Two Generations of Contemporary Chinese Folk Ballad Minyao 1994-2017

Home , Beijing Knot, Bowie Wu, Cang Mountain, Chinese rock, Dai Meng, Freaking Me Out

Two Generations of Contemporary Chinese Folk Ballad Minyao 1994-2017:

Emergence, Mobility, and Marginal Middle Class

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

MUSIC

July 2020

Yanxiazi Gao

Thesis Committee:

Byong Won Lee, Chairperson Frederick Lau (advisor) Ricardo D. Trimillos Cathryn Clayton

Keywords: Minyao, Folk Ballad, Marginal Middle Class and Mobility, Sonic Township, Chinese Poetry, Nostalgia

Yanxiazi Gao

for my parents

ii Acknowledgements

This thesis began with the idea to write about minyao music’s association with classical

Chinese poetry. Over the course of my research, I have realized that this genre of music not only relates to the past, but also comes from ordinary people who live in the present. Their life experiences, social statuses, and class aspirations are inevitably intertwined with social changes in post-socialist China. There were many problems I struggled with during the research and writing process, but many people supported me along the way.

First and foremost, I am truly grateful to my advisor Dr. Frederick Lau. His intellectual insights into Chinese music and his guidance and advice have inspired me to keep moving throughout the entire graduate study. Professor Ricardo Trimillos gave frequent attention to my academic performance. His critiques of conference papers, thesis drafts, and dry runs enabled this thesis to take shape. Professor Barbara Smith offered her generosity and support to my entire duration of study at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. I was fortunate to have her participation in my online defense as she was about to celebrate her 100th birthday. The ethnomusicologist spirit has been passed down from dear Barbara to Professor Trimillos, to Dr. Lau, and to us.

I am indebted to Professor Byong Won Lee and Professor Cathryn Clayton for their comments and continuous support. Dr. Lee’s inquiries about Chinese minyao and comparisons to

Korean minyo helped me to broaden views on this musical genre. Professor Clayton read all of my drafts closely and offered me an anthropological angle to look at minyao music within a

Chinese sociocultural context. The incisive comments and inspiring theories she suggested provides a cross-disciplinary balance to this research. I would also like to thank Professor Jane

iii Moulin. Her comments on my conference papers contributed to this thesis. Professor Eric Harwit at the Asian Studies Program inspired me to keep a sociological eye on the research.

I owe my thanks to Yoomee Baek, Andrew Filson, and Rafael Borges Amaral for their enthusiastic support, and for their help with proofreading my transcriptions in the musical analysis chapter. I cannot adequately express my thanks to Chris Molina and Kirk Sullivan. They spent time with me to edit the initial drafts of this thesis. Additionally, Ben Fairfield generously helped me to proofread this thesis.

There was much support from my colleagues throughout the writing process including

Chiao-Wen Chiang, Hae In Lee, Sean Shibata, Yuan Hsin Tung, Aaron Singer, Yuanyu Kuan,

Susan Jacob, Ryan Blauvelt, Austin Crowder, Travis Shaver, Megan DeKievit, Sangah Lee,

Padraic Costello, Beryl Yang, and Yang Xi.

This thesis also benefitted from several scholars who were invited to a series of Words on

Music, organized by the Association of Ethnomusicology (EMA) at UH Mānoa, including

Professor Robert Garfias (2016), Professor Beverley Diamond (2017), Professor Ellen Koskoff

(2018), Dr. James Revell Carr (2019), and Professor Bonnie Wade (2020). Their inquiries and suggestions provided scholarly insights to this thesis. I am also grateful to the great supporters of my research and academic life in Honolulu including Kenny Endo, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel,

Darin Miyashiro, and Eric Chang. There are many nostalgic memories of rehearsals and Pau

Hana Concerts with the Gagaku ensemble and the late Masatoshi Shamoto sensei, and with his daughter, Mika Shamoto Hill, and all of the ensemble members.

Research for this thesis was made possible by the Asia-Pacific Fellowship in

Ethnomusicology by the Music Department, the Master’s Student Research Award by the

iv College of Arts and Humanities, and the Graduate Student Organization (GSO) and Student

Activity and Program Fee Board (SAPFB) at UH Mānoa.

It would have been impossible to complete this thesis without support from the Music

Graduate Chair Professor Kate McQuiston. She was a wonderful supporter to graduate students.

She encouraged me to participate in the 3MT competition held by UH Mānoa, and her kind help was greatly appreciated. I would also like to give warm thanks to the facilities coordinator Byron

Moon, and the secretaries Cindy Nakashima, Tracie Bregman, and Kathleen Kamiya for working hard for all music students.

My deepest gratitude goes to my parents and YY; without them my study at UH Mānoa would not have begun. My sincerest thanks for all of the support and sympathy during my graduate years from my friends Heather Diamond, Kyoungwon Oh, Yang Jing, Sun Hui, Wang

Qi, and others in the U.S. and China.

Finally, this thesis is dedicated to all the minyao contributors. It is not easy to correlate popular music with Chinese culture. Thanks for all your efforts.

v Abstract

This thesis explores two generations of contemporary Chinese minyao music (xiaoyuan minyao, 1994-1996 and xin minyao, 2005-2017). Originally, the term minyao was used in imperial China to refer to a type of folk entertainment, which focused on rhyming verbal expressions. But in a post-socialist context, minyao is now known as a genre of commercial popular music featuring western folk music and poetic Chinese lyrics. Over two generations, musical themes of minyao shifted from a focus on nostalgia and gentle romance to poetic self- expression and brutal criticisms of social issues. Accordingly, the tastes of minyao audiences shifted as well. By examining those shifts and China’s urbanization and population mobility, I argue that the second (current) generation of minyao audience draws from the marginal middle class, who see contemporary Chinese minyao as a symbol of good taste. I further argue that the second generation of minyao artists and audiences build their “sonic township” (O'Toole 2014;

Kim 2016; Wang 2018) by singing and listening to minyao together in “live house” music clubs.

The live house, as a sonic performing space, musically articulates the audience’s home origins and regional identities. The music of this “sonic township” is characterized by 1) the notion of wen as a civilized, refined, literary and feminine sophistication; and 2) a “feminine” style of singing (Moskowitz 2010; Baranovitch 2013). These two traditional qualities help define the aesthetics of minyao and its reception among audiences in current China. This thesis also attempts to combine aspects of gender and social class to discuss the regional identity and cultural attachments of contemporary minyao as a genre of popular music.

vi Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... iii Abstract ...... vi List of Tables ...... ix List of Figures ...... x Notes on the Text ...... xi

Chapter I Introduction: Outlining Contemporary Chinese Minyao ...... 1

1. My First Time Listening to Minyao ...... 1 2. Two Generations of Contemporary Chinese Minyao ...... 5 3. Literature Review ...... 9 A. Contemporary Chinese minyao ...... 9 B. Contemporary Chinese popular music ...... 12 C. Sociocultural perspectives ...... 15 4. Connecting Myself to Contemporary Chinese Minyao ...... 17 5. Methods, Theoretical Frames, and Informants ...... 18 6. Significance ...... 22

Chapter II The First Generation of Contemporary Chinese Minyao ...... 24

1. Minyao in Imperial China ...... 24 2. 1994: The Birth of the First Generation of Minayo ...... 28 3. Back to 1980’s: Literature and Rock ...... 33 4. Wen vs. Wu Discourse: A Case Study in Nanjing ...... 39 5. Minyao Dormancy: Music Market and Politics ...... 43

Chapter III The Second Generation of Contemporary Chinese Minyao ...... 47

1. Yuanfang (“Faraway Place”): Reality or Utopia ...... 47 2. From Beijing to Dali: Mobility and Community ...... 51 3. Three Characteristics ...... 60 A. Geographical belonging ...... 60 B. Civil involvement ...... 65 C. Literature attachment ...... 69

vii

Chapter IV Lyrical Analysis ...... 73

1. Three Tables ...... 73 A. Table One: General Characteristics ...... 73 B. Table Two: Top-Five Key Words ...... 77 C. Table Three: Mood of Minyao Lyrics ...... 79 2. Literary References and Gender Stereotypes ...... 81 3. Conclusion ...... 88

Chapter V Musical Analysis ...... 91

1. The First Generation ...... 91 A. Minyao style ...... 92 B. Mixed musical styles ...... 94 2. The Second Generation ...... 95 A. Instrumentation ...... 96 B. Folk tunes ...... 100 C. Sound effects ...... 102 D. Vocalization ...... 102 3. Conclusion ...... 103

Chapter VI The Social Gap ...... 105

1. Longing and Belonging ...... 105 2. The Social Gap Between Old and Marginal Middle Classes ...... 107 3. The Audience ...... 113 4. Conclusion ...... 118

Chapter VII Conclusion ...... 120

Glossary ...... 124 Bibliography ...... 127 Appendix I: List of 210 Minyao Song Titles ...... 133 Appendix II: Transcriptions ...... 141 Appendix III: Questionnaire ...... 149

viii List of Tables

Table 1 General Characteristics of Minyao

Table 2 Top-Five Keywords

Table 3 Mood of Minyao Lyrics

Table 4 Comparison of Terms of Middle Classes

ix List of Figures

Figure 1 Map of 2011 JZ Festival

Figure 2 Xiaoyuan Minyao I, 1983-1993 (Campus Folk Ballad I 1983-1993)

Figure 3 Lao Lang (老狼) in the National Graduation Gala, 6/24/1994, Beijing

Figure 4 “I Am a Singer” of China, S4

Figure 5 A short novel Shanghen (“Scar” 《伤痕》)

Figure 6 Rocker Cui Jian’s classic image

Figure 7 Ola Art Space in Nanjing

Figure 8 Poster of Strawberry Festival in 2014

Figure 9 The artist community shifts from Beijing to Dali

Figure 10 Huanqing (欢庆) and his album Deep in the Forest

Figure 11 The live house Jie Lu (结庐) in Dali

Figure 12 The cover and CD of album Old Town in April (2014)

Figure 13 Map of Contemporary Chinese Minyao

Figure 14 DiKuAi Band (低苦艾)

Figure 15 The cover of the album of A Tale of Haifeng

Figure 16 Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬) and his album Chinese Kids

Figure 17 Wan Xiaoli (万晓利)

Figure 18 The cover of Cattle and Sheep Go Downhill

Figure 19 Painting: Red Orchid (Leaf) in Birds and Flowers (Album)

Figure 20 College students before and after the policy change in 1999, China,

1990-2007

Figure 21 Share of Four Subclasses of the Middle Class, Urban China, 1982-2006

x Notes on the Text

Romanization

The Romanization of Chinese names, song titles, books, and places in this thesis uses the Hanyu

Pinyin Romanization system, which was officially adopted in China in 1958 for Mandarin

Chinese. Chinese names are given in Chinese order: surname first and given name second.

Transcriptions

All the transcriptions in chapter V is transcribed by the author, Yanxiazi Gao, and proofread by her colleagues Yoomee Baek, Andrew Filson, and Rafael Borges Amaral.

Chapter I

Introduction : Outlining Contemporary Chinese Minyao

1. My First Time Listening to Minyao (民谣)

October is the busy season for holding music festivals in many cities in mainland China.

Large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan are witnessing the fruitful outcomes of urban planning and significant construction initiatives that aim to build a prosperous economy, sprawling landscape, and populous areas. These cities provide plenty of outdoor venues for young urbanites to gather and enjoy music festivals as part of popular culture.

Shanghai Expo Park, a well-utilized venue spanning 64 acres, has hosted numerous music festivals and other big events since 2009, including the Shanghai Expo in 2010. Situated along the East Bund riverside in the Pudong New Area, the park itself is famous for its beautiful gardens and rare tranquility juxtaposed with buzzing neighborhoods.

From October 15 to 16, 2011, a two-day JZ Festival took place at the park, featuring various musical genres performed on five separate stages. Folk and world music were performed at the Blue Grass Stage (Figure 1: the second circle in blue from left), while other four stages displayed jazz, rock, electronic, and other genres of music. Thus folk, rock, metal, and other mainstream pop musicians and bands from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were invited. I bought a one-day pass on the 15th to see Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬), a minyao singer- songwriter and poet. I had read his book, Spring Blame (chuntian zebei《春天责备》), and was immediately captivated by his concise and witty manner of writing. His music, however, was unfamiliar to me.

Zhou's performance started at 8 P.M., but I arrived at the park in the early afternoon.

From Puxi, where I lived, to the park located in Pudong New District, one can either take the subway or drive a car underneath the Huangpu River. This was the first music festival I had ever attended. The breeze from the riverside, the flea market, food vendors, huge park and stylish crowds all made me feel slightly overwhelmed.

Figure 1. Map of 2011 JZ Festival. Retrieved from: http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/y/jazzshh/

While eating, taking pictures, and chatting, my friends and I casually strolled from one stage to another as we listened to music and observed the audience. We tried to immerse ourselves in this relaxing musical landscape.

Around 8 pm, the audience crowded around the Blue Grass Stage, where Zhou was going to perform. Zhou's assistant set up the amplifier, pedals, and other sound equipment on the stage, while Zhou sat quietly, wearing a pair of dark glasses and methodically and thoughtfully

preparing for his performance. He has become accustomed to stages in this way as a result of the blindness he developed at age nine.

