”) Second, procure as much knowledge about “the Beatles” as possible and always boast about that. Third, play a musical instrument, preferably guitar. Oh, did I forget to mention i-pod?