I arrived in Beijing in late March 2005. Peter Cusack, David Toop and I were guests of the British Council. Our hotel was celebrating Easter, with a cordoned-off area for live chickens in the foyer where yellow balls of fluff pecked and strutted. A nearby building was painted with the English words Overseas Feeling in flamboyant, cursive script.

That afternoon we stood on a roof in the old Dashilar district and listened in amazement as pigeons circled above, many wearing whistles firmly attached to their tail feathers. The sound was a mobile flute organ, an eerie chord in the sky. We tracked down the local pigeon-fancier, an elderly man in a loft, and bought several whistles. Back home I sterilised them carefully. I read in a Chinese newspaper that historical accounts of whistling pigeons go back to the 11th century. But this is an endangered local sound that may disappear along with the traditional, low-rise hutong housing districts where they are kept as pets.

This was not my first trip to Beijing. In 1978 I spent a hectic 24-hour stopover in the city, en route to the UK after two years living in Japan. The culture shock after Tokyo was more than the technological gulf – hundreds of Beijing workers were out building a subway line largely by hand, digging enormous holes in the ground with spades. The shock was also in the noise of the city: uninhibited shouting was very un-Japanese, and thousands of cyclists bustled along broad highways. In Tiananmen Square, I heard eight-year-old children singing. It looked like an informal celebration of their school trip: there was no audience. It was more: here we are at last,  let’s sing a couple of songs. But the disciplined precision of the children’s delivery was uncanny. They hammered out their patriotic anthems in a harsh, machine-gun unison, no trace of raggedness, a hundred voices synchronised as one. This was a kind of ‘group mind’ ensemble singing, the like of which I had never heard.

Twenty-seven years later I was in Beijing again, to ‘listen to the city’ and make a piece of work in response to what I found. Among the artists invited to the Sound And The City project, I felt the odd one out. It occurs to me now that possibly each of us felt this way, but my background in sound installation and environmental recording was embarrassingly skimpy. I realised that even to regard myself as an artist, making an artwork, required a jolting shift of focus. I experienced a wave of liberation: those crazy, anything-goes gallery pieces, now I can do one of those. Then I noticed the project actually had a clear brief: ‘To encourage local people to think about their personal relationship with the city through sound.’ Given that this was China, a brutal way of doing this might have been to plaster the city with enormous posters, exhorting, ‘People of Beijing! Think about your personal relationship with the city through sound!’ But I didn’t have the nerve to do that, feeling I had only been an artist for about ten minutes. (Later I gave a talk to the Beijing Film Academy on environmental sound. My title was Your Sound And Your City. That would also make a good slogan for a poster campaign. At the Academy they had indeed put up posters to advertise my talk. They read: ‘Clive Bell: Hollywood On The Gold Coast’, far better than anything I could have devised.)

The sound of Beijing was certainly extraordinary, even though those thousands of creaking cyclists had been swept aside by a million cars. Apart from our flying pigeon musicians, a morning visit to the Temple Of Heaven Park brought us face to face with Peking opera singers, ballroom dancers, a gang of harmonica players, folk groups, rock groups and tap dancers, all making a racket, and all engaged in something poised between rehearsal, public performance and a weekly social get-together. Beijing’s parks seemed fabulously unpredictable venues, where you never knew which activity (water calligraphy? trombone scales?) lurked around the next corner. The following October, when I visited Brian Eno’s installation in Ritan Park, it made complete sense that people flew kites and chatted, and toddlers staggered about in the sunshine, while Eno’s calm bell sounds animated the circular, walled space.

In a teahouse we found a music room full of gu-chin zithers, where the old philosophers’ favourite instrument was still being taught. In the Tianqiao Bird Market we watched duelling diablo spinners trying to outdo each other in sheer volume, a kind of deafening spinning-top standoff. Meanwhile, in the hutong residential streets, only metres away from main roads, traditional quiet reigned. The click of a bicycle pulling a rag and bone cart, or a workman heartily spitting into the gutter, could be heard from far off.

I began to think about making a piece of work. With the embarrassment of the Western tourist, only too aware he knows almost nothing of this city and is illiterate in Chinese to boot, I felt at first I should make a work about my own home sound environment and take that to Beijing.

If a Chinese artist came to London and explored his impressions of Trafalgar Square, would I want to see that? Or would I prefer to hear about the streets of his home town? I worried about taking sonic coals to Newcastle. In fact, a Chinese writer called Chiang Yee did visit London in the 1930s, and subsequently wrote a book, The Silent Traveller In London. Even his title has soundscape implications. One New Year’s Day he was passing through Camden Town on a bus when the daylight turned into a ‘thick, yellowish shroud’ of fog. Yee left the bus. ‘Hardly seeing anything, I walked on the pavement and had many amusing adventures; once I struck a pillar-box, then I found myself clutching a man’s hands; as we bumped into each other we broke into a laugh but could not see each other’s face clearly.’

After a few days walking around Beijing with a MiniDisc recorder, I had several interesting field recordings. But rather than work directly with these, I was becoming seduced by the sheer energy of something else that kept poking itself into the soundscape: the local pop music. I wondered if I might have an amusing adventure here. Pop was everywhere, as a backdrop to shopping, eating, hairdressing, TV. Competition from Western pop and rock seemed feeble, which was a difference from other Asian countries I had visited. I started to see mainstream Chinese pop as the soundtrack to the city’s daydream about itself. Sweet, sentimental and insanely popular, pop was not so much the elephant in the living room as the giant meringue.

Near my hotel were shops selling CDs and DVDs. I walked into one shop that had no customers at all. A song was playing on a screen, and the three girls staffing the shop were all singing along confidently; not just the chorus, they knew the lyrics of every verse. Back in my room I switched on the TV. A camera panned across a vast, shadowy audience in a park. Every generation seemed to be there, a throng fading into darkness at the edges, at least 50,000 strong. On stage a demure woman and a slightly more demonstrative man sang at a white grand piano; or not really a piano, more a florid, Plexiglas sculpture inspired by the general idea of a piano. A version of this show was on TV every night.

Shamelessly commercial pop is below the radar of many artists and intellectuals, almost by definition. It’s the rotting mainstream to which we desperately need an alternative, even an antidote. It’s kitsch, it’s trash, it’s what’s wrong with China. Much better to explore rock or underground music, which are frequently persecuted by the government. But Chinese rock, from its leather jackets to its anti-establishment anger, has arguably borrowed images and tropes wholesale from the West, resulting in a grimly macho pose that many find hard going. Sweet pop melodies, crooned by girls or boys with peacock hairstyles and soft-edged gender identities, offer a comforting oasis in the hard lives of modern China. A space where society can daydream of other possibilities before returning to harsh reality.

Musicologist Stephen Jones’s book, Plucking The Winds, recounts his fieldwork among ritual musicians in a village near Beijing. Jones loves this invigorating shawm, gong and mouth-organ music, and has learned to play it himself. He despairs that these skilled village musicians are also expected to play popular songs on synth and drum kit at weddings. He double despairs on discovering they enjoy it. There’s an amusing passage in his book where Jones watches a New Year pop concert on Chinese Central TV. He asks his village friends whether they approve of this sentimental music, and they say no; but then it emerges that what they prefer is less ‘modernised’ pop, that is, still more sentimental.

A book I found very helpful in understanding pop’s special place in China is China’s New Voices by Nimrod Baranovitch. Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power in 1978 ushered in the Reform Era, a new phase of Chinese history. The previous generation had virtually no contact with the outside world, and their cultural activities were largely controlled by the Communist Party. Popular songs dealt with love of the homeland, the Party or Chairman Mao. Suddenly, with an influx of gangtai songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, other kinds of love could be expressed. Baranovitch quotes the mainland singer Jia Ding, on encountering the restrained, whispery singing of Taiwanese singer Deng Lijun (aka Teresa Teng): ‘The first time I heard Deng Lijun’s songs was in 1978. I just stood there listening for a whole afternoon. I never knew before that the world had such good music. I felt such pain. I cried. I was really very excited and touched, and suddenly realised that my work in the past had no emotional force.’