Shortly after our arrival at the Blue Grass Stage, the music started. Zhou sang several of his hit songs such as “Buying Houses” (Mai fangzi《买房子》), “Chinese Children” (Zhongguo haizi《中国孩子》), and “September” (Jiu yue《九月》). The crowd surprised me by how well they knew the songs by Zhou; they were singing along with him. Toward the end, they shouted,

"Encore, encore!" They asked for Zhou's signature songs including "Separated by a River

Forever" 《永隔一江水》), written by Chinese folklore master, Wang Luobin (王洛宾).1

Zhou seemed fond of this song, too, as he emotionally introduced the metaphor of the river in dedication to his minyao friend, Zhang Huisheng. The last sentence of the lyric is repeated and filled with melancholy:

“you and I are two banks of a river, separated by the river forever.” “我和你是河两岸，永隔一江水” 。

The calm and melancholy mood of this song created a different atmosphere with the loud and intense electronic sounds of other pop songs in this Festival. Typical pairing metaphors such as wind and rain, black night and dawn, green grass and dew, mandarin ducks and couples were used in this encore song. Additionally, the melody was adapted from a soundtrack of the Soviet movie, Thirst, released in 1959. The music told of suffering and joy. Its slow tempo, minor melody, and steady chord progressions sounded like it was tailored to the atmosphere of the night.

The night was getting darker, but the audience still looked very attentive during the song.

From their warm applause and cheers, it was clear that a large group of fans in their twenties

1 Wang Luobin (1913-1996) was a Chinese composer and songwriter and awarded the title “The People’s Musician.” He devoted his life-long music career to composing ethnic minorities folk songs and arranging Uyghur folk tunes into Mandarin songs. All these arrangements have become classics in contemporary China.

adored Zhou’s music and supported his musical spirit. Some in the audience looked like recent graduates younger than 30, and some looked like college students. Their appearance was not as fashionable as the rock or jazz audiences. Most of them wore simple long-sleeved shirts, t-shirts, or casual jackets with jeans.

Watching Zhou’s entire performance, I was moved and surprised. Since gangtai gequ

(Hong Kong and Taiwanese popular songs, 港台歌曲) dominated the popular music market in mainland China in the late 90's, my ears had become accustomed to songs that delivered love as the main theme. In contrast, Zhou's songs described life experiences and stories that depicted the issues of ordinary people’s daily lives. The poetic and ironic articulation of his lyrics made his music unique. Was it for the same reason that the other young urban audiences been equally captivated by Zhou’s songs? Who were they? My curiosity was aroused, and that began to lead me into the minyao world.

This thesis is a culmination of my ongoing research on contemporary Chinese minyao music during years of my M.A. degree study at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. It explores two generations of contemporary Chinese minyao from 1994 to 2017, the perspectives of regional identity, social classes, poetics, and their relationship with rapid and radical changes in

China's socioeconomic conditions.2 Through the comparison of two generations of minyao artists, audiences, lyrics, and music, I address the value of minyao music within both Chinese cultural tradition and the post-socialist context.

2 In this thesis, “two generations” refers to minyao producers and consumers who have shared formative experiences in terms of music, culture, and social changes. I mark the two generations of minyao music as formally beginning in 1994, with the release of the first minyao album. I conclude in 2017 when my fieldwork was done in Dali, Yunnan Province, China. In other words, the current (second) generation of minyao music still keeps going.

2. Two Generations of Contemporary Chinese Minyao

The genre of the contemporary Chinese folk ballad, minyao (民谣), is a commercial popular music in mainland China. It was first labeled and marketed in 1994. Although it disappeared after a short time of popularity, it reemerged in 2005. This development has led me to wonder among many genres of Chinese popular music: who is the audience of minyao, why do they listen, and what social shifts have affected their musical preferences. Contemporary minyao is often characterized as a hybrid of western folk music style and poetic Chinese lyrics.

The folk music style has been influenced by the second American folk music revival during the

1960s, and the Taiwanese campus folk song movement (xiaoyuan minge yundong, 校园民歌运动) from about 1976 to 1981.3 Over two decades, it has been elevated as a symbol of good taste and an idealized music genre associated with classical Chinese poetry by its current audience,

China’s post-80s and -90s generations (balinghou/jiulinghou 八零后/九零后).4

The first generation of the genre is recognized as xiaoyuan minyao (“campus folk ballad”

校园民谣) from 1994-1996, and the second (current) is xin minyao (“neo-folk ballad” 新民谣) from 2005-2017. Accordingly, minyao artists and audiences involved in these two periods are referred as two distinct generations for analytical purposes. Following this, two perspectives are considered between two generations: first, from the perspective of the minyao artists, who shifted from a focus on nostalgia and gentle romance to one of poetic self-expression and brutal criticism of social issues; and second, from the perspective of minyao audiences, whose tastes shifted with those of the artists, but who came to view minyao music as an expression of their

3 “The second American Folk Music revival,” see Iain Chambers, “Reaction, revival, and renewal: ‘folk’ music” section in Popular Culture (1986). It specifically refers to white folk music in the 1960s, music praised by folk music historian A. L. Lloyd (Lloyd, 1975: 371; Chamber, 1986: 146). The Taiwanese campus folk songs (xiaoyuan minge, 校园民歌) is a counterpart of contemporary Chinese folk ballads minyao. 4 The generations of Chinese post-80s and post-90s roughly correspond with the Millennials and Generation Z (1981-1996) in the U.S.

class aspirations. While the first generation of minyao audiences were mainly college students, the second draws from the marginal middle class, who see contemporary Chinese minyao as aligning with the good taste of the old middle class.5

The first generation of minyao began with the debut album Xiaoyuan minyao I 1983-1993 in 1994 in mainland China. It heralded a new genre of Chinese popular music. Following the student protests in Beijing (1989), the authorities tightly censored domestic cultural products, including imposing severe restrictions on rock music by 1993. The first generation of minyao thus unexpectedly replaced Chinese rock music to gain nationwide attention.6 The sudden boom of xiaoyuan minyao evoked an emotional response among young adults in top universities in

Beijing, such as Beijing University and Qinghua University, which were the sites of development of the first generation of minyao. The catchy melodies and nostalgic lyrics sent ripples through the educated youth who are now social elites.

After the Open Door policy in 1978, only a small percentage of the population in mainland China was able to attend college. The debut minyao album has served as a souvenir of their memories rather than political statements for the first generation of minyao artists and audiences. However, the fame of the first generation minyao was ephemeral, enduring only two years. After the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, public interest in xiaoyuan minyao faded due to the invasion and commercial success of gangtai gequ. According to Moskowitz, “after Hong

Kong’s return to China in 1997, Taiwan took an even more central role in the PRC’s imaginary,

5 The terms of “old and marginal middle classes” in this thesis are driven from two of subclasses of Chinese Middle- Class: new and marginal classes, by Chinese sociologist Li Chunlin (2012). According to Li’s classification out of Chinese context, I employ old middle class and marginal middle class to reference the first and second generation of minyao artists and audiences, respectively. 6 The debut album of minyao contains 11 songs collected between 1983 and 1993. Due to its influence and campus life experience, people use the title of this debut to recall the first generation of minyao music.

and from 2002 to today [2012] Taiwan’s mandopop has consistently accounted for approximately 80 percent of Chinese-language music sales in the PRC.”7 (2)

In 2005, Beijing, the second generation of minyao music emerged in a half-day concert titled “Chinese Neo-Folk Ballads,” which was held at 798 Art Zone, a reconstructed art community. This concert is credited as founding the second generation among minyao circles. At this time, minyao surfaced again to coincide with social changes and urbanization that recast people’s lifestyles in living and in musicking.

From the year 2000, a large number of artists, entrepreneurs, technicians, and manual laborers known as piao’er (drifters /migrants 漂儿), such as bei piao (Beijing-drifters 北漂), hai piao (Shanghai-drifters 海漂), etc., poured into Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities. China’s urbanization demanded a substantial workforce to enable city expansions and other aspects of developments. It enabled worker mobility in China, which also resulted in a shift of effect for minyao from nostalgia and collective reminiscence of the first generation to a sense of geographical belonging.

These domestic migrants make up the majority of the second generation of minyao. One feature of this group is that it comprises mostly white-collar workers who migrate from towns/villages to bigger cities. In the process of consolidating smaller cities and towns together into new city structures, the sense of their physical township for those domestic migrants became blurred. Instead, they find a sense of geographical belonging from the second generation of minyao music, which includes dialect and local expressions, portrays daily lives and social critiques, and features poetic lyrics.

7 Moskowitz, Marc L. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010.

Meanwhile, various live music venues, called “live houses”, cater to the minyao industry, such as MAKO live house (Maque washe 麻雀瓦舍), River bar (He Jiuba 河酒吧), Jie Lu (结庐) live house, Ola Art Space (欧拉艺术空间), On the Road (在路上) live house, VOX live house, and others in major cities.8 Other than live houses, music festivals have also boosted the fame of minyao singers. The major festivals include the Strawberry Music Festival, the Midi Music

Festival, the Valley Minyao Festival, the Zhouzhuang Minyao Poetry Festival, the “Minyao on the Road” tour, and others. Music companies and local sponsors have experienced financial gains from these booming performance venues and activities.

By comparing these two generations, although they experience the same genre of music, their social classes and receptions are different. The first generation were intellectuals and from the middle class, while the second was mostly mobile youth and the marginalized middle class.

The first generation recalled a collective nostalgia for campus life, while the second stresses a sense of geographical belonging and narrates people’s actual lives under socioeconomic changes in post-socialist China. Considering the similarities and contrasts of two generations of minyao music, I argue that both second-generation minyao artists and audiences build a “sonic township” by singing and listening to minyao together in “live house” music clubs. The live house, as a sonic performing space, musically articulates the audience’s home origins and regional identities.

Building on theories of sonic citizenship and (O’Toole 2014; Kim 2016) and sonic-spatial home (Wang 2018),9 I view the musical performance as sonorous ritual that shapes cultural

8 A live house is a live music club. This new trend of performing venue is growing fast in many music-friendly cities in China. Drinking alcohol is allowed but is not the primary intention for the live house business. In Chinese live houses, the most popular musical genres are rock, electronic, jazz, and folk music. Many performers are indie artists. 9 O’Toole, Michael. 2014. “Sonic Citizenship: Music, Migration, and Transnationalism in Berlin’s Turkish and Anatolian Diasporas”. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1559962172/. Eun- Sung Kim, Ji-Bum Chung. 2019. The memory of place disruption, senses, and local opposition to Korean wind farms. Energy Policy 131:43-52. Wang, Yun. 2018. “Sonic Poetics of Home and the Art of Making Do in Sinophone Toronto”. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. http://search.proquest.com/docview/2148404007/.

identity and national belonging. This sonic citizenship usually happens in diasporic communities, transcultural environments characterized by ethnic diversity and political engagement (5). Wang examines Chinese immigrants who listen to Chinese music in their rooms to create a sonic homeland in Toronto (12). My research does not involve issues such as ethnicity and transcultural politics or musical performance as a representation of the national identity. Rather, this thesis overall devotes its focus to the comparison of two generations of minyao in order to discover the interplay between current minyao and social mobility and classes.

3. Literature Review

The following literature review is organized by themes. Besides the subject of contemporary Chinese minyao, it also includes related topics such as contemporary Chinese popular music, theories and concepts of popular music, and other cultural aspects.

A. Contemporary Chinese minyao. There are four principle writings regarding the ethnomusicological study of contemporary Chinese minyao. Two young Chinese ethnomusicologists Yuanyuan Sun (2008) and Yue Zhao (2011) closely examined the audience and lyrics of minyao music in 1990s and early 2000s. While, Jeroen de Kloet (2010), a Dutch scholar, discusses minyao music as a fusing folk-rock genre among other Chinese popular music.

Huang Liaoyuan(黄燎原), a Chinese music critic and art curator, collected articles about minyao industry in the early 1990s.10My study is built upon their contributions to further discuss minyao after 2000.

10 Sun, Yuanyuan. “Xiaoyuan Minyao: sing out in our own voices in China’s campus ballad.” M.A. thesis, Wesleyan University, 2008; Zhao, Yue. “The Musicality of C-pop: A Study of Chinese Popular Music from 1985-2010.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Sheffield, 2011; Jeroen de Kloet. China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010; Huang, Liaoyuan. “Shinian: 1986-1996 Zhongguo Liuxing Yinyue Jishi” [Ten Years: 1986-1996 the Chronicle of Chinese Popular Music 《十年：1986-1996 中国流行

Sun’s thesis is the first academic English writing on xiaoyuan minyao. Her study provides a comprehensive description of the development of xiaoyuan minyao and emphasizes the general college culture in Beijing. She argues that xiaoyuan minyao “stands at the intersection of many blurred socio-cultural areas” (20). The transformation of female images from orthodox heroines to sentimental girls is an innovative point regarding the analysis of Chinese popular songs (34).

Sun's fieldwork methodology consists of two parts. One is her experience as a college student at

Qinghua University, and the other is the phone interviews she has conducted since 2005. Her library research includes youth culture from 1993 to 2000 based on Beijing’s five major newspapers and other popular music magazines (22). Notably, not only does she relocate xiaoyuan minyao in its historical context, but she also generates questions about “rebellion,”

“genre,” and “commercialization” (19) which are considered in my thesis, too. Sun analyzes musical features in terms of rhythm, influence from old Soviet songs, instrumentation, harmony, and vocal style. However, she does not provide transcriptions to support the musical analysis.

The first chapter of In Zhao’s dissertation covers minyao.11 He sees minyao as a music- maker’s expression and divides minyao into two subgenres: xiaoyuan minyao and urban minyao.

