A Brief History of the Band


Musical band Kung Pao was established in November 1999 in Prague. The name of the group is derived from popular Chinese dish that the members consumed in order to lessen their depression after the first rehearsal. In order to avoid hungry ghosts of famous and even forgotten authors of Chinese popular song, the name of the group is tabooized by using different characters for its name, which have the same pronunciation, but mean "bulletin" or "communique".
On one hand, by means of that the group aims to address Middle-European audience to whom we wish to prove, that Chinese music does not necessarily have to mean only "pulling cat´s tail" but that it can also be an enjoyable stuff.
On the other hand, the Chinese name aims to address Chinese audience living here, by using traditional form of attracting attention and spreading new ideas.
The first concert which arouse an enormous interest of the audience took place on March 9th, 2001 in Zizkovska kotelna club in Prague. The band´s performances usually take place in Prague, but it has absolved several succesful concerts outside Prague too, especially in Olomouc, and Litomerice, and one performance abroad as well - in autumn of the year 2000 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Among the significant actions which took place in Prague we should mention Sinological Steamer 2000, performance during christening the book of Dr. Cimicky, Czech psychiatrist well known from TV, "Nefritovy drak", the performance on the Orientalistic Ball in Bonsai Hotel in November 2000, the performance on the occasion of Chinese New Year (January 2001) in KD Eden and the participation on the ball of Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of the Charles University (April 2001).


Jan Chmelarčík / He Yang