A scrapbook of the zeitgeist
dedicated to the dakou generation;
It’s the new sound of the city –
Catalogue cut-outs from trash migration,
From cunning middlemen with a gash saw
to a table set up on university streets;
Cultural anarchy in black market bags –
No refunds and untraceable receipts,
Youth, as water, will find the way –
The Catcher In The Rye has New Pants;
Horizons broaden for the time travellers
prepared to take half a chance.
Inspired by this article at beijingscene.com by Jeremy Goldkorn and Su Fei back in 1999.
Da kou is the Chinese term for catalog cut-out CDs and cassettes that have been gashed with a saw to prevent resale. Record companies in the West can save money by destroying surplus stock, but the law only requires that a small gash be sawed into the disk or cassette (and packaging), which renders the product “destroyed,” in a legal sense. The music is still listenable: sawn cassettes are easy to repair, and on CDs the gash only ruins the last song or two of an average-length LP. Cunning middlemen then sell the gash-sawed items as “scrap” to poorer countries where copyright laws are lax, such as the People’s Republic of China.
1994ever 