I planned to make a work based on reinterpreting currently successful songs. With the British Council’s help, I compiled a list of songs, with literal translations of the lyrics. I wanted to rewrite the lyrics so they would work in English, and rearrange the songs so they would satisfy me as fresh versions, while leaving the music instantly recognisable to any listener who already knew this material. We would make hundreds of copies of this ‘homage’ album, distribute it freely to cafés, shops and hairdressers all over Beijing, and wait for the reaction. I imagined my ideal Beijing listener, surprised by hearing a new version of their current favourite song: the language has changed, the singer has aged by maybe 50 years, and there’s a warped soprano sax solo on the instrumental break, but it’s the same song and it’s still about loving you like a mouse loves the rice. Then this ideal listener would set about rethinking their personal relationship with the city through sound… or some other thought process I couldn’t yet put my finger on.

My own practice as a musician has often strayed into pop. I learned to play the shakuhachi flute in Japan, and the khene mouth-organ in Laos and Thailand, but I have always enjoyed finding a place for these instruments in the context of a song. In my own group, British Summertime Ends, and in Kazuko Hohki’s Frank Chickens, I have helped write and produce, and I snatched a glance at the BBC Radio One playlist through working with Asian singer Bindu. Other collaborators have included Jah Wobble, Jeff Beck, Kelsey Michael, Bing Selfish and even the Chinese female singer Liu Sola when she was resident in London. In Beijing I was intrigued as to why pop arrangers used so few Chinese instruments, except as occasional exotic references to far-flung corners of China. There are obviously issues of cultural self-confidence here, and the cultural cringe towards the West. By using my own Asian instruments frequently, I wanted to reintroduce those sounds as just part of a normal repertoire for pop production. Maybe a British cover version could have more Asian elements than the Chinese original.

On the other hand, the young audience for these songs seems to have already developed a pan-Asian identity. Whole swathes of Chinese pop magazines are devoted to Korean and Japanese artists, and within their covers the anti-Japan feelings prevalent among even educated Chinese appear to vanish. The Chinese fan happily follows an international music across north Asian borders, unconcerned that the languages are mutually unintelligible.

I named my project London Listens To Beijing Top Ten, hoping for echoes of Communist Party slogans like Learn From So-and-So Village. Sadly, Beijing has long ago ceased to have a Top Ten – I’m not sure whether music charts and Nick Hornby-style lists were ever big here – rather than buying records, it’s an age of downloading content, legally and otherwise, and bootleg CDs. Top Ten is a nod to my own childhood, a pre-television age of rural radio listening, where the weekly pop chart helped structure one’s schooldays.

Here is my list of songs, together with their singers:

1. ‘Aurora’, sung by Viv Corringham, original sung by Angela Chang

This has very poetic lyrics: ‘In the mysterious Arctic Circle, on the mountaintop of Alaska, whose face appears in the sky?/  The magic aurora borealis, the legendary prediction, is the eyes of lovers.’ I added a big band riff lifted from Carmen Miranda, plus Richard Bolton’s laconic guitar, and encouraged the wonderful Viv Corringham to bask in the wide-eyed wonder of the original. My new chorus: ‘Don’t be so surprised if you see Aurora inside lovers’ eyes – blink and then it’s gone.’

2. ‘Fragrance Of Seven Miles’, sung by Clive Bell, original sung by Jay Chow

This has ‘hit’ written all over it, and was pieces like this that made me realise Chinese songwriters these days know exactly what they are doing. With its strings, gamelan and clever backing voices, this has an impressive arrangement, and Jay Chow knows when to toss in a vulnerable yodel effect. I reggae’d up the chorus, and had more fun than is decent with extra backing vocals. Stereo goathorns (a cousin of the bagpipes) and a gong I bought in the Panjiayuan antiques market helped to roughen things up, and Richard Bolton unleashed the album’s only rockist guitar solo.

3. ‘To Piglet’, sung by Kazuko Hohki, original sung by Xiang Xiang

Fantastic! It sounds so innocent, but it’s a clever love song to a piglet. Is this the most Chinese song of all? ‘It is said that your ancestor had an eight-nail rake/ And the fortune-teller said that he is destined to have romantic affairs/ He laughs and jokes whenever there is a pretty girl/ Piglet, you have a nice head, body and tail.’ The chorus is as catchy as a skin condition. London-based Japanese pop maverick Kazuko Hohki was born to sing this song. My version has dancing flutes and a khene mouth-organ solo to add Thai spice.

