Piracy strikes notes both sour and sweet for singer

BEIJING — Chinese opera singer Fan Jingma has been on all sides of the piracy issue.

His recordings have been copied and sold without his permission. He has succumbed to the temptation of buying fake movies and music. And at a time when he struggled for enough money to eat, he made and sold pirated copies of his own recordings.

Such is life in China, where the notion of intellectual-property rights is an evolving concept, and protection for creators is elusive.

Now that he's getting ready to release his first CD on a major record label, it's no surprise that his feelings are mixed.

He knows his music is likely to be pirated in China soon after it hits the market.

"I don't like it, but I'm not worried about it," he said. Fan figures there may be a silver lining: The more his CD is copied, the more people in China will recognize him.

"Of course I want to make money," he said. "But the more important thing for me is exposure."

Fan moved back to China a couple of years ago after living in Europe and the United States for 15 years and performing opera around the world. He brought a newly released DVD, "The Great Singers of the Century," from Paris and eagerly showed it to friends in Beijing.

"They said, 'Oh, we had that a long time ago,' " Fan recalled. The pirated copy was readily available in China for a fraction of the price he'd paid in Europe. "They showed me a whole wall of CDs. My jaw dropped. For me, an American citizen, I can only dream about it."

Hungry for cultural immersion, Fan immediately went shopping. He bought 80 pirated DVDs of his favorite movies, operas and musicals for less than $100 — "what I have missed and could never afford to watch," he said.

Now Fan makes a comfortable income in China from performances and television appearances.

After a recent concert, an eager admirer came up to him, asked when his new CD would be coming out and offered to distribute illegal copies on every street corner.

"He said it with such sincerity," Fan recalled. "Obviously he thinks he is trying to help me. Can you imagine if this was in the USA?"

Fan confessed that during a difficult spell while living abroad, he found an old cassette of his own performance at a second-hand store in Hong Kong and used it to burn 3,000 CDs to sell at his concerts.

"I sold myself for bread," he said.

He believes the rapid spread of cheap pirated goods has benefited young Chinese directors, musicians and artists. They've learned a lot about Western music and ideas in recent years, often without ever traveling abroad.

"If [authentic] software costs $1,000, they can't even buy it with a whole year's salary," he said.

But for less than $1 an opera, "they can afford to see what's going on right now."

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com