What is a person belonging to the zodiac sign Scorpio and with blood group type A like?
The Scorpio person is said to be emotional and intuitive, compulsive and obstinate, while people with blood type A are supposed to be introverted, pessimistic and need their own space.
This is exactly the personality of singer-songwriter Zheng Jun, who tends to link many things in his life to his zodiac sign and blood type. Any surprise then that even the main protagonist of his first novel that he wrote two years ago, is a singer, a Scorpio with blood type A.
Zheng has not produced a single album in two years and has no popular song to his credit in four years. But he will make a rare appearance on Saturday at the Workers' Gymnasium.
In contrast to Beijing's falling temperatures, Zheng's 146-page novel is entitled The Warm Kitchen Knife (Caidao Wennuan) and his show Warm Whoop (Wennuan Nahan).
Autobiographical?
One evening at Logos, the bar he opened a few years ago near Beijing's East Third Ring Road and adorned with his own paintings the 38-year-old veteran singer talked to China Daily about his music and life.
Why this frequent use of the word "warm."
"I am looking for warmth and I hope my songs will make the listeners feel warm," says Zheng. "My expectation of the concert is that the exciting rock pieces will stir the audience while the soft love songs will make them want to cry."
In the preface to his novel, Zheng writes: "Life is a kitchen knife and we are a cauliflower or a white gourd on the chopping board, craning the neck for cutting. The metal knife should be sharp and cold but when it touches my neck, I feel an unexpected warmth. It might be because my hot blood is splashing."
He wrote the novel in spring 2003 when he spent the SARS days at a friend's farm in the suburbs of Tianjin.
The novel is a triangular love story involving a band singer named Wen Nuan (Warmth) and two women, besides stories about Wen Nuan and his friends.
Some of Zheng's friends have said that it is an autobiographical novel featuring the singer's life and career in the industry. And Zheng himself admits that Wen Nuan and many characters in the novel are based on himself and his friends. Many details are from his life.
But he emphasizes that it is not an autobiography. "I wrote it to record my youth and share it with my friends who have walked these years with me. So many things read very true and you can guess who is who in the story. But I can't say it is an autobiography," he said.
Although The Warm Kitchen Knife may not be top-rate literature, readers can get a peek into both Zheng as an individual and as a social person, his views and values and his happiness and depressions.
Zheng writes about things that he wanted to do but did not in his life. For instance, the novel character Wen Nuan says no to doing silly promotion programmes on radio and TV and curses the DJ for not knowing anything about music and merely flattering the listeners. The A type Scorpio person does not like to show off in public, but Zheng has often had to do promotions, whether he liked to or not.
Zheng creates a tragic ending to his novel in which Wen Nuan's lover Jing dies in a car accident as the couple try to elope and Wen Nuan shoots himself to death. Zheng says he has thought of committing suicide a few times since he was 8.
In reality, Zheng lives with his wife and daughter and leads a somewhat peaceful life. Zheng joked that when all his dreams came true, he wanted to jump off a skyscraper.
Most of his childhood dreams including having big pet dogs, writing novels and painting have been realized. But he added that there are still some unfulfilled dreams, refusing to elaborate.
"If you know all my dreams, you would know when I will jump from the window," he laughed.
Few albums
Since he walked into the music scene in 1994, Zheng has released merely five albums in 11 years and done just one show in Shanghai.
"I am a perfectionist," he said. "If I do something, I hope it to be the best. I had planned the gig in Beijing several times in the last 10 years, but none materialized because the presenting company or the record company and I could not reach a consensus on what the show should be like.
"They wanted a sell-out pop gig while I stuck to a real rock & roll night for true fans," Zheng said.
Two years ago, he opened his own company and roped in new singers. Zheng focused on producing. It is only now that he has the time to work on his new album and it is also the time to present the concert, he said.
He said he would sing some 26 to 27 songs on Saturday night. The list will include his signature songs, Naked, Back to Lhasa and Cinderella.
Loyal fans can also look forward to Nu Fang, The Happy Bullet and One Third Idea the latter bagged him the Video Music Award by MTV in August 2002.
The past five years have seen him engaged in works other than music such as opening a bar, operating a farm, doing some foreign trade and playing in a movie. Above all, there was the novel.
Zheng said he also wrote songs though fans have yet to hear them. "I love music but not the profession of singer," he said. "Being a singer one must make compromises, sacrifices and barter music or your ideal. I don't want to make a living by singing. I try to build a strong financial foundation in other ways to be able to make music my true love.
"I do not care how many albums I release or how many people buy my albums. I create according to my mood and don't want to write songs pressed by somebody or by deadlines," he said.
He admits that he often acts on sudden impulse. On the night of November 6, his friends were celebrating his birthday at his bar. Around 4 am, a drunken Zheng suddenly rushed out into the street, stopped a cab and hurried to the airport, leaving all his friends behind.
"There was nothing on my mind, I just felt tired of life. I was so eager to fly to my hometown to see my mother, or to a place where nobody knows me an escape from Beijing," he recalled.
However, no flight was available to take him anywhere at 4 am. He slept on a chair at the airport for a few hours before returning to his routine life.
Turning point
He said the first escape of his life was from his hometown Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province to Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang Province after graduating from high school.
"I wanted to escape from my mother's care and a brother who was extremely strict with me."
Brought up by his mother, Zheng said he felt grown at 7, when his father died. "When I saw my father's body in the hospital, I began to think the ultimate question: For what does man live in the world."
In 1987, he enrolled as a foreign trade major at the Hangzhou Electronic Engineering Institute. The course of study was hardly thrilling, but the foreign professors introduced him to many songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen. He was fascinated and he started listening to Western music of the 1960s and 70s, forming bands and playing around the campuses in Hangzhou.
He quit college in the senior year when a friend offered to help him study in the United States. However, it took him almost two years to get a visa. Music was his only relief in those years of waiting. He taught himself music theory and composition techniques and also performed with friends at the local bars.
His life changed when he went to Beijing to get the US visa. He ran into Guo Chuanlin, manager of the rock outfit Black Panther (Heibao). Guo advised him to ditch his studies and turn to music full time after listening to Zheng's demo of a few English songs.
He was overjoyed and saw his dream of becoming a singer coming true. But when he returned to Xi'an with the visa in hand, he became hesitant. His mother had booked the air ticket and packed his things. He called Guo again and he just said: "Come on, why not?"
"I was so impetuous that I took the luggage to Beijing. Few are the important opportunities in one's life. I love music and dreamt of being a singer. If I didn't give it a try, I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life."
In January 1992, Zheng signed a contract with Red Star Productions and released his first album "Naked" the next year. It was an immediate success with most of the songs being those that Zheng wrote while waiting for the visa. "Naked," "Back to Lhasa" and "Cinderella" soon became national hits.
But it took him nearly three years to release the second album, The Third Eye in 1997 and then Nu Fang in 1999.
"For a writer-singer, four original albums and a rearranged one is a ridiculously small number," he said. "But I don't really care. Over the last 11 years, I've learned to respect my own will, and I'll just do what makes me happy," said Zheng.
(China Daily December 3, 2005)
