Moving to China was a trip. San Diego to Haikou, Hainan Province. Not even Haikou actually, but a little city about a 45 minute Didi ride from the city center called Guilinyang; a village by my standards. I had moved to a city of two million people, much larger than the 1.4m or so back home. It’ll be fun I said. It’ll be a good time I said. There must be a bangin’ music scene I said.. Nope.
After a particularly entertaining bus ride of which I won’t go into detail for the privacy of all involved, I was invited to join the Cacophonists by Jenny Rumble and Mango. Shenanigans, inebriated hijinks, a Lucky the Care Bear onesie, and one burn later I was hooked. I needed more of this in my life. This chaotic, swirling, anarchist, beautiful mess that is burn culture. The costumes, the fuck your burn, and a group of people that were simultaneously the most expressive and the most accepting people I ever had the pleasure of being around. I was going back to Haikou. Fuck.
I don’t remember with whom or when it happened, but there was a conversation about the origins of Camp Cacophonia and the role of the San Francisco Cacophony Society in the formation of Burning Man, and by extension the regional burn I was now returning from. It was a story of pranks and cultural jamming, of dorks and misfits pushing the boundaries of acceptability in the name of art and novelty and sheer self-entertainment. I was hooked. This would be how I would gather my tribe in Haikou.
Stealing the format from the earliest Cacophony Societies and the then-named Shanghai Cacophony Society, I preached the gospel to my close friends, and Birds of a Feather was born with our first newsletter. It outlined a smattering of events that were relatively mild compared to some of the shenanigans that we’ve been up to since, but for the time and place, they were daring, interesting, and altogether different.
It wasn’t an easy transition for a lot of birds. The everyday pub culture had most of the expats hooked and the local culture in the city didn’t prioritize any sort of artistic exploration. In fact, it seemed like your typical tall-poppy syndrome. Things would only happen if a large enough group was doing them, and by both design and culture, the fledgling Haikou Cacophony was not that.
Until the outbreak of Covid-19, events had been just as varied as some of the original cacophony society events. 50 people down to 2. Sometimes 3 people attended. Sometimes we recruited as the night progressed. Sometimes the event host didn’t even show. Our largest event in town is an extension of Santa Con, started by OG Cacophony. Drunken shenanigans behind the anonymity of a beard and costume seem to be what get the people going. Bar owners and establishments serving all ranges of adult beverages run the gamut from hating us with the passion of a thousand suns to welcoming the red and white throng of Santas of all genders. We evidently love desecrating beloved cultural icons.
Now as I write this on Halloween of 2020, only returning to China less than a month ago, we have just released our 14th issue of Birds of a Feather and are looking forward to getting back to the hijinks and culture jamming. We’ll see how it goes with numbers, but frankly, I don’t give a fuck. This isn’t for the people. This is for me.