Buskers: NY subway / Chinese street

Largely ignored, a busker at Manhattan’s West 4th Street subway plays a traditional Chinese stringed instrument, with little apparent joy. The amplifier he brings helps the music rise above the cacophony. The instrument’s high, sliding sound echos though the filthy station, and when the train comes, blends with the screech of metal wheel on metal rail.

Dressed in worn clothes, a busker sits on a dusty street in 1982 China playing a similar stringed instrument with a rough bow. Mao had died a few years earlier, and the country was poor; food was scarce, and the khaki or blue clothing the Great Helmsman favored was nearly ubiquitous. Still, the man with the red shirt behind the musician is evidence that change is coming.

On this quiet road, the music sounds clearly, but as in the subway, 40 years and half a world away, few stop to listen.

05/06/2023