Perspectives on the Beijing Underground

Look up Chinese underground Chinese music online and you’re bound run into the rock bar D-22. It's owned by an economics professor named Michael Pettis, who with absolute confidence, foretells an explosion of underground Chinese music that will rock the world. The BBC, Time, and the Guardian are all on board. But still, I wouldn’t be so quick to pin Chinese rock music as a nascent social movement -- naturally, the reality is far more complicated than the Western press has made it out to be. Rock here has some obvious limits, the least of which are government-imposed.

In truth, the fat cat bureaucrats don't mind their youth showing a spark of creativity, and have been relatively supportive of artistic ingenuity (even the loud kind), within their jurisdiction. But they set some firm boundaries, and there’s no room for social protest -- we won’t be hearing any Chinese analogue to the “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol” or "Hail to the Thief," at least not any time soon.

Last month, I went to the Modern Sky music festival, the second biggest rock festival in China (after Midi). The higher-ups had inexplicably denied visas to a bunch of foreign bands at the last minute, so Modern Sky slashed the ticket prices and highlighted the Chinese acts. And while they put on a pretty good show, I was more than a bit distracted by the row of soldiers in front of the stage, another in front of the designated standing area (which they closed off at about half its capacity), another facing the grassy knoll, and a fourth at the top of the hill. Sponsors like Google and Levi Jeans and Myspace sold T-shirts out of booths along the periphery. No horseplay. No beer. Just a few hundred college-age Chinese kids sitting on the grass, lost in quiet curiosity.

Security, as I see it, had nothing to worry about.

Ironically, many of the folk/rock musicians I’ve talked to here look back to the 80’s and 90’s as the golden age of the Chinese underground, and blow off the current wave as faddish and imitative. Hindsight bias? Maybe. But this is where Michael Pettis is important, with his doctrine of exclusivity and his confidence in the scene. It’s all about the attitude. But that’s just rock & roll, isn’t it?