Popcorn and Strauss: it's a Chinese thing

Western culture is served with a twist in the People's Republic, says Christopher Wood

In an old New Yorker cartoon, a couple of America's movers and shakers are enjoying a cocktail. "You're leaving out one thing, Frank," says one to the other. "Asia."

All evidence suggests it's an omission worth rectifying. In China, for example, where our very own Royal Philharmonic Orchestra went on tour last month, preparations were underway for an Olympics (2008), while here we squabble over whether to put in a bid or not. They build new tube lines (Guangzhou's second opened the day the RPO played there), we have breakdowns and crashes on old ones. Here it has been announced that jobs in manufacturing are disappearing at 10,000 a month. There they make things: on my desk, the fax machine, phone, printer, light, light bulb, notebook, pen. Thank god for the Czech Republic-assembled computer, keeping the West's end up.

But despite outstripping us in most things, the Chinese remain fascinated with western culture, and on New Year's Eve the RPO was invited to share the stage of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. The orchestras combined to play some famous chunks of western classical music – including Strauss's waltz "Roses from the South", a favourite of President Jiang Zemin who thought the occasion important enough to turn up in person. Unsurprisingly, his countrymen did him proud.

"It taught us a bit of humility, because we thought the Beijing would be much less good than the orchestras in our country," says RPO leader Shirly Laub. "Culture and education are not the same, so you don't know what you're going to find. But they were very good."

Although possibly not good in quite the same way. "Discipline is enormous," says Laub, "and they always try to copy each other's fingerings and do exactly what the leader does. At home there is a little more freedom and the idea that having different things will blend better. They think if everyone does the same, it will be better. It's a different philosophy."

The philosophy of concert going – which in the West demands a religious hush be maintained in the concert hall – is also rather different in China. Many Chinese cough and talk throughout the music as if they were at home listening to a CD. People troop in and out, like in a jazz club. Children gambol in the aisles. At the RPO's first concert, which took place in a 7,000-seater basketball arena in Guangzhou, a young entrepreneur walked about selling binoculars. Popcorn was consumed. Mobiles chirruped constantly: the first item was the overture to Carmen, encored during the second item by my neighbour's telephone. Security guards chatted and laughed on walkie-talkies, and during the break the PA broadcast pop music and adverts. Not quite the Royal Festival Hall.

But Barry Wordsworth, who was conducting the concert, didn't seem to mind. "I think listening to music is not for them a rarefied and holy experience," he said. "It's all part of life, and if the phone goes off, well so be it. They certainly don't seem upset by it. Although sometimes you think you might as well be doing a thé dansant or something, at the end it was clear that they were enjoying it, were attentive and that music is very important to them."

Important, and worth paying through the nose for. The top price for the RPO's two concerts in Shanghai was a staggering 1,800 Yuan (around £150), this in a country where a decent meal costs a few pounds. All five of the RPO's Chinese concerts were practically sold out, and when the Chinese are not flocking to hear western orchestras, they're doing it for themselves. In Shanghai, there are several orchestras boasting both western and Chinese instruments that perform programmes juxtaposing eastern and western items. Chinese tastes generally incline towards the conservative – but the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra did come over a few years ago and persuade audiences to sit through some thoroughly modern Thea Musgrave.

Chinese enthusiasm for western music seems to be not only much greater than ours for Chinese music, but can be indulged without threatening native traditions: as well as its western orchestras, Shanghai has numerous traditional Chinese orchestras and Chinese opera companies. "It's a different market," claims Li Jian, a Shanghai-born pianist who joined the RPO on tour. "There are hundreds of different types of music all over China. There's no way you can create a competition between the two – they're apples and oranges."

Chinese cultural appetites extend well beyond symphony orchestras. The British Council is this year making China a priority destination, sending out sculptor Antony Gormley to make an "immense sculptural installation", the band Morcheeba, an exhibition of contemporary British domestic architecture, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, and a "writers' train" that will traverse China with various British scribes on board. Just as it is liberalising its economics, China is opening cultural borders, and all this would have been unlikely if not impossible even a year ago. As the Council's director of performing arts, John Kieffer, says: "The pace of change is mindboggling."

And the result of all this cultural traffic? A British Council press release suggests it may help "shape consumer choices", but somehow money doesn't explain why the brass players of a British and a Chinese orchestra, none of whom spoke each other's language, should have spent the first hours of 2003 quite so convivially. Beer, of course, but maybe one also has to reach for some old and rather wonderful clichés.

Barry Wordsworth certainly thinks so. "It's confirmed everything that I've always felt about music," he concluded. "That it has the ability to break down barriers, both for audiences and the musicians themselves. After all, people of all nationalities left to themselves tend to get on rather well. It's only when they group into nations and get politicians behind them that they start fighting. With music, you don't have words to get in the way."

The RPO's complete Beethoven cycle, conducted by Daniele Gatti with pianist Freddy Kempf: Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 (020 7960 4242) from 25 March to 3 June