ELLIOTT: What are you trying to say with “The Chinese Wave”? TAN: The [musicians] and audience are very much confused about the past, and they have lost confidence in the future. Musicians are a little bit jet lagged; they don’t know how to communicate with the audience. I want to reconnect them.

Do the musicians think this stuff is weird? Musicians forget that music should be vocalized, that they need to shout, to have eye contact. Like Paganini, Tchaikovsky and Mozart. We misunderstand Mozart, saying his was a purely academic, classical sound. He was such a lively human being, full of love of life and music. He was crazy at rehearsals–shouting; he was mad for music, mad for life. That is what I want to capture.

What are you working on now? I just spent 10 days in a Hunan village that is almost unchanged from 100 years ago. I plan to bring 30 farmers to London’s Barbican arts festival [in September 2000] to present their rituals–weddings, funerals and ghost operas, to show how they fall in love, how they sing songs, make shoes, textiles and rice cakes.

What do you see when you go back to China today? I feel so sad. I see them destroying the basic roots of their old traditions, the literature, the culture, the arts. All this renovation: on one side it’s great, but on another side it’s sad, so sad. They are losing the ability to appreciate quality–everything is becoming so tacky and cheap.

What was it like in the village? I appreciate the farmers so much. Rich people say, “That’s ugly, no good.” Their way of drinking, dressing, their way of living. I was shouting, we’ve got to get rid of this spiritual poverty and tackiness, this cheap materialism. People are only looking for plastic, not real things. Nobody appreciates things like good cotton anymore. It’s such shortsightedness. The Chinese have lost the ability to appreciate what they had. They are tearing down old villages. If China doesn’t preserve its traditions now, it will be too late. Why can’t we learn our lessons earlier?

Is China producing great art or music? This is a tragic period for our culture. In five or 10 years, if China continues on the same path, the economy will be great, but in terms of culture, they will be embarrassed. They will find that they have created nothing great in their culture.

How do you explain what’s happening? It all goes back to the Cultural Revolution. The cultural officials and musicians have jet lag. They are not educated.

But the Cultural Revolution was more than 20 years ago. Those people are in charge now. Young people are not challenged by the educational system. The educational system is bankrupt; it is falling down.

What’s your background? I lived in a village with my grandmother while my parents, a doctor and a nutritionist, worked in the city. When I was 9, the Cultural Revolution began, and they were sent to clean pigpens and be barefoot doctors. I was left alone. I ate in canteens or in the street, with aunties looking in occasionally on me. I thought it was great until I graduated from middle school and was told I would have to work forever on a farm and accept re-education.

How did you survive in the village? I organized the villagers to play operas every night. Then, when Mao died, I joined a Peking Opera troupe as conductor. I was already quite well known locally. They reopened the central conservatory, and I joined. Fifty thousand people applied for 10 positions in the composition department. Today everybody wants to be a businessman or a lawyer. Last year at one school they were looking for 10 students in the composition department, and they got only nine applicants from all over the country.

Do you still feel you are a Chinese musician? I love China. There are so many things I want to contribute, but there is no way to connect.

Is there something you can do? I want to go on a “shouting tour” with well-known Overseas Chinese and mainland intellectuals, to urge the Chinese to protect their roots. If we have a good future, it’s because we have well-preserved roots.