He suggests that minyao songs reflect young people’s lives and ideologies in the first half of the

1990s (52). As Zhao includes minyao as part of C-pop, he points out that from the aspect of music-making, C-pop songs have changed from irregular to regular in the musical pattern, and from liberated to formulaic in music structure from 1985 to 2010 (150). Most importantly, Zhao suggests that regular musical pattern in C-pop is influenced by conventional concepts of Chinese historical poems, following the syntactic structure of the qi-cheng-zhuan-he (“opening, holding,

音乐纪事》].Beijing: Chinese Film Publishing House, 1997. [Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubenshe, 1997. 北京：中国电影出版社,1997.] 11 In Zhao’s dissertation, the category of C-pop encompasses mainland Chinese popular music, art music, and folk music in general.

turning, and closing” 起承转合) four-part formula. He parallels it with western pop song structure,

32-bar form (148). I borrow his idea of classical Chinese poetic structure to argue that minyao lyricists, more or less, have been influenced by the aesthetics of this Chinese poetic structure, and follow this pattern in lyric writing.

For the purpose of showing the multiplicity of Chinese popular music, Jeroen de Kloet, a professor specializing in globalization and Chinese pop culture, merges different genres of music with the roots in rock music. He displays singers such as Zhang Chu (张楚), Zheng Jun (郑钧), Hu

Mage (胡吗个), Xiao He (小河), and Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬) with the observation of their migratory experience from various cities to Beijing before 2000. The first two are rock singers and the rest are minyao singers. De Kloet credits a long tradition and the local identity expression of minyao, and states that “folk singers are troubadours, lyrical poets with a guitar. They reflect on the loneliness of urban life, and sing about nostalgia for their hometown and their longing for true love” (76). The folk-rock genre in de Kloet’s book is based on his notion of folk aesthetics, which “produce a discourse of authenticity based on notions of closeness, simplicity, and intimacy.” (76) In terms of lyrics, sound and image, still, de Kloet foregrounds Beijing as a center to argue migration experience, nostalgia, innocence, margin, and critique in this

“multivocal and ambiguous” music style. Overall, de Kloet’s intention of fusing different genres of music into one offers a keen insight on sociocultural views of minyao music. However, it is not enough to exhibit the whole picture of minyao as its own genre.

The Chinese popular music encyclopedia, “Shinian: 1986-1996 Zhongguo Liuxing Yinyue

Jishi” [Ten Years: 1986-1996 the Chronicle of Chinese Popular Music], was chiefly edited by

Huang Liaoyuan, who has built an extensive social network in Chinese popular music and art circles. The year 1994, the first year of minyao, is a separate chapter—chapter six— in Huang’s

book. This chapter includes six articles regarding the first generation of minyao, presenting a real minyao industry scene to readers and providing a useful source of detailed and relevant facts. For instance, the inception and consequences of the system of music contracts since 1992. This book fully shows all the phenomena as well as recognizable singers, bands, producers, record labels, and other industry workers in all genres of popular music in cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai rather than stressing only rock music in Beijing. All of collected articles in the book have distinctive arguments and reflections on Chinese popular music. In short, the editor Huang inclusively calls for the bentuxing (“sense of Chineseness” 本土性) in Chinese popular music as a new page after the first ten-year of post-Mao period.

B. Contemporary Chinese popular music. Western scholars usually set the end of the

Cultural Revolution (after 1976) as the initial time for the study of contemporary Chinese popular music. They have put Chinese popular music study in formative way with new perspectives.

American scholar Andrew Jones divides Chinese popular music into two broad genres in terms of different functions of ideology, officially-sanctioned popular music and underground rock music, which “act as vehicles for the articulation of ideology in disparate ways” (Jones

1992:4).12 Jones targets these two genres of music, trying to hear “what these two disparate voices have been ‘saying’ about what kind of modernity China is advancing towards in the

1980’s and 1990’s” (145). He takes the foundations, development, genre, and ideology of contemporary Chinese popular music into consideration; and brings modern Chinese music

12 Jones, Andrew F. Like a knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. NY: Cornell University, 1992.

culture to readers in a scholarly and comprehensible way. Jones’ book helps me to situate the principle concepts of Chinese popular music. Moreover, drawing upon his research, I consider minyao as a contra-rock musical phenomenon in the 90’s, though it is not mentioned explicitly in his book.

Nimrod Baranovitch (2003), an ethnomusicologist specializing in the culture, society and politics of contemporary China, explores China’s New Voices between 1978 and 1997. He considers “three models” for understanding the debate on Chinese popular culture: hegemony

(Adorno 1990); disempowerment or subordination (Fiske 1989); and a combination of both. The third model, the both of hegemony and subordination, is essential to explain popular culture

(Hall 1981; Middleton 1985a). In particular, my thesis aligns with the third model, which

“acknowledges the active role that both dominant and subordinated forces play in popular culture, and views the latter as an arena of constant struggle” (Baranovitch 2003, 6). Based on these three-models, Baranovitch argues and (re)constructs ethnicity, gender, and music and state politics from two sides of a coin. In other words, he believes that “‘power is everywhere’

(Foucault 1980) rather than ‘above’ (or ‘below’)” (Baranovitch 2003, 8). This thesis takes

Baranovitch’s third model into consideration and accounts for the post-Mao period and beyond, specifically examining minyao music from the marginal force.

Moreover, Jeroen de Kloet sheds light on music life in urban Chinese youth culture in the post-80s era (“1980s generation”). Foucault’s notions are widely used in de Kloet’s writing of musical taste and “technologies of the self” (140).13 De Kloet writes, “music plays an important role in the production of locality; it gives audiences a sense of place, of belonging (De Kloet

13 The idea of “technologies of the self” in Jeron de Kloet’s book is related to the experience of music audience: “This chapter presents an attempt to explore how audiences use music as a technology of the self, showing how music consumption provides ‘a means for self-interpretation, for the articulation of self-image and for the adaptation of various emotional states associated with the self in social life’” (Kloet 2003: 140).

2010, 156). He conducted substantial interviews and surveys to “scrutinize how music is used for technologies of the self-related to gender, to age, to place, to subjectivity, and finally, to politics”

(149). His research focuses on the end of 1990s. Several terms, such as “hard rock” (88, 108) and

“cultural belonging” (175), and the idea of technologies of the self, can be easily adopted in my research and they support my argument: listening to minyao engenders cultural attachment and a sense of geographical belonging among the second generation of audiences.

Another recently released book is Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and

Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc Moskowitz (2010). Based on substantial interviews and a wide range of critiques, Moskowitz’s book links Mandopop (Mandarin popular music) to mainland Chinese people’s life experiences. It puts insights into their concerns in terms of sophisticated poetic lyrics. Most importantly, it navigates the gender roles through the perspectives of both male and female songwriters and singers. He argues that “the critiques of

Mandopop tell us more about the reviewer’s personal and cultural biases than the music itself, and I will highlight Mandopop’s important contribution as a modern-day poetic lament that simultaneously embraces and protests modern life” (15).

Moskowitz argues that Taiwan’s counter-invasion has influenced on PRC’s culture in terms of gender roles in its Mandopop music. He asks “because most women’s songs are written by men, whether they represent a female ideal that is being molded by men for male pleasure in a usurpation of women’s voices and power” (72). In the same vein, I also borrow Moskowitz's

(2013) notions of wen (civil 文) and wu (military 武) masculinity to consider how it affects the lyrics and aesthetics of minyao music. Specifically, I use this wen and wu discourse to characterize minyao as a feminine method of singing (wen), in contradiction to rock music, which is wu.

The journal CHIME is an English-language-based international database for the study of

Chinese music, publishing the cutting edge of academic achievements and extensive fieldwork experience. The journal has published comprehensive articles regarding Chinese popular music in terms of fieldwork, reports, and research. Those articles reveal the musical activities of

Chinese rock music and urban popular culture to English readers, which will contribute the background information for the first-generation minyao writing in this thesis. Those articles talk about Chinese popular music in different cities, for instance, “A bit of this and a bit of that:

Notes on Pop/Rock Genres in the Eighties in China” (8, 1995: 67-75) and “Pop ‘n’ Rock Loan

Words and Neologisms in the PRC” (14-15, 2000: 103-123) by Peter Micic; “Beijing Bastards -

The New Revolution” (8,1995: 99-103) and “Hou Dejian and the Rise of Pop Music in Taiwan in the Seventies” (9, 1996:112-123) by Linda Jaivin; and “Sounds from the margin: Beijing rock scene faces an uncertain future” by Chow Yiu Fai & Jeroen de Kloet (10-11,1997: 123-128).

C. Sociocultural perspectives. When contemporary China meets western cultures and theories, as well as globalized impact, its social changes face underlying challenges in aspect of lifestyle, economic reform, cultural products, social class, gender aspects, nationalism, and others. Those aspects also have also certainly affected the Chinese popular music domain.

Geremie Barmé (2000), an Australian sinologist, illustrates both official and non-official spheres of contemporary Chinese culture. He elaborates on two pivotal events, the 1989 protests and

Deng’s 1992 South tour, which had a significant impact on popular lifestyle in China today.

Those influential political moments thus shifted currents of Chinese popular music during 80’s and 90’s.

Taste and language embody social structures. According to Pierre Bourdieu, “cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education” (1984, 1). Thus, as one important symbol of cultural hegemony, taste distinguishes social classes, influences a predisposition toward a certain kind of music. In addition, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the

“imagined communities” of nationality and explores the processes that created these communities: language, print industry, and capitalism (1991, 78). He describes that the vernacular languages-of-state and its readers reinforce the power of nationalism as well as how a nation/community imagines and presents itself through language (146). Likewise, this thesis will discuss how the minyao artistic community recalls their regional identity through minyao lyrics as well as how social classes can be examined in terms of minyao music making and listening as a powerful agency.

In gender studies, objectification theory criticizes a common issue existing in popular music (Flynn et al. 2016; Aubrey and Frisby 2011; Brethauer et al. 2006), examining male dominance over females. This thesis does not touch upon the sexual objectification and negative impact on minyao consumers. I only borrow the concept of objectifying women to investigate the aspect of gender in minyao music. Keith Negus, a popular music scholar, exemplifies many popular music cases over the western world and concludes theoretical arguments from many scholars in the Popular Music in Theory. Particularly, his elaboration on the audience section inspire my observation on the minyao audience.

Overall, my research contributes both to scholarship on contemporary Chinese popular music, and to a general awareness of contemporary Chinese society. This thesis also attempts to employ theories of gender and of social class in order to examine the cultural attachments and social gap of contemporary minyao as a genre of popular music. I show how minyao has been

identified with social class and subcultural values by its producers and consumers. I also draw on scholarship from the 1980s and early 90s by Andrew Jones, Nimrod Baranovitch, Jeroen de

Kloet, Marc Moskowitz, and others who focused on Chinese rock and pop culture in Beijing before 2000. My thesis aims to expand the scope of this scholarship to include minyao in the 21st century and in cities other than Beijing.

4. Connecting Myself to Contemporary Chinese Minyao

My academic music training was obtained in two cities of China, Wuhan and Shanghai, which both inherited rich Chinese music traditions and introduce and develop western art music.

Armed with degrees in piano pedagogy and musicology from conservatories in China, I grew up with classic and contemporary European and American art music. Nevertheless, I was always interested in Chinese musical tradition. I had vocal training in Chinese minzu changfa (“national style of singing” 民族唱法) for many years; and also had performing experience of Chinese folk songs and traditional Chinese opera. Later on, at the Graduate School of the Shanghai

Conservatory of Music, I founded xiqu she (“Chinese opera club” 戏曲社), which has become an engaging club among universities in Shanghai, rehearsing and performing regularly in local community centers and concert halls since 2008. Now I realize that, those performing experiences and moments in my early twenties in fact musically formulated my interest to literary Chinese texts.

Texts in Chinese folk songs and traditional opera, such as kunqu (昆曲), can be seen as classical poetry in modern sense, and their styles are distinct. The former is simple and witty, the latter is poetic and refined. However, they both are concisely beautiful to me. Since high school I have been writing poetry as a way to “talk.” I think that was the reason why I was attracted to

minyao singer Zhou Yunpeng right away at the Shanghai Jazz Festival back in 2011 precisely because the singer Zhou himself is also known as a poet specializing in poetic lyric writing.

In retrospect, my fondness for poetry and poetic writing was one of my motivations for studying contemporary Chinese minyao. Additionally, there was my empathy with contemporary minyao audiences. I am also of the post-80s generation and have migrated from Chinese cities to the U.S. The lack of sense of geographical belonging and a class aspiration I observed from the minyao audience is also what I have striven for. Stepping into ethnomusicology program, I unhesitatingly decided to research minyao music. I have, at times, found it challenging to connect my intuitive passion with intellectual findings. My positionality as a minyao audience member appears personal, and my listening preferences had the potential to inform or bias the research. As a young Chinese ethnomusicologist, I take advantage from my perspective as cultural insider in my analyses of Chinese popular music and society from sociological perspectives. I also incorporate previous English scholarship to my examination of Chinese social currents. All in all, writing about social classes within the minyao culture, this thesis stems from personal experience, intuitive motivations, fieldwork and observations, and intellectual ideas.

5. Methodology, Theoretical Frames, and Informants

This thesis consists of seven parts. The introduction provides contemporary references to contemporary Chinese minyao, the research methods and employed theories, as well as the contribution to scholarship on minyao genre and Chinese popular music. Chapter two chronicles the history and the first minyao generation and discusses how the first generation conforms to ideological trends of 1980s and 90s’ China. Chapter three looks at the second generation and

minyao community practice in Dali, Yunan Province, China, in order to examine population mobility in China. Chapter four analyzes 210 minyao lyrics in association with intimacy to classical Chinese literature and the aspects of gender. Chapter five analyzes minyao songwriting in terms of “minyao style” chord vocabulary, instrumentations, folk tunes, sound effects, and vocal style. Chapter six focuses on the minyao audience in order to elaborate upon the definition of contemporary minyao and an imagined social gap from a marginal middle class. The conclusion is a review and a consideration on further research of minyao.

