China’s evolving punk scene draws a new generation of fans

The crowd joins Chinese punk rock band Gum Bleed as they perform during a punk festival in Hangzhou, in January

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 the city of Hangzhou, a tech 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.

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’s 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, the owner of School Bar in Beijing. Others frequent underground raves with pounding techno beats.

But 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.

“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.

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” 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.” AARON FAVILA, HANGZHOU, MDT/AP