China Punk (17 images)

Drumsticks count up to four and the wall of noise starts. Deep in an endless sea of concrete apartment buildings, a garage band's screaming at the top of its lungs. You've heard the music before, it's raw, unpolished, punk rock, but this time, it's in China. There's a burgeoning scene in China, and Beijing's where it's at. But elsewhere in the country, in Wuhan or Chengdu or Dali or here in Nanjing, for instance, the sound has made its way past the government censors and the morals and...
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Drumsticks count up to four and the wall of noise starts. Deep in an endless sea of concrete apartment buildings, a garage band's screaming at the top of its lungs. You've heard the music before, it's raw, unpolished, punk rock, but this time, it's in China. There's a burgeoning scene in China, and Beijing's where it's at. But elsewhere in the country, in Wuhan or Chengdu or Dali or here in Nanjing, for instance, the sound has made its way past the government censors and the morals and traditions of older generations to take root among a small subculture of young men and women.

At a typical concert in Nanjing, the small crowd hovers around the band, but this time, the singer starts out, "This is a song about the government." There are anarchy signs on his jacket and the lyrics take a strange slant, adopting a satirical tone: "The people don't need freedom/It's easier that way..." These lines which would be silly anywhere else 30 years after the Sex Pistols, but in China, with everyone singing along, fists in the air, the punk ethos is at once fresh and urgent.
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