Methods are comprised of fieldwork and library research. The primary resources come from my fieldwork in cities of Nanjing and Dali, China, including interviews and recordings of minyao singers and fans, conversations with concert audiences, and online questionnaire and participant-observation at live performances. Books, journal and magazine articles, transcriptions, lyrics data analysis, and personal observations from TV programs make up my secondary resources. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and library research, I inquire into questions of who produces minyao, who listens to minyao, why they listen, and what social shifts affect their musical preferences. During fieldwork, I befriended some minyao fans. The way they look at minyao inspired my analysis. The lyrical data and questionnaire lend statistical support to research outcomes from both sides of minyao artists and audiences.

The approach of the relationship between music and context was articulated in several influential ethnomusicological books (Feld, 1982; Seeger, 1988; Kingsbury, 1988; Lau,

2004:24). Those scholars addressed their findings, mainly discussing the music itself, either ethnic or classical/avant-garde music. In this thesis, I will examine cultural attachment and social classes within the context of mobility in China.

As Bruno Nettl suggests about American folk songs (2005), Frederick Lau points out that new work songs “rest heavily on their emotional appeal and symbolism to keep migrant workers together as a visible social group” (2015: 426). Jeroen de Kloet argues that “music plays an important role in the production of locality; it gives audiences a sense of place of belonging”

(2010:156). The migration of the second generation of minyao singers is in conjunction with the transformation of post-socialist development in twenty-first century China. Rather than focusing on a group or a region affected by specific music activities, or such issues as music and ethnicity, music and colonization or decolonization, sound studies, and so on, my concept of “sonic township” underlines that the practice of music in a live house, the sonic-spatial performing venue, accommodates minyao audiences to reconfirm their homeplaces.

The music of this “sonic township” is characterized by 1) the notion of wen (文) as a civilized, refined, literary and feminine sophistication; and 2) a “feminine” style of singing

(Moskowitz 2010; Baranovitch 2013). According to Tian Xiaofei (田晓菲), a professor of

Chinese literature, the Chinese word wen refers to cultural accomplishments in general and literature in particular. Intellectual sophistication has been a longstanding expectation in China, which causes the audience to value minyao lyrics more than the music itself. Another definition of wen references a Confucian worldview concerning Chinese men. According to Moskowitz, a professor of anthropology, male wen, refined but not necessarily female, signifies social elitism in contrast to male wu, which is characterized as more energetic, “coarse,” and associated with military force. In imperial China, wen-style manhood was both primary and ideal. These two traditional qualities help define the aesthetics of minyao and its reception among audiences in post-socialist China.

Other theoretical frames include semiotics (Eco 1976; Kristeva 1980a; Barthes 1981;

Allen 2000) and class-based tastes (Bourdieu 1984). The texts (lyrics) play an important role in understanding Chinese cultural codes in minyao lyrics. “A reader always brings other texts to an understanding of the single text, so that all writing is filled with allusions, quotations, and references to other writing” (Klein 2005, 1). According to my informants, they adore minyao music simply because of its lyrics. Further, their music tastes reflect a marginal middle class, seen mainly in the second-generation audience, under the middle class in 21st century China.

In the summer of 2016, I attended a show at Ola Arts Space (欧拉艺术空间) in Nanjing, performed by Lao Lang (老狼), the godfather of minyao. It was a grand opening of Ola, a live house located on the ground floor of Sun Palace that is contracted by the Nanjing state-owned

Cultural Investment Holding Group. The owner of Ola is also a minyao singer, Li Zhi (李志), a local Nanjinger. After the show, I met briefly with Li and had a conversation with Lao Lang and his band in the dressing room.

Zhou Yunpeng, my first informant, kindly introduced me to another minyao singer

Huanqing (欢庆). Zhou and Huan have also built a partnership in a live house called Jie Lu

(“house” 结庐) in Dali. After that, I visited Jie Lu in December, 2017 and watched a minyao performance by Zhang Zhi (张智). Afterward, I had interviews with Zhang and his audience members. In subsequent days, Huan showed me around Jie Lu and his music fellows in Dali.

Through the visit of Jie Lu, their music business and the status quo of the minyao circle in Dali became practical to me. Although I lacked seasoned fieldwork experience, all my informants showed terrific kindness to me and my research. The fieldwork is general, conducted was gratifying.

6. Significance

Scholarship on Chinese popular music, by both Chinese and international scholars and musicians, mostly explores rock music and the first generation of minyao music during the 1980s and 1990s in Beijing. However, some scholars, e.g., Andrew Jones (1992), Nimrod Baranovitch

(2003), Marc Moskowitz (2010), Jeroen de Kloet (2010), and Frederick Lau (2004, 2016), employ theories such as interpretation, re-contextualization, gender in performing arts, and the relationship between music-making and social context, to extend their insights to both political and cultural influences in contemporary China. In recent years, many minyao singers and songs have occupied the top of Chinese popular music charts. However, the study of this genre of music is still limited. This thesis, therefore, attempts to link minyao music scene to class aspirations in post-socialist China, with the emphasis on the second generation after 2000 in two cities other than Beijing. Specifically, I bring four new perspectives to this research.

Firstly, I bring attention to the second generation minyao not done by previous scholars.

The lyrical and musical analysis are given in the thesis. The live house is a new performance venue for the second generation. The demonstration of minyao community in Dali exemplifies the population mobility in China.

Second, I show the relationship of the second generation minyao text to classical Chinese poetry. Minyao lyricists, more or less, have been influenced by the aesthetics of Chinese poetic structure, the “qi-cheng-zhuan-he” (起承转合) pattern, and adapt this rhetorical convention of classical Chinese poetry into minyao lyrics. The pathos of ordinary moments, quotidian events, and social critiques are poetically expressed through minyao. This way of writing lyrics lends a literary glory to minyao text, implies cultural connotations, and makes the audience feel themselves close to classical Chinese poetry.

Third, this thesis discusses musicking as part of an emerging “marginal middle class.”

The musical activities and the lifestyle of the second generation ally with the peculiar social group. By observation and interviews with minyao artists and audiences, I demonstrate how this marginal middle class connects to minyao music and class aspiration.

Lastly, I identify aspects of gender in all periods of minyao. The main points are objectification of women, the gender stereotype, and female minyao lyricists.

Overall, this thesis provides information on minyao as an organic Chinese popular music genre, especially the second generation of minyao music. The research can contribute both to scholarship on contemporary Chinese popular music, and to the general awareness interested in contemporary Chinese music and society. Furthermore, it would also attract a niche audience, which primarily supports and facilitates the popularity of the second generation of minyao music.

Chapter II

The First Generation of Contemporary Chinese Minyao

1. Minyao in Imperial China

Regarding the folk ballad genre of minyao (“folk ballad”), people may think of poems, popular narrative songs, storytelling, and various oral traditions. Generally, minyao features a natural and simple style that makes it easy to spread and accessible to people. The ancient minyao would be recited or sung by people who connected to individuals’ stories about daily lives, or who made commentaries about social issues and politics. In this section, I will briefly introduce the history of imperial Chinese minyao with two purposes: to explore its musical and textual value in political and social situations, where it acted as a vehicle for ordinary people to tell their lives and for emperors to know their voices; and to distinguish two confusing terms, minyao (“folk ballad”) and minge (“folk song”) in a modern Chinese context. The history in this chapter is important to my analysis of present-day minyao in terms of how it connects to folks and how it circulates ideas of folks about the society.

Musically, the earliest Chinese minyao can be traced back to Han dynasty (202 B.C. –

A.D. 220), when the Emperor Hanwu (汉武帝) established the Yuefu (乐府), Bureau of Music of

Han, for both ritualistic and political purposes (Barmé 1999:147), collecting and refining ge

(“song” 歌) and yao (“ballad” 谣) 14 to reinforce the domination of the rulers.15 The repertoire of

14 Cited from《前汉·艺文志》“孝武立乐府而采歌谣.” 15 According to Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China, the functions of the Bureau were to “collect popular songs from regions of the Han empire (especially Chao, Tai, Ch’in, and Ch’u) and foreign countries; to adapt and orchestrate popular songs; to compose new hymns and put them to music; to put existing texts to new, modern tunes; to set to music compositions commissioned from famous poets, such as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju; to participate in, and perform at religious and secular functions.” (p.6)

the Yuefu was extended to 5,290 pieces from Han to Five Dynasties (AD 960) under twelve categories collected in the book, Anthology of Yueh-fu Poetry (Birrell 1988:6).16 Song-texts of

Yuefu were well-documented in historical classics, but over time this traditional folk music developed as a genre of poetry by court literati and musicians. Subsequently, the music was lost.

A variety of terms were used to indicate rich characteristics of folk song singing and written styles from the imperial times.17 Ge (song 歌), yao (ballad 谣), and minyao (folk ballad 民

谣) were used in different Han folk song contexts. The earliest documented use of these terms can be found in The Book of Songs (Shijing 《诗经》) around 600 BC in Zhou Dynasty (1046

BC-256 BC).

“《诗经·魏风·园有桃》：园有桃、其实之肴。心之忧矣、我歌且谣。”

The Book of Songs·Regional Songs of Wei·Peach Tree in My Yard: “The peach tree in my yard is prosperous. Its fruits are fresh and delicious. My worry and gloom drear long. So, I sing a ballad loudly.”18

Throughout the dynastic period, the Chinese character yao and the term minyao had evolved into two meanings. First, by analogy to western music, yao can be seen as a form of a cappella vocal performance featuring singing without instrumental accompaniment.19 In the

Chinese context, this musical style is called tu ge (plain song 徒歌). Er-ya 《尔雅》, the oldest

Chinese lexical dictionary, dating from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE), asserts that yao and tuge refer to the same thing:

“《尔雅·释乐·15》：徒歌谓之谣。”

Er-ya·Shiyue·15: “Plain song means ballad”

16 Here, Yueh-fu is the same as Yuefu with different spelling. 17 The citations of Chinese references in this section are based on the online Chinese Text Project, which digitizes collections of early Chinese classics. 18 English translation sourced from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_3f4024480102drm1.html 19 Here, 谣 yao differs from 歌 (ge, song) that consists of both musical instrument and vocal singing. The source of annotation can refer to the Annotation of the Book of Songs [“Maoshi Guxun Zhuan” 毛诗故训传] or the Kangxi Dictionary [“Kangxi Zidian” 康熙字典]: “谣既徒歌，则歌不徒矣，故曰曲合乐曰歌。歌谣对文如此，散则歌爲总名，未必合乐也.”

Alternatively, yao also could be interpreted as “small tunes among folks,” according to

Yiwen Leiju (Ouyang Xun, 624 AD,《艺文类聚》), an encyclopedia of reference books.

“《艺文类聚·卷四·三月三日》：二龙巡夏代，八骏驭周朝，豫游光帝则，乐饮盛民谣。”

Yiwen Leiju·Volume four·March 3: Two dragons look over Xia dynasty, Zhou dynasty drives eight steeds traveling around, The Emperor parades in autumn, drink pleasurably and sing folk ballads.

However, the second meaning of yao or minyao referred to expressions or proverbs that reflected social customs and public opinions or rhymed folk sayings.20 The Book of the Late Han

(Fan Ye, 445 AD, 《后汉书》) first documented this meaning.

“《后汉书·列传·杜栾刘李刘谢列传》: 愿陛下宽锲薄之禁，后冶铸之议，听民庶之谣吟，问路叟之所忧……”

Book of the Late Han·Collected Biographies·Ciographies of Du, Luan, Liu, Li, Liu, and Xie: (I) Plea with the Emperor to implement the currency policy more flexible, to make bronze coins heavier and thicker, to listen to folks’ ballads, to ask folks’ worries……

In addition to this example, many expressions or proverbs were popular among children or gained popularity in certain regions. For instance,

“童谣曰: ‘弃我戟，捐我矛；盗贼尽，吏皆休。’ ”

Kids ballad: “discarding the halberds, donating spear; robbers will wipe out, officials all get rested.”

“ 长安谣曰: ‘伊徙雁，鹿徙菟，去牢与陈石无徒。’ ” 21

Chang’an (Xi’an city nowadays) ballad: Yi Jia was demoted as a Yanmen boarder military, Wulu Chongzong was relegated as an administrator in Xuantu county/commandery, Lao Liang and Chen Shun were recalled, and the public applauded.

20 The term “rhyming folk sayings,” is referenced from In The Red, On Contemporary Chinese Culture, written by Geremie R. Barmé, published by Columbia University Press in 1999. Barmé discussed the linguistic function and impact of rhyming sayings in the Chinese socio-political environment of the late 1980s. 21 References from the online Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org/text.pl?node=385401&searchu=民谣 &searchmode=showall&if=en&remap=gb#result.