4. ‘My Love For Hiroshima’, sung by Clive Bell & Sylvia Hallett, original sung by Zhang Hongliang & Karen Mo

This is a love duet ballad that is all about wallowing in unabashed romanticism. In an attempt to match the glorious kitsch of the original, I decided to sing it in duet with my partner Sylvia Hallett. I still don’t understand the title’s reference to Hiroshima, which is nowhere mentioned in the lyrics. It’s about rain, so I started with the sound of frogs: ‘Sitting in the autumn rain/ We could not be any wetter/ Playing a romantic game/ Old enough to know better.’

5. ‘The Mouse Loves The Rice’, sung by Sonny Boy Saltz, saxophone by Lol Coxhill; original sung by Yang Chengang

This was such a mega-hit that the composer was sued by another songwriter who claimed to have written it, too. But it has to be said that once we’re past the cute concept of the title, there’s not much happening lyric-wise. Here’s the chorus: ‘I love you, loving you, as the mouse so loves the rice/  Even everyday I heard so, I’ll always be by your side/  I miss you, missing you, I don’t care how hard it is/ I just want you to be happy, everything I’ll do it for you.’ I kept the mice, and even had them chased by a farmer’s wife as in the British nursery rhyme, but elsewhere I rewrote freely: ‘Like a druid needs a rune/  Like Bing Crosby needs to croon/ If I lost you I’d be busting out all over just like June…’ Sonny Boy Saltz is the secret alias of septuagenarian soprano sax maestro Lol Coxhill.

6. ‘Crazy Party’, sung by Clive Bell; original sung by Sam Lee

‘Wanna you to be drunk with a latte, to make you love me more/ My hurt because of you, you will never know/ Why I push myself to love you all, and you ruthlessly strike my readiness.’ Sam Lee’s lover gives him so much hurt, he’s driven to use the latte weapon. And where is this ‘Crazy Party’ of the title, never mentioned again? By this time I was hooked. I replaced Lee’s slushy, self-pitying, plodding song with a slushy, self-pitying hiphop beat, but kept the fine melody. Thai ‘pi saw’ reed flutes take the solo.

7. ‘Our Love’, sung by Viv Corringham; original sung by f.i.r.

An epic, balladtastic production by rock gods f.i.r. Again, a classy piece of songwriting, harmonically and melodically, with an absurd cod-baroque bridge after verse one. But these people have studied the classics (Abba). Here, I scaled down. Out with the violin cadenzas, the hairy-chested tom-tom runs, the ‘meaningful’ grand piano, the screaming guitars. In with Sylvia Hallett’s eerie bowed saw and Viv Corringham’s exquisite despair: ‘And you tell me I’m still number one/ But you need to get out and have fun/ And my misery’s a bit overdone, Now where’s that gun?’ A very good song indeed.  
8. ‘Ten Years’, sung by Clive Bell; original sung by Eason Chan

I love this song, and it annoys me considerably that Eason Chan sings it so much better than I ever could. It’s a good example of serious Chinese songwriting, crammed to bursting with literate chords and a round-the-houses melody with far more syllables than a Western writer would contemplate. As elsewhere, I loosened up the rhythm with a tinge of hiphop. I replaced Mr Chan’s oboe with a shakuhachi, and flung in a male chorus. But I wouldn’t claim to have improved anything here.

9. ‘Six Pigeons’, by Clive Bell. Flying bird whistles played by CB. Harmonica group recorded in Temple Of Heaven, Beijing by CB

As a flute player, I couldn’t resist blowing down the pigeon whistles. I looped, stereo-panned and pitch-bended them to create my personal flock of circling birds, wheeling over an imaginary Beijing in the dusk. Here come the harmonica band from the end of the street, marching past and playing one of the revolutionary songs from the good old days. The silly electronic noise at the end is a pigeon from a Sesame Street book, titled Bird Watching With Bert.

10. ‘Practise’, sung by Andy Lau, remixed by Clive Bell. Flying pigeon recorded in Beijing by CB

Some songs sound better in reverse. When it fades out, there’s a genuine solo pigeon with whistle attached.