Frank Sinatra/Murray Garrett/Getty Images
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
In this song, the term ‘slow boat to China’ is used as a metaphor, originally borrowed from poker slang and then romanticized, to refer to an unimaginably long journey to a distant place. Indeed, years later, Yegor Letov would mockingly write, ‘To China on foot, just half a step away’, and play with a similar idea. The song, written in 1947, has been covered by everyone from Rosemary Clooney to Dean Martin, but Sinatra’s rendition best captures that unrelenting slowness, reminiscent of the Chinese proverb ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’
Sinatra toured Hong Kong in 1962, though he didn’t perform this song there. That same year, he made a cameo appearance in the film The Road to Hong Kong as an alien with a propeller on his head.