In a modern sense, another term minge (“folk songs” 民歌) mingles with minyao to confuse people outside of a Chinese context. To English audiences, the confusion between contemporary Chinese minyao and minge arises partially because of the Chinese-English misinterpretation. They tend to assume that Chinese minge (“folk song”) is equivalent to

American folk music. In a broad sense, Chinese minge, Taiwanese minyao, Korean minyo, and

Japanese min'yō are of the same lineage. They are characterized as folk songs with a long history and rural origins. However, in imperial China, the term minyao and minge were alternatively used. Since the May Fourth Movement (1919), a student protest against the Treaty of Versailles, signed by German Concession in Shandong Province, China. Western thoughts were introduced into modern China. With this, the concept of minge was established under Japanese and

European influences, associated with the German term “Volkslied.”22

Therefore, modern Chinese music textbooks have used the term minge substantially to talk about all ancient or modern regional Chinese music, which includes both heterophonic and monophonic musical styles that function as work songs or small tunes in rural contexts, regional dialects, and conventional performances.23 The term of minyao was no longer mentioned in music textbooks, but in the field of Chinese literature and popular culture. Until in 1994, popular music producer Huang Xiaomao (黄小茂) revived this term, minyao, in the popular music domain, which is influenced by American folk music and Taiwanese xiaoyuan minge (“campus folk song” 校园民歌).24 These three are similar popular music style with a guitar accompaniment.

22 Mair, Victor H. & Mark Bender. 2011. “The Oral Literature of China.” In Translations from the Asian Classics: The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature (p.5). Columbia University Press. 23 According to the entry of “folk song” under the China section in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, there are six classification methods of minge: region, theme, function, vocal style, structure, and genre. Further examining genre, minge was categorized into haozi (work songs), shan’ge (mountain songs), xiaodiao (small tunes), and tian’ge (field songs). 24 Taiwanese campus folk songs are considered as synonymous with gangtai yinyue in this thesis. Therefore, this thesis mentions Taiwan folk music influence, but do not treat it in the body of the chapter.

2. 1994: The Birth of the First Generation of Minyao

“黑夜给了我黑色的眼睛，我却用它寻找光明” 顾城《一代人》

“The night gives me black eyes, but I use them to look for the light.” Gu Cheng, “The Generation” 1979

The most influential poem, Yidairen (“The Generation”《一代人》), written by Gu Cheng, described the uncertainty and expectations in the post-Mao China. In 1978, one year after the

Cultural Revolution, China resumed the National College Examination for national candidates under age thirty. In universities, students were eager to know everything outside of China and to express themselves after the ten-year ban on overseas studying and connections. This radical socio-political change also occurred in the popular music domain in the 1980s (Matusitz 2010).

In the aftermath of the 1989 student protests, college students had to abandon rebellious rock music. Beijing, Qinghua, and other Universities in Beijing gathered a large group of passionate young college students who were eager to consume new experiences from abroad and were well read in literature, especially poetry. Those college students have now become social elites.

In the popular music scene, xibeifeng (“northwest wind” 西北风), a Chinese folksong style of popular music, rock, and patriotic songs competed with imported music from Japan, H.K.,

Taiwan, and the U.S. in the 1980s. Patriotic songs such as “My Chinese Heart” (《我的中国心》

1982), “My Country and I” (《我和我的祖国》1985), and “The Clouds of My Hometown” (《故乡

的云》1987) performed in official events, military troops, and schools and institutions;

Taiwanese diva Teresa Teng and her song “Moon Represents My Heart (《月亮代表我的心》) was ubiquitous in the mainland; rock become a fad, specifically Cui Jian’s hits “I Have Nothing”

(《一无所有》1987), “Flower Room Girl” (《花房姑娘》1987), and “Fake Dervish” (《假行僧》

1989); other styles such as prison songs and xibeifeng songs enjoyed popularity in the late 1980s.

The relatively aggressive music style was different from the soft and romantic gangtai yinyue

(H.K. and Taiwanese music) (Baranovitch 2003). Meanwhile, big names such as Bob Dylan, the

Beatles, and David Bowie, the first western popular music tour in China by WHAM, and other foreign pop music all influenced ideas and concepts of Chinese music.

The complex of various music styles in 1980s’ mainland China brought a cultural desire for westernization and modernization to China’s intellectuals (Baranovitch 42). Starting in late

1993, rock music was no longer politically acceptable, and popular music turned to personal and nostalgic moods, reflecting a move away from politics and toward an individual desire. Under this scene, another style of music caught musical producers’ attention, with college students actively producing original songs. Young college students and graduates wrote songs and spread over campuses. Groups of friends sung with guitars and sat on the campus lawn, which was an unforgettable memory to the generation who cherished educational opportunities after the

Cultural Revolution.

Dadi label (“Great Earth” Record 大地唱片) released the debut minyao album Xiaoyuan

Minyao I, 1983-1993 (“Campus folk ballad I 1983-1993”《校园民谣 I 1983-1993》) to evoke an emotional response among the audience who experienced college life in the late 1980s and early

1990s (see Figure 2). Those singers, lyricists, songwriters, and producers of xiaoyuan minyao songs are regarded as the first generation. Songs in this generation captured audiences with catchy melodies and nostalgic lyrics, which described their old days, friendships, loves, and campus lives. The name of xiaoyuan minyao and this music marketing idea was extended from campus folk songs and the Campus Folk Movement of Taiwan, except for the difference that nationalism triggered the Taiwanese genre among American popular music domination, influenced a political identity between Chinese and Taiwanese, and infused KMT ideology into

Taiwanese folk song production.25 Compared to Taiwanese campus folk music, the mainland successor seemed to simplify the nationalist ideology while emphasizing individual relationships with lovers and friends.

Figure 2. Xiaoyuan Minyao I, 1983-1993 (Campus Folk Ballad I 1983-1993) 26 Left: The album cover Right: The cassette

In 1992, Dadi moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Beijing. Huang Xiaomao (黄小

茂) joined Dadi there as a manager and producer, and directed production of this iconic album xiaoyuan minyao I, 1983-1993. He had heard a demo of the song “Youth” (qingchu《青春》) right after his 30th birthday, an age at which men should be completely independent and able to manage their lives and families competently, according to an old Chinese mantra, called sanshi erli (三十而立). For this reason, Huang was naturally touched by “Youth,” and he was inspired to begin producing music that catered to such feelings of nostalgia and longing. In the liner notes for this album, he wrote:

“One day, I heard a song in my office, which was ‘Youth.’ I have no idea what pulled my heartstrings, that I thought I would have not easily been touched

25 “How Beautiful It Will Be: How Campus Folk Changed Taiwan, by Matt Taylor (2017), https://international.thenewslens.com/article/71329 26 This picture is courtesy of http://www.jammyfm.com/p/112566.html

again. Perhaps this feeling explains the reason why I am a producer of this album Xiaoyuan Minyao I, 1983-1993. College students and young graduates wrote all the songs for this album. Every song has an ordinary but beautiful story, and every song is a souvenir for youth. I have a kind of impulse to tell people no matter they are young or not: life is impermanent, but youthfulness is born in a vibrant life and youthful mind. This youthfulness is mine, and hopefully it’s yours. A souvenir of youth, for those who are young or young at heart!”27

This debut album collected eleven newly-composed songs. Among them, three songs were collaborated by Gao Xiaosong (高晓松), a song-writer and lyricist, and singer Lao Lang (老

狼): “My Desk Mate” (《同桌的你》), “The Brother Who Sleeps in My Upper Bunk” (《睡在我上

铺的兄弟》), and “A Jongleur’s Lover” (《流浪歌手的情人》). Singer Lao Lang believed that the success of the first album of xiaoyuan minyao was due to the musical experience of the producers and singers. The musical style and lyrics were about love and nostalgia, and overall, it is more tender than rock music. He also pointed out that this album described the general lifestyle and mentality of the college students of the class of 1985-1992, according to an interview Lao once had with the Movie and Drama Weekly magazine. (Huang 1997:163).

Specifically, the song “My Desk Mate” was the most recognizable hit and has become a classic minyao song to general Chinese audiences. In regular Chinese classrooms, two students usually sit next to each other. If the pair are a boy and girl, they draw an invisible line between their desks, and one’s elbows must trespass beyond the line. This unique campus culture generates an intimate but “pure friendship” among boy-girl desk mates (Sun, 32). We can hear from the lyrics that a male recalls a female desk-mate from his youth (see Example 1). Lao Lang

27 The original Chinese:“有一天，我在办公室里，听到了一首歌，那首歌，就是《青春》。我自己也想不明白，是什么在这首歌里，打动了我自以为不再会被轻易打动的心。也许，正是这种打动，日后，幻化成了我成为校园民谣制作人的原因。这盘专辑中的歌，都曾经是校门里的人和已经走出校门的人自己写的。每一首歌的后面，都有一个平凡美丽的小故事发生过，每一首歌都是他们自己的青春纪念。我有一种冲动，想告诉年轻的和已经不年轻的人们，生命无偿，而年轻美丽，它生于年轻的生命以及那些年轻的心灵中，它是我的，希望它也是你的。送给年轻或曾经年轻的你一份青春的纪念！”

initially sang it at the College Students Graduation Concert in 1993, Beijing, and then received official invitation to perform at the CCTV New Year Gala in 1995 (see Figure 3)28. Since 1983,

China Central Television (CCTV) has produced the spring festival Gala on new year eves. The performance at CCTV Gala allowed Lao Lang to sing sentimentality of the youth group on an official event to all Chinese TV audiences. The Gala performance implied that the authority opened up to youth groups and opened the market for this genre of music. The official approval also played a key role in a trending-setting style of minyao-themed music.

Example 1: “My Desk Mate” (first verse),《同桌的你》, 1994

Singer Lao Lang, Chinese CCTV Gala in 1995

For both performances, in person and on CCTV, Lao Lang dressed a semi-casual style of a white shirt with medium long hair. From a semiotic point of view, image is communication; it has significance and acts as a go-between, on the physical level, between its mental and psychic

28 Figure 2: http://1118.cctv.com/2018/02/01/ARTIk46RmiNUabQdy0w9VfYO180201.shtml; Figure 4: https://v.qq.com/x/page/u0516gcc4bo.html?

levels (Matusitz 2010). Based on this concept, the image of Lao Lang and his song “My Desk

Mate” musically and visually made him a symbol to a large number of Chinese youths in 90’s. It has been a quarter century since this song was released, and whenever this song plays today, it is denotational and connotational to individuals’ minds, mentally and psychically. Lao Lang’s early songs talked about romance, campus life, and loss and hope of the post-Mao generation. His songs accompanying his gentle and elegant appearance created a young intellectual imagery. In this sense, Lao Lang has been regarded as the godfather of minyao. He and his music represented school memories in the early of 1990s to audiences. It can be said that the year of 1994, the release of xiaoyuan minyao debut album, symbolized the birth of “Minyao.”

Figure 3. Lao Lang (老狼) in the National Graduation Gala, 6/24/1994, Beijing.

3. Back to 1980s: Literature29 and Rock

The Chinese term qinghuai (情怀) refers to a feeling or sentiment that a person always bears or an ambition that one tries to accomplish one day regardless of their age. Its English

29 In this section, the literature specifically refers to scar literature. Some critics believe that this literary form is important because the political association. But others defend it because many of novels have little literary value.

equivalent might be to call someone “a rocker at heart.” As a fan of rock and roll, Lao Lang invited his rock singer friends to perform in the last episode of the Chinese version of “I Am a

Singer” (Figure 4), in April 2016. Though Lao Lang was a minyao icon, he did not hide his love for rock music and dedicated the last episode of this show to the thirtieth anniversary of Chinese rock music (1986-2016). In Lao Lang’s case, the passion for rock music is always in his mind.

From rock case of Lao Lang to the case of the minyao audience, what was the sentiment for them to listen to minyao? And what generated their collective sentiment and preference for minyao music? I suggest that Chinese rock music and the scar literature during the 1980s play important roles to generate this collective sentiment.

Figure 4. “I Am a Singer” of China, S4. Lao Lang: from right, the fifth.

Before the popularity of minyao in 1994, the overall political and cultural atmosphere in the 1980s was relatively lax. Benefitting from the Open Door Policy (1978), China attracted foreign businesses economically and also absorbed western modern/post-modern theories intellectually. In music, such new styles as American folk music, rock ‘N’ roll, and gangtai yinyue were introduced. The official acquiescence to new experiences implied an introspection on the Mao period and an encouragement to innovative thoughts. The Democracy Wall (xidan minzhu qiang 西单民主墙) on the Xidan Street of Beijing was the landmark for this short-lived

liberty. The public was able to post their speeches and protests on the wall. Activities such as underground journals and petitions were acceptable under the government. Literary genres, such as poetry and novellas, had a huge impact on college students during 1980s. In such cases, higher educational institutions were ideal grounds for the development of contemporary Chinese literature and music. Among them, a new literary current, scar literature or literature of the wounded (shanghen wenxue 伤痕文学), was significant for helping a generation release the trauma brought on by the Cultural Revolution. (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. A short novel Shanghen (“Scar” 《伤痕》), issued on the Wen Hui Newspaper, 1978.

The scar literature emerged in 1977 right after the end of the Cultural Revolution. As Xu

Zidong (许子东), a modern Chinese literature professor, points out, it had been a significant literary genre and phenomenon since the May Fourth Movement (1919) due to its broad readership and its means to narrate the trauma of the time. To set stories in the Cultural

Revolution period was a way for writers to face history in order to survive the cultural and moral discontinuity with classical Chinese literature and the spirit of the May Fourth period. The authors’ writing styles and motivations differ: some wished to witness history, others wanted to record a historical complaint, and still others simply wished to explore the literary form. Of those

writers, Wang Meng (王蒙), Zhang Xianliang (张贤亮), Wang Anyi (王安忆), A Cheng (阿城), Han

Shaogong (韩少功), Shi Tiesheng (史铁生), Mo Yan (莫言), Yu Hua (余华), and Jia Pingwa (贾平

凹) are all renowned now but first achieved their fame for writing about their experiences in the

Cultural Revolution. “The scar stories, which were published in the state-sponsored literary journals, marked a new phase in Chinese socialist literature” (Siu, Stern, 1985). Those Mao generation authors “required integrity and courage to produce such literature under post-Mao socialist circumstances” in which the community allows them to write their historical memories and to participate in the process of this collective memory (Siu, 1985). They, as a group, utilized writing to tell their stories, to relieve traumas, and to improve a collective understanding of the history.

