Don't play us a song Mr Piano Man

"For anyone who has ever wondered who in the world buys Richard Clayderman records, it's the Chinese, and there are a billion of them." Douglas Adams - "Last chance to see"

Errata - Douglas Adams wrote 'Last chance to see" in 1988, since then the Chinese population has grown to 1,338 billion according to the CIA World Fact Book.

In most public places we entered thus far in China, your ears are the first of your senses to suffer information overload. Whether it is from the shear noise of a crowd of people shouting at the top of their voices to be heard above all the others shouting at the top their voices or whether it be the Chinese pop music blaring out through the speakers, your ears suffer an enormous b(l)eating. I have learned to treasure silence...

In some of the more suave Chinese establishments there always seem to be piano music playing in the background, giving your ears a brief respite from the noise. At first I did not consciously recognise the music playing in the background but after a while I recognised the unmistakable sound of the one and only master pianist for the masses... Richard Clayderman. There is something about Richard and I am not sure what exactly it is...Sure, his tunes are popular...Three chord simplicity worked for the Beatles so Richard figured it'll work for him too. Richard has been around since the late 70's and he entered my childhood somewhere around primary school and judging on the zing in my ears when hearing his music, I realise that I might have OD'd on his music together with "Hooked on Classics" back in the eighties.

I stumbled on this description of the Clayderman brand of music when I tried to make sense of what I am hearing in China:

"Some see him as a symbol of Kitch. Clayderman has a curious market niche on third world countries, a fact mainly attributed by critics to his commercially oriented performance of local and very popular music (especially love songs), and cheap well distributed records. Some Chinese music teachers attribute the popularity of his music in mainland China to the increase in the number of piano students in the 1980's. Some people believe that the inverse is true, that there was an increase in piano students due to Clayderman".

Irene's theory is that when Richard became big in China (in the eighties), it marked a very significant period in China's history - the incident on that square in Beijing, and Deng Xiaoping's reforms that shaped modern China. Clayderman's music is maybe a sort of commemoration of a very significant period in Chinese history.

The Chinese are clearly besotted with the man and if you hear piano music it is almost guaranteed to be Richard Clayderman. Sorry, Lang Lang you'll have to practise harder!