China's Tin Pan Alley - Xinjiekou Street in Beijing

The original Tin Pan Alley was in Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, where music publishers set up shop in the late 19th century, attracting songwriters and coming to dominate American popular music. Since then Tin Pan Alley has come to mean a quarter where there are music shops and where musicians gather. Cities all over the globe have Tin Pan Alleys of their own. For instance, if you wanted to buy a bass guitar in London, you'd head to the UK's Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street.

In this week's series of the Essay BBC correspondents from Madrid to Tokyo explore the Tin Pan Alleys of their towns, talking to musicians trying out the instruments before they buy, and to the shopkeepers selling them. They explore the state of the musical culture, and culture more generally, of the countries they are reporting from.

The series begins in Beijing where Stephen McDonell visits Xinjiekou Street, where the shops sell Chinese traditional instruments: the erhu, a two string fiddle; the pipa, a pear shaped lute; the guzheng, a zither...and several others. He discovers that there is renewed enthusiasm for them and their music, and meets some musicians playing in a tunnel, not for the acoustic but because, in an odd reversal of the norm, if they play in the street young people object to the noise and shop them to the cops. Presenter: Stephen McDonell Producer: Julian May