In contrast, while 1980s rock music lyrics did not directly address the Cultural

Revolution, the symbolic “red” imagery in rock songs is related to the Maoist ideology. In this sense, the earlier rock vented out a collective trauma of post-Mao generation, as the consequence of the Cultural Revolution. Beijing, as a political and cultural center of China, unsurprisingly given its politicized ethos, has been a center for rock music (Baranovitch: 31). The rocker Cui

Jian (崔健) and his music are usually taken as an example of the opposite of and non-conformity to Revolutionary China (see Figure 6). However, I would suggest, Cui’s lyrics were introspective symbolism to the post-Mao generation at a certain point, who were stuck in limbo – how to move forward; it is a question for them.

However, by the end of the 1980s, the Chinese government reinforced censorship of cultural products, including music, after the student protest in 1989. Therefore, the release of

Cui’s song, “The Red Flag Lays an Egg” (《红旗下的蛋》) occurred on the cusp of this controversial situation. Due to the sensitive theme, this song, along with its album was

withdrawn from the market after its one-month release in 1994. The following three excerpted lyrics of Cui Jian demonstrate a paradox of combining the Maoist “red” political power and a new rebellion of the post-Mao generation (see Example 2).

Figure 6. Rocker Cui Jian’s classic image while performing ‘A Piece of Red Cloth’ in Nanjing, 199230

Example 2: Lyrics, “A Piece of Red Cloth” 《一块红布》, 1988 那天是你用一块红布 You covered my eyes with a piece of red cloth on that day 蒙住我双眼也蒙住了天 Covered my eyes and the sky as well 你问我看见了什么 You asked me what I was seeing 我说我看见了幸福 I said I saw happines s

Lyrics, “Rock on the Road of the New Long March” 《新长征路上的摇滚》, 1989 听说过，没见过，两万五千里 Have heard, not seen, 25,000 li of the Red Army’s Long …… March …… 埋着头，向前走，寻找我自己 Head down, walk forward, look for myself …… …… 一边走，一边唱，领袖毛主席 Sing while walking, singing the leader Chairman Mao

Lyrics, “The Red Flag Lays an Egg” 《红旗下的蛋》, 1994 妈妈仍然活着 Mom is still living 爸爸是个旗杆子 Dad is a flagpole 若问我们是什么 If being asked what we are 红旗下的蛋 We are eggs laid by the Red Flag

30 The picture courtesy of https://www.zhihu.com/question/37965431.

Growing out of this context, the first generation of minyao provided a non-threatening and emotional outlet for young adults. In other words, it served the needs from both official policy and youth entertainment. Therefore, I suggest that three images in minyao lyrics—girls, lost days, and friends—took the place of Cui Jian’s three “red” images, “red cloth” (hongbu 红

布), “red flag” (hongqi 红旗), and “The New Long March” (xin changzheng 新长征), to express minyao artists’ and audiences’ counter-narrative out of the collective aphonia. A prominent

Beijing-based music critic Jin Zhaojun (金兆钧) summarized minyao phenomenon in the Beijing

Youth Daily on June 3, 1994:

“In my opinion, the current minyao movement is pretty Beijing-oriented. It is a kind of transformation of rock music or a kind of musical reminiscence of the return to nature, and also an unintentional resistance to Hong Kong and Taiwanese shuqing gequ (popular romantic songs 抒情歌曲) of the past two years or so.”

Lattice, a Chinese rock band, once described the metaphorical contrast among three musical styles of C-Pop: “Minyao is tea, rock is wine, and popular music is water.” A big leap appeared between the transition from rock to minyao in the mid-90’s. Materialism and practicality became a new value among Chinese society, and also to some myopic music companies. Some rockers lost their belief in the rock spirit along with the loss of spirituality in culture and politics (Baranovitch 2003:43-45). At that moment, experiencing the transition from official acceptance to forceful control, the first generation of minyao music acted as a stopover, characterized by a gentle way of singing rather than a tough rock singing style to express collective nostalgia and sentimentality. Unlike rock, the first generation of minyao dealt with romantic themes, acoustic style, and qualities of nostalgia and sentimentality. The overall sociopolitical atmosphere during the 80’s and early 90’s was mirrored and helped by this transition from rock to minya

4. Wen vs. Wu Discourse: A Case Study in Nanjing

This section uses the Nanjing site as a case study that reflects a general discourse of wen

(literature; civilized, refined, and feminine sophistication 文) and wu (military 武) in minyao music. When I spoke with Lao Lang after his performance at a live house, Ola Art Space(欧拉艺

术空间), in Nanjing, Provincial city of Jiangsu, China in 2016, his friendly greeting impressed me: “how can I help you?” With an American style of greeting in a gentleman-like manner, rather than a typical Chinese greeting, he offered to help me.

On June 22, 2016, I watched Lao Lang’s performance for the soft opening of Ola (see

Figure 7). Ola is located in the center area of Nanjing city, which is a large plaza called Sun

Palace, constructed and sponsored by the Nanjing Cultural Investment Holding Group, in affiliation with the Nanjing government, in response to a need for the development and management of the cultural capital of the city. The Sun Palace comprises a tea house, restaurants, a movie theatre, a fitness center, hotels, a magic show theatre, music live houses, bars, and other businesses. The subway was under construction at the main street connected to the open entrance of the Palace.

I arrived at Ola a half-hour earlier than performance time, but there was already a long line waiting for checking in. Ola is in the basement of the palace. Its black and grey wall color creates a simple industrial style for the performing venue. Ola is divided into two large rooms, one is a bar-like room, where one can get beers, wines, and beverages while seated at the counter or at tables; the other is a spaciously open room with a built-in stage. Late June in Nanjing is sweltering and humid, so little by little the crowds of audience members inside the Ola got overheated. Noticeably, the air conditioning did not work, but the audience still remained patient and eager to interact with performers. While waiting for the restoration of electricity, Lao Lang

made several jokes about the owner of Ola, Li Zhi. Li is a leader of the minyao circle in Nanjing, and he has been dubbed “old brother” by minyao artists and audiences because Li strives to provide minyao performing opportunities and consistently offers financial support for minyao music.

Figure 7. Ola Art Space in Nanjing. Photography courtesy of Yanxiazi Gao Upper left: The main stage of Ola. Upper right: Lao Lang sings for the opening night of Ola. Bottom: Author holding the ticket at the box office and the entrance of Ola, 6/22/2016.

During the two-hour performance, audiences enjoyed the interaction with Lao Lang’s early repertoire, which is comprised of themes about love, campus life, and friendship.

Interestingly, the majority of audience members singing along were men. But noticeably, female audiences also sang along, and they seemed to ignore the subtle machismo in the lyrics. Lao

Lang’s later music contains other themes, which shows his ambitions to express himself authentically through his music—his disappointment, his likes and dreams, his persistence, memories and worries. Lao Lang and his songs have become the primary – and most unforgettable – representation of a particular period, which recalls audiences’ memories in the

past. For this reason, the next section will employ the method of wen and wu to discover the quality of the first generation minyao.

Lao Lang, with his band, performed signature songs such as “My Desk Mate,” “Rice

Store,” and “Escaping from Tiger’s Mouth.” Observing people while listening to the live music proved a completely different experience from simply listening to the music online. Being physically present at the performance, together with the audience, helped me to observe the music within its own community. I argue that the three primary images of “old days, girls, and friendship” in the first generation of minyao music resonate best with audiences who grew up during the post-Mao period socialist transformation between 1978 and 1989, a period which encouraged higher education for young adults, and which offered increased economic efficiency and political freedom.31 Most importantly, Deng Xiaoping’s administration greatly resolved the unemployment problem and provided good social welfare to the masses. Therefore, when the first generation minyao audiences considered these three images presented in the songs, they were nostalgic for their youth and for the innocence of childhood friendships and young love.

This reminiscence of minyao offered an alternative to the hard-edged masculinity of rock music, and, the gentleness of minyao singing was more in line with traditional Chinese aesthetics. Minyao and rock seem to mirror the discourse of wen and wu, and Lao Lang seems to personify the first generation of minyao.32 According to Baranovitch and Moskowitz, the wen and wu discourse refers to two distinct types of Chinese men in Chinese culture. Wen, a civil type, refined and effete but not necessarily female, stands for elitism, while the military type wu

31 The reference of the specific period 1978-1989 is cited from Chapter 22, “Welfare State Changes in China since 1949,” written by Bingqin Li, in The Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State, 2012. In western perspective, this generation is also called the Generation X. 32 The references of the discourse wen and wu can be seen in the books of Baranovitch, 2003:133; Moskowitz 2010; Louie and Edwards,1994:138.

is a more energetic and “coarse.” In Imperial China, wen-style manhood reflected the Confucian worldview to behave with morality and ethics. A quotation from China’s New Voices explicitly explains the wen type of masculinity in the traditional context:

“It is true that this type, personified by the scholar-artist-official, had a broad range of meanings that did not necessarily include femininity, but conscious references to femininity nevertheless often did constitute part of the wen male experience, and no less importantly, femininity, at least as an abstract idea, was not necessarily considered to be inferior. So strong was the desire among educated male writers and artists to articulate qualities traditionally associated with femininity that they often assumed the role of a woman in their art. As Wang Yuejin observes, the ‘beautiful woman and fragrant plant’ is a clichéd classical poetic figure that ancient poets, mostly male, identified with to embody their yearning for spiritual purity and loyalty’ (1989, 35).”

Applying this traditional background to the popular music scene of the early 1990s, wen style minyao singing can be seen to embody the aesthetics of the elite in the context of the discourse about wen and wu (Moskowitz 2013)33, and therefore the aesthetic values of the elite.

Correspondingly, the preppy look, accommodating manner, and the gentle singing style of Lao

Lang all conform to the image of the wen type. This style is accessible to general audiences and thus influences the first generation of minyao music’s aesthetics in the contemporary sense.

Regarding the singer himself, during the fieldwork at Ola in Nanjing and continuing conversation with Lao Lang via WeChat, he claims to focus on the minyao music itself and not on the cultural or social perspectives.

33 Moskowitz, Marc L. 2013. Go Nation: Chinese Masculinities and the Game of Weiqi in China. Berkeley: University of California Press.

5. Minyao Dormancy: Music Market and Politics

The first generation of minyao was destined to face a dilemma, due to the radical changes of political environment and the music industry. From one side, it functioned as a substitute for the rebellious rock music in the 1980s, yet from the other side, it was not able to compete with gangtai yinyue since the mid 90’s. Essentially, neither had it remained the Chinese folk tradition, nor did it have an established music industry in a global music market. At the moment when idealism was compelled to alternate with the materialist capitalism, the audiences’ taste shifted to urban love, which was better represented by gangtai yinyue. Looking to the past versus looking to the future in the Chinese music industry, looking inward versus outward in domestic social conditions, also the political context of Taiwan and HK relations in the late 1990s, minyao producers were limited in their musical topics and audiences. Despite the expansion of Chinese higher education since the end of the 1990s, the college audiences were full of ambitions that been taken over by the rising desire of materialism.

To rethink minyao music, several Chinese music critics in the mid-90’s concluded their reflections from multiple angles. The critic Yi Zhou believed that minyao was minge (“folk ballad is folk song”), which originally derives from or imitates folk life through singing. The style is supposed to be plain and explicit, as well as easily accepted. It characterizes the folk style of airs or tunes. The preceding descriptions help us to outline what minyao is. Basically, it resembles western ballads, guitar-accompanied singing, talking about people, society, and the universe. It should be an encouraging music style because it comes from the folk and talks about people’s life and society. The most important thing is that minyao music here offers an opportunity for people to create organic Chinese music that is close to themselves (Huang:167).

The music critic Jin Zhaojun is concerned with the quality of minyao music due to the tension between its campus origin and the commercial market. Because the fundamental feature of minyao is communal and down-to-earth, rather than commercialized or kitsch, the ideal life of minyao is better rooted in the folk. The debate on the current situation of minyao music is hard to solve. Jin suggests that minyao music does not need to be commercialized as other popular music styles since Chinese popular music is already diverse. Once commercialized it would lose the nature of its origin (Huang 169).

The first generation of minyao was put to the test inevitably due to the changes in the domestic political environment and the chaotic music market, although it achieved great popularity and a huge success. Politically, Jiang Zemin’s administration, as the successor of

Deng, outlined the policy of the “Chinese characteristics nation” (Zhongguo tese de minzu 中国特

色的民族) since the 1990s in terms of the development of the economy, science and technology, and education, to ensure the survival of the Chinese nation-state in a globalizing world (Hughes,

2009:101; Jiang, 1998h:408-9). His series of reforms facilitated building small firms and entrepreneurialism, whereas, it challenged the order of the emerging business market and social welfare to the ordinary Chinese.

In the popular music industry, following the popularity of minyao specifically, and

Chinese popular music in general, the issues and consequences of Jiang's reforms became apparent from 1995. First of all, signing with another record company was a typical commercial activity among singers. Nevertheless, issues were arising due to the lack of legal awareness relevant to singers. The most severe case as when the singer was unaware of the legally binding nature of a contract, according to the music critic Huang Liaoyuan. Thus, when a singer switched companies, a dispute inevitably followed. Secondly, new albums repeated the same style of hit

songs in order to make quick money. Consequently, audiences felt constrained by the homogeneity of the music, and record companies and singers lost their competitiveness. Thirdly, the “colonial tendency” in Chinese popular music resulted in the imitation or copying of western popular music styles or songs. It let audiences get used to the sounds of westernized Chinese popular music too. Finally, the success of gangtai yinyue dominated the market of mainstream popular on the Chinese mainland. All in all, a “cookie-cutter” approach to music resulted in a declining market for the popular music industry by the end of the 1990s (Huang: 198-240 passim).

In the wake of socialist reform and transformation, China faced a series of new social welfare policies such as the cancellation of tuition waivers and accommodation fees for all college students in 1994; the ending of the housing and work allocations in 1998; and the expansion of college enrollment in 1999. These reforms changed the social structure and peoples’ lifestyles. As enrollment in higher education increased, the size of the labor force decreased. College students in the 1990s were suddenly forced to begin job-hunting, a tremendous shift from their parents’ generation when the country allocated jobs. Economically,

Jiang led a large-scale privatization. Most state-owned enterprises, with the exception of a few large monopolies, were sold to private investors. The private sector, foreign investment, and entrepreneurship were considered essential to open the Chinese economy fully.

One result of these sweeping socio-economic changes was that the first generation of minyao music gradually faded from audiences’ vision, although the producers and singers of minyao songs attempted more sophisticated musical experimentation following the success of

1994. Along with other popular music, five minyao albums got final attention at the end of

1990s: Lao Lang’s first personal album “Dust in the Wind" (1995), songwriter Gao Xiaosong’s

collected album “No Regrets About Youth” (1991), the first album of the duo, Shuimu Nianhua

(“water-wood past,” 水木年华) “Forever Having You" (2001), and female minyao singer Ye Bei’s two albums “The Age of Innocence” (1999) and “Pisces” (2001).

To sum up, the first generation of minyao was a threefold fusion of American and

Taiwanese folk influences, commercialized packaging, and domestic socio-political modes. Its emergence and development catered to the dual needs of the music business and the aesthetics preferences of audiences. This duality also created a paradox for minyao, which was drowned in competition with more varied musical styles and businesses. Its nostalgic lyrics and conventional musical style were not able to satisfy the tastes of young audiences who preferred graduating sooner in order to earn money and who tended toward passive listening. At that point, minyao became a cultural symbol more than a popular music genre per se.

In conclusion, I would further suggest that the first generation minyao is situated as the finale of collectivism, ended by the privatization measures of the mid-90’s. This collectivism was seen in group living- and working- experiences from the national order of shangshan xiaxiang (“Down to the Countryside” 上山下乡) during the Cultural Revolution, through to the resumption of national college admissions. Although, the collective consciousness of youth shifted into universities from rural settings, they later in life, nurtured their collective memories in the campus through minyao music. In this sense, the first generation minyao was the elegy to collectivism. Chapter three next discusses the shift away from Beijing-centrisma and the use of diverse musical resources manifested in second generation minyao.

Chapter III

The Second Generation of Contemporary Chinese Minyao

“This untouchable happiness in a faraway place.” The Faraway place, Haizi

“这不能碰触的远方的幸福。” 《远方》海子

“Starting tomorrow, I will become a happy one. …… I will have a house facing the sea, basking in the spring with flowers blossoming.” Facing the sea with Spring Flowers Blossoming, Haizi

“从明天起，做一个幸福的人 …… 我有一所房子，面朝大海，春暖花开。” 《面朝大海，春暖花开》海子

1. Yuanfang (“Faraway Place” 远方): Reality or Utopia

This chapter discusses the second generation, also called xin minyao (neo folk ballad) in terms of its literary implication, a case study in Dali, Yunnan Province, China, and its three characteristics. In order to demonstrate the characteristics of minyao, this chapter privileges texts as part of supporting materials. The cultural connotations of minyao lyrics will be analyzed in chapter four.

Music festivals and a booming internet presence championed minyao back into the public’s attention around the mid-2000s. The annual Strawberry Festival (草莓音乐节), organized by its parent company, Modern Sky Entertainment (MSE), aims to create a folksy, casual, and light-hearted outdoor music event (see Figure 8). To help create this atmosphere, MSE has contracted with many established and famous minyao singers and bands, such as Zhou Yunpeng

(周云蓬),Ma Di (马頔), Zhang Weiwei (张玮玮), Song Dongye (宋冬野), Wutiaoren (五条人), Rao

Shisan (饶十三), and DiKuAi. (低苦艾) They are all active in the contemporary minyao scene as well as the Chinese pop music scene. Moreover, since 2010, Shisanyue Records (Thirteenth

Month 十三月唱片公司) launched several large scale concert tours entitled “Minyao on the Road”

(民谣在路上). This project has attracted more than 4,000,000 people across sixty cities of China.

Figure 8. Poster of Strawberry Festival in 2014; all-star minyao singers performed in Dali city.

These minyao activities noticeably influence the lifestyle of young audiences. The most pertinent example is a slogan, shi yu yuanfang (“poetry and a faraway place” 诗与远方). It calls for a utopian aspiration for individuals to pursue their ideal lifestyles under the extreme pressure of high housing costs and rising unemployment after 2010 in China. This slogan is quoted from the iconic minyao songwriter and lyricist Gao Xiaosong (高晓松), who is a well-known celebrity for first-generation minyao lyric writing. Quickly, the slogan attained a kind of “chicken soup for the soul” sentiment sweeping over the Chinese internet, and it offered an illusionary escape to many people, especially those in their twenties and early thirties. In real life, some of them were tiring of the hustle and bustle of urban life and wished to quit their stable jobs such as doctors

and teachers, moving to their “faraway places” where they could seek out spiritual tranquility and pastoral comfort.

The yuanfang (“faraway place” 远方) in both Chinese poetry and minyao lyrics speaks of an escape from the everyday anxieties of society. Dali, a city with a significant tourist industry in southwestern China, provides a new artist community for people to see their burdens and concerns from another perspective. Xin minyao addresses day-to-day lives and problems that aspiring middle-class people encounter in China: namely, a sense of place and belonging in a society characterized by a huge population mobility, and a lament about materialism and the anxieties characterized by economic uncertainty and spiritual poverty. These characteristics of the second generation of minyao are expressed in poetic language that evokes the great poets of

Chinese history and classical literature, which ennobles the suffering and anxiety of their identities and even makes the audience feel connected to an elite tradition.

Concerning this social phenomenon, I suggest that this slogan is interlaced with the meaning and code from the classic Chinese essay Taohuayuan Ji (“The Peach Blossom Spring”

《桃花源记》), written by Tao Yuanming, an official, scholar, and poet of the Eastern Jin Dynasty

(317-420 CE). The essay talks about a fisher who finds a carefree and isolated land, where a village of people works and lives together timelessly. At the end of the essay, the fisherman leaves this village, and, one day, when he again tries to go back to this land, finds there is no path back due to the political instability and warfare.34 The metaphor of this essay refers to an ethereal utopia where the people live and work ideally and idyllically without any worries. Because of the both elite backgrounds of the writer of the essay, Tao Yuanming and minyao lyricist Gao

34 An introduction with the complete essay of The Peach Blossom Spring in the English language is downloaded from Primary Source Document with Questions (DBQs) at Columbia University.

Xiaosong, therefore, the slogan “faraway place” also taps into notions of the literati and elitism of classical Chinese culture in the contemporary literature, music, and lifestyle.

Chinese contemporary poetry references this utopia by narrating yuanfang (“faraway place or distant place” 远方). Haizi (“child of the sea” 海子), one of the most celebrated Chinese poets, wrote several poems about yuanfang which describe the feeling of desolation, isolation, and loneliness. However, inside of these feelings, his poetry about yuanfang implies a spiritual agony that expresses his suffering from the conflict between the dissatisfaction of materialism in

Chinese society in the late 80s and his firm belief of writing poetry and of being a spiritual self. I cite three excerpts of Haizi’s poetry as an example for his poetic image of a faraway place (see

Example 3, 4, and 5).

Example 3: September (excerpt) 《九月》, Haizi, 1986

目击众神死亡的草原上野花一片 Witness the wildflowers on the grasslands where gods come to die. 远在远方的风比远方更远 The wind – is more distant than a faraway place. 我的琴声呜咽泪水全无 My lute is crying out without tears. I return to the distance of the faraway place to the 我把这远方的远归还草原 grasslands. …… …… In a faraway place, there is only in the death-bringing all 远方只有在死亡中凝聚野花一片 wildflowers together. The bright moon is like a mirror hung high over the 明月如镜高悬草原映照千年岁月 grasslands, shines on the thousand years. …… ……

Example 4: Country (or Dreaming as a Horse) (excerpt) 《祖国 (或以梦为马)》, Haizi, 1987

我要做远方的忠诚的儿子 I want to be a loyal son of the faraway place 和物质的短暂情人 And a temporary materializing lover 和所有以梦为马的诗人一样 As the same as other poets who dreams as a horse 我不得不和烈士和小丑走在同一道路上 I have to walk on the same road with martyrs and clowns …… ……

Example 5: Faraway Place (excerpt) 《远方》, Haizi, 1988 远方除了遥远一无所有 In addition to a faraway place, nothing is there. 遥远的青稞地 Remote barley field 除了青稞一无所有 In addition to this barley field, nothing is there. 那时我在远方 I was there, the faraway place. I was free and poor there then. 那时我自由而贫穷 This untouchable happiness is in a faraway place. 这不能触碰的远方的幸福 And how painful is the happiness of the faraway 远方的幸福是多少痛苦 place. …… …… 更远的地方更加孤独 Furtherer is lonelier. 远方啊，除了遥远一无所有 Oh, the faraway place, nothing at all, except remoteness. …… ……

The literary image of yuanfang enables metaphoric musical interpretations. Minyao singer Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬) writes a title song for the poem “September.” Gao Xiaosong includes “poetry and faraway place” (shi yu yuanfang) in his new song in 2016 that takes advantage of the debatable sensation on his slogan. The outcome of this metaphoric vocabulary yuanfang brings a question of whether it reflects the reality of people’s lives and their determination to change and whether it merely works as an opiate that keeps people from trying to change the conditions that create anxieties. In order to labor this dichotomy, I will first look at a minyao circle in Dali city as a case study; then delineate its three characteristics. From the sociological perspective, I will also look at how minyao-related individuals interact with social dynamics and how those individuals reflect themselves.

2. From Beijing to Dali: Mobility and Community

The burgeoning of the internet at the beginning of the twenty-first century in China widely disseminated various genres such as wangluo gequ (“internet song” 网络歌曲), gangtai gequ (“Hong Kong and Taiwanese popular music” 港台歌曲), indie music, rap music, R&B, jazz, and other competing Chinese and western popular music styles. “Super Girl,” “Chinese Talent

Show,” and other Chinese singing contests produced many grass-rooted super idols. Music

production business profited from these new musical activities. However, the quality of Chinese popular songwriting did not keep pace with the established music production. Overrated musical idols dominated the main market of Chinese popular music due to successful singing shows

(Zheng Hanyue 2010).35 Jin Zhaojun (金兆钧), a music critic and a secretary of the Association of

Chinese Popular Music, noted that the living experiences and mindsets of audience groups have changed from the 90’s. It hardly produced a good quality popular song, the value of which truly reflects the life of Chinese (2008). Jin also predicted that Chinese popular music would be prosperous if it could cater to Chinese audiences’ call for a kind of spiritual value. His expectation for Chinese popular music coincidently pointed to the re-emergence of the second generation minyao music.

A half-day “Xin Minyao Concert” was held at the 798 Art Zone in Beijing from the afternoon until night in May of 2005. It was organized by Xiao He (“a stream or little He”小河), a pioneer of second generation minyao music. The concert leaned toward an experimental musical style, and the lyrics concerned social issues more than the first generation. Other than the western style of easy-listening popular music, the Xin Minyao Concert weaved personal experiences with social change into sophisticated lyrics and more vibrant music. This partially accounts for the xin (“neo” 新) in its name. The performance venue 798 Art Zone turned an old military factory into a contemporary community consisting of a large number of art galleries and coffee shops. As a part of the urban planning being conducted by Beijing government, the 798

Art Zone is now famous for the leading role in the creative industry of China and an artsy place

35 The resource of the article is in Chinese language, titled《写一首好歌我来唱》, published on People’s Daily. This article looks back at various styles of popular music and the dissemination in mainland China since the late 1970s. It also criticizes the commercialization of popular music over its musical value due to the booming internet and successful singing shows. The original link follows: http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrbhwb/html/2010- 10/21/content_649872.htm?div=-1

for urbanites. The urban planning affected not only the living conditions at some artistic communities in Beijing, but also impacted a sense of township and the careers of those artists, including a flock of painters, poets, and rock and minyao singers. The township physically stands for the origin of individuals. However, the vast mobilized workforce in China nowadays blurs people’s place of origin alongside the China Urbanization Plan.

