- Courtesy of John Yingling
- Speak Chinese or Die
Back in the summer of 2013, tireless former Chicago scene documentarian John Yingling—currently residing in Missoula, Montana—announced that he would be taking his operation global. He’d made a name for himself around town by running the website Gonzo Chicago, in which he filmed and photographed every underground show he came across for years before relocating to Montana, where he continued doing the same thing. With the help of crowdfunding he started up his latest project, a web series titled The World Underground, then set off to China with little more than a camera, jumped head-first into the country’s punky musical culture, and traveled around meeting musicians and documenting their stories for two solid months. And now, a year and a half later, we have the final result.
And there’s more being worked on. Two more episodes are in postproduction: one that covers another tour of Asia and one that takes a look at Yingling’s home of Missoula. A full-fledged Chicago episode—a tribute to the city where Yingling got his start as a filmmaker—is in the works too, “but I have to move back to finish,” he says.
