Young fans, some sporting spiky mohawks, slam-danced and stage-dived as the music blasted into the night. One wore a metal-studded jacket with what looked like vintage Sex Pistols buttons.
Several hundred people packed Nine Club early this year for the “Unite Punk Music Festival” in Hangzhou, a technology hub in southeastern China also known for its scenic West Lake.
The mostly young crowd shouted out the lyrics and raised clenched fists under blinking red lights. Some had pierced lips. Others looked like clean-cut college students.
Photo: AP
Then the body slamming began. About a dozen people in front of the stage slammed into each other as if possessed by the thumping beat. There was chaos, but no fights.
Punk rock burst onto the scene globally in the 1970s with groups such as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. It took longer to reach China, but witnessed explosive growth there in the late 1990s, when influential bands such as SMZB, Brain Failure and Queen Sea Big Shark inspired hip young people to sport mohawks and leather jackets.
It is no longer as trendy as it once was. Many younger people today view punk as their parents’ music and gravitate toward hip-hop and rap, said Liu Fei (劉非), the owner of School Bar in Beijing.
Photo: AP
Others frequent underground raves with pounding techno beats.
However, some are forming new punk bands, and China has skateboard, new school and hardcore punks, Liu said before a recent punk night at his bar for fans of a Beijing soccer team.
The fan club has a fight song written by a Chinese punk rocker who died in 2015.
Photo: AP
“The atmosphere is not as enthusiastic as before, but it is still there,” said one of the performers, Wang Lixing, from the band Labor Glory (勞動光榮).
The lyrics are less rebellious than in the past, said Liu, who remembers the hopping scene in China during a punk revival in the early 2000s.
Today, the songs are more about the “sang” (喪, “mourning”) culture of depression, pessimism and apathy that some young people feel in modern society.
“They need channels to relieve pressure and release negativity to help themselves adjust,” said Zedd, a mechanical engineering student by day who plays guitar by night for the band System Chaos and prefers to be identified by his stage name.
The entertainment industry in China is tightly censored, with regulations over lyrics and portrayals of subcultures and images deemed unsuitable.
“It may be more difficult to do punk rock in China,” Liu said. “But in different environments, it has its own way of survival.”
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS