Christy Moore Box Set Pirated in China

I reported some time back that there’s a Chinese singer doing a Mandarin version of Ride On, a mid-1990s hit for Irish balladeer Christy Moore. Well there may be more covers of the Kildare man’s in the East. Moore’s vaguely Pink Floyd-looking (the design is clean lines of primary colours on black) 1964 – 2004 box set is on sale at RockLand, a tiny pink-painted music store on Nanguangfang Hutong, run by the shaggy haired folk fan Xiao Zhan. You’re encouraged to choose the cheap version, neatly labeled CDs in rough brown envelopes burned on Xiao’s computer. So it’s RMB60 (about EUR6), compared to RMB300 (EUR30) he’s slapped on the original box.

One of the smallest, snuggest CD stores I’ve ever been in, Xiao Zhan’s cottage enterprise could mean that we’ll have Mandarin versions of Moore songs like Hey Paddy or the Enniskillen Dragoon – or the Knock song? – on Chinese radio soon. Xiao says he’s a fan of Moore – there’s also David Gray and Leonard Cohen, as well as lots of smaller singer-songwriter names on the shelves. Though CD factories in southern China manufacture batches of pirate copies of popular CDs the Rockland operation suggests there's also a counterfeiter and an audience in China for more obscure western artists.

RockLand is one of several music shops in Beijing’s old Houhai quarter, an increasingly bohemian/backpacker quarter sprouting out of narrow old grey-stone streets winding around the artificial lakes dug hundreds of years ago for the pleasure of the nearby palace. Several similarly tiny CD shops offer a slew of imported CDs, most of them the clearings of European music retailers. Details are very sketchy – one retailer said the CDs were part of lots manufactured in China for export before backtracking when I asked him about the price and promotion stickers of French and German shops. The CDs are possibly picked up along with electronic waste, paper and lots of other things Europe doesn’t want and put in the otherwise empty containers being shipped back to China.

Through some connivance at the ports the CDs enter China without being taxed – it’s unlikely cut CDs would be pass any country’s quarantine inspection procedure. Another CD shop owner told me his CDs were taken from a shipment of waste plastic. Whatever, there’s some great stuff here: among the pile I bought are Ryan Adams & The Cardinals, The Originals best of and Van Morrison’s latest. Prices were RMB40, RMB10, RMB10, respectively. I was charged extra for the Cardinals because it’s a double CD.