The second generation minyao singers in Beijing moved among artist communities, which proliferated on the outskirts of the city. Beijing connects towns and urban areas by seven nested rings. Tian’anmen Square is the center of these traffic rings. Since the early 90’s, artists, musicians, poets, and entrepreneurs moved from the Old Summer Palace area to Ge Village,

Black Bridge, Song Village, and other outlying communities scattered beyond the fifth ring road, hoping for fame and fortune. From 2000, minyao artists were displaced from Beijing. The new business district of SOHO CBD replaced their old bar area. This displacement resulted in the shift to Dali city as a new artist community and performance venue (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. The artist community shifts from Beijing to Dali

Dali, a city in the ancient Nanzhao kingdom (937-1253) until the Ming dynasty, became a part of Chinese territory in the late fourteenth century. Dali is located between Erhai Lake and the Cang Mountains. At present, it has become a tourist city and provincial capital of Yunnan in southwestern China, where it is known to scholars as well for the diversity of its ethnic minorities. The Dali municipal government supports, restores, and markets the city as a business center and art market. The scenic nature, diverse ethnic cultures, and leisurely lifestyle appeal to around 40,000 surging newcomers from all over the world, including painters, freelancers, essayists, poets, photographers, gourmets, dancers, folklorists, and musicians.36 Many such artists, including minyao singers Yehaizi band and Zhou Yunpeng, mentioned earlier in this chapter, moved to Dali city one after another after 2010. Although the music media generally refers to all of them as minyao musicians, some of these artists call themselves experimental musicians because they explore instruments in ethnic groups from all over the world , and also use these instruments in their digital or improvisational song writings.

Huanqing (欢庆), an important and knowledgeable minyao informant who prefers to use just his given name in the music industry, is one of those experimental musicians. He began his journey of collecting and recording minority songs after a talk he attended in Chengdu, Sichuan province. In that talk, Huanqing was amazed by folk recordings, which were collected and presented by a non-Chinese researcher. Many of the colorful and unique tunes he had never heard before. After five-years of fieldwork, he released an album Deep in the Forest (《西南深

处》) in 2003, comprising 91 regional folk songs collected from seven ethnic groups – Yi, Hani,

Zang, Naxi, Lisu, Wa, and Han. He did not transcribe those folk songs (see Figure 10). The themes of this album include mountain songs, shepherd songs, Buddhist songs, ritual songs,

36 The estimate of newcomers is cited from an article “Dream Lifestyles in Dali end in Disappointment” in China Daily: https://www.chinadailyhk.com/articles/122/128/17/1553568197130.html

family genealogy songs, wedding, and funeral songs, love songs, lullabies, haozi (one of the categories of Chinese folk songs), poetry reciting, and more. The tracks on this album include vocal solos, vocal call and response, choir, local instrumental music, and a vocal solo with one instrument accompaniment. All the music collected in this album is sung in the dialect of the respective ethnic groups by locals. A subset of 21 songs from this collection of 91 folk songs was re-released in 2015 by the Tree Music Records company. The latest release is available to global audiences on music apps such as Spotify and Apple music.

Figure 10. Huanqing (欢庆) and his album Deep in the Forest. Photo courtesy of Huanqing. Left: Huanqing with an African Mbira. Right: The cover of the album Deep in the Forest.

In addition to being a performing musician, Huanqing has multiple other roles in popular music circles in Dali – a music producer, an event and music festival organizer, and a co-owner of the live house “Jie Lu” (“building a house” 结庐). Jie Lu live house is an integrated space featuring music performance, poetry gatherings, art exhibitions, a bookstore, a bar, and a recording studio (see Figure 11). It functions as a music and art salon in the contemporary commercialized setting. Literature, fine arts, music, and social networking all meet in one space.

Those artsy demonstrations and the general atmosphere in Jie Lu, as well as throughout Dali, create a spirit-oriented home to correspond to the slogan shi yu yuanfang (poetry and a faraway place). The lake and mountainous landscape that run the length of Dali city offer an idyll in its simple lifestyle to many intellectuals looking for a relatively hermitic residence to suit their spiritual and geographical departure from central and autonomous cities of China. Hot on the heels of a group of intellectuals’ arrivals, a flock of followers arrived in Dali to pursue a slow- paced lifestyle surrounded by nature.

Figure 11. The live house Jie Lu (结庐) in Dali. Photo courtesy of Huanqing and Chongyang. Left top: main stage. Right top: open space, facing Erhai Lake and the Mountains. Left bottom: bar area. Right bottom: recording and rehearsal room

The minyao circle in Dali gradually grew bigger, too, influenced by the general trend of social mobility. Zhou Yunpeng spent one year to produce the indie album Old Town in April with old minyao friends and new minyao migrants in order to articulate their eco-musicological perception of nature and daily life in the Old Town of Dali (see Figure 12). He shared this eco- lifestyle and his thoughts about his musical life during the preparation of this album:

Figure 12. The cover and CD of album Old Town in April (2014). The cover is handwritten by a street calligrapher in Dali. 37

“… I don’t want to repeat the walking dead’s lifestyle in the basement of Beijing, smoking and having red eyes, producing music overnights. Thus, I decided to move to Dali to prepare my new album. In April 2013, producer and minyao singer Xiao He and I found an old village at the foot of Clouds Playing Peak (Yunnong feng) as the last peak belonging to the Cang Mountain. … We don’t get drunk, don’t stay up late. Every morning, we get up with birds’ singing. Xiao He chants sutras for one hour. I stretch my arms and legs to do a morning exercise routine. Then we eat a healthy breakfast, start to work at 9 A.M., have a short nap at noon, and then continue to work at 2 P.M.; after we are done with dinner, we have a walk to the mountain and exchange our opinions as to the success or ineffectiveness from the day time work; before 11 P.M. we go to bed. The routine and the way we take care of our health is the same as retired cadres. We create a green, organic, regimen-oriented, and positive environment for the music production. … Music fellows in Dali used to visit us with drinks. But we obey the rule of “leaving the sound” to ask every visitor to leave their musical talents into this album. The song “Fragrance” records shakuhachi sounds by Yang Yi; “A letter to Mom from Lin Zhao in prison” records long and short melodies of the xiao by Huanqing; the participation of Ye Haizi band created a carnivalesque recording in the yard. We sit in the yard, drinking and grilling lamb kebabs with the remarkable scene of various instruments making sounds and collaborating. Their musicianship is shown by playing all kinds of instruments like zhongruan, ukulele, accordion, hand drum, shakuhachi, and kouxian. Everyone repeats singing my song: ‘get to a food stall, drink until dawn.’ The field recording captures

37 The photo belongs to https://baike.baidu.com/tashuo/browse/content?id=51917f417921fa5470672fcc&lemmaId=15251824&fromLemma Module=pcBottom.

ambient sounds of wind, chickens, dogs, etc. The result of this kind of recording is that the surroundings are less technically controlled, capturing the moment that the harmony of humans and the universe is recorded. That is the most valuable treasure overall.

In the end, we feel that non-technological good feelings in a flash are more important than a high fidelity effect of audio mixing in music studios. … This child was born in Dali, and we thus named it Old Town in April. Similarly, the Chinese Kids attaches to Beijing, the Cattles and Sheep Downhill derives from Shaoxing, the Old Town in April is a prosperous plant at the foot of the Cang Mountains of Dali.”38

In addition to the minyao circles in Dali, other genres of music are active as well. For example, electronic music, world music, experimental music, and ethnic minority bands are all invited to the music live houses, bars and festivals of Dali. Along with the growing migrant hipsters and middle-income earners, this diverse and creative environment forms a subculture in

Dali, where new neighborhoods arise consisting of numbers of out-of-state independent art contractors. The out-of-state contractors try to retain the cultures they had and display the culture in the arts, but their artistic works become part of the city’s new culture. Their artistic works become part of the identity of the city and also contribute to the continuity and vitality of dialects and regional musical elements. Ten years of development has created a new community in Dali.

Since 2018, this community has hosted a public marketplace three times a week. Jie Lu organizes live music performances, serving as a music base to audiences and inhabitants with the ebb and flow of migrants into and out of the city.

The new local-based culture and economy have benefited the music market of Dali in general. In Old Town, you can see several similar style of music bars, musical instruments

38 The full original online link of this post is in the Chinese language, https://site.douban.com/zhouyunpeng/widget/notes/474971/note/345341034/.

stores, and CD stores all in one street. Bars singers, conga drummers, and CD sellers are everywhere in the Old Town area. On the one hand, music becomes a necessity to Dali’s tourist industry and benefit some residents of a community. One the other hand, the homogeneous commercial music in Old Town may drag its music business in the future. Moreover, when newcomers serve in the community, they try to work on diverse minority identities and collaborate with minority musicians. The local voice is another business card for investors to share the music business in Dali. In the newly emerging music festivals in Dali, the collaboration of pop, jazz with local minority music is a common marketing strategy. However, it is yet to be determined whether this kind of music business will still benefit the music community in Dali or whether this will be a kind of gentrification that may disempower them.

The musical practices from Beijing to Dali city are associated with social changes in post-2000 China after the minyao music re-emerged around 2005 alongside other international and local music genres. In this case of domestic migration, I attempt to exemplify the local practices that minyao artists capture the essence of the places and reflect this in their music

(Negus: 185); what minyao artists feel and how they experience musical activities in association with particular geographical places (Guilbault 1993b; Negus 1996). Asking why the second generation of minyao music draws renewed attention, the primary answer could be that it is a reaction to globalization. Musically, it emphasizes local identities under westernized musical styles. Instead of labeling themselves as ‘Daliness,’ minyao community constructs its local identity within a more elaborate net. Inspired by Sara Cohen’s research of Liverpool’s popular music, I suggest that the musical influences in Dali vary from regional, national, and international; the political support, social mobility, and economic profit are all critical factors that facilitate their musical practices. Their songs tell audiences what they have experienced and

how they have connected to local places. Following the theory of the place, I will next discuss three characteristics of the second generation minyao music. These three characteristics are applicable to the second generation in general and not just the nouveau movement in Dali.

3. Three Characteristics

A. Geographical Belonging

Within the context of contemporary China, communities of birth are mainly based on educational background, occupation, income, fellow townsmen, and language/dialects.39

Migration within of China is a social phenomenon not limited to the working class but also including educated and professional groups. China encourages this mobility both to promote integrated urban-rural development and the living quality and in attempting to achieve the goal of developing the quality of the people as a whole (fazhan renmin sushi 发展素质教育).40 While repeatedly moving through communities across China, city migrants also lost their physical townships as they already left their hometowns. The anxiety of identity consequently follows: tens of thousands of artists, entrepreneurs, technicians, and manual laborers, known as Piao’er

(drifters 漂儿), poured into major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou,

Nanjing, and Hangzhou in the early 2000s, where they found many job opportunities and diverse lifestyles.

39 The concept of “communities of birth” is derived from Andre Beteille (2007). His article “Classes and Communities” discusses two categories of communities, one is caste, and the other is class, which is included socially disadvantaged communities. Beteille further uses the term “identity politics” to refer specifically in contemporary India that the communities of birth or the kind of politics maintain their collective identities based on language, religion, sect, caste, and tribe. In this thesis, I simply borrow Beteille’s term “communities of birth” into the Chinese context. 40 According to Ann Anagnost (2008: 513), she suggests that the aspirations for social mobility of individual citizens of China as a whole is enframed in the formation of human capital. In reform-era China, this human capital referred to as ‘quality’ (sushi 素质).

This social phenomenon decentralized the old center of minyao in Beijing and dispersed minyao to other provincial capitals that cultivated and characterized their own minyao musicians.

Therefore, the first characteristic of the second generation of minyao, geographical belonging, is characterized by the diverse backgrounds of minyao singers. The term geographical belonging acknowledges the concept of sense of place in the general literature in terms of attachment to place and regional awareness. Further, geographical belonging has two implications in this thesis: 1) it points out a broader distribution of the second generation minyao across Chinese cities; and 2) it assumes social mobility in contemporary China.

Representative second generation of minyao songs are titled for cities either where singers come from or where they have been to. Based on those popular songs with city names, I have included a map of contemporary Chinese minyao geographical references on Google Map, which shows a driving route from point A to point J, across ten cities over China (see Figure 13).

This figure gives an idea of how broad the minyao territory is as a whole.

Figure 13. Map of Contemporary Chinese Minyao, created by Yanxiazi Gao on Google Map.

Individual regional identity can be defined in different minyao artists and bands as they return to simplicity and narrate their homeland. Some examples include “The Yellow River

Ballad” by Ye Band (野孩子“黄河谣” 2004), “No One Talks to Me Since You Left Nanjing” by

Li Zhi (李志“你离开了南京，从此没有人和我说话”2005), “Beijing Beijing” by Hao Yun (郝云“北

京北京”2008), “North by Northwest” by Liu Dongming (刘东明“西北偏北”2008), “Lanzhou

Lanzhou” by DiKuAi (低苦艾“兰州兰州”2011), “The Brightest Star in the Yibin’s Sky” by

Yishi Band (衣湿乐队“宜宾夜空中最亮的星”2014), “South Mountain by South” by Ma Di (马頔

“南山南”2014), “Chengdu” by Zhao Lei (赵雷“成都”2016), and others.41

The band DiKuAi (低苦艾) comes from the northwest China city of Lanzhou, a capital city of Gansu Province, which cultivated the majority of its population living along the Yellow

River. The song “Lanzhou Lanzhou” narrates a scene where a young adult leaves his hometown and thinks of city views and the landscape of the city (see Example 6 and Figure 14). This song has resonated with many migrant workers as a representation of homesickness.

Example 6: “Lanzhou Lanzhou” (Refrain), 《兰州兰州》, DiKuAi, 2011

Figure 14. DiKuAi Band (低苦艾)

41 Lanzhou and Beijing are northwestern cities of China, and Yibin and Nanjing are southeastern and eastern cities.

The widespread geographic distribution of minyao music is inevitably intertwined with vernacular expressions, too. In various urban and rural areas, growing numbers of minyao singers interpret their everyday lives by using regional dialects. Local slang and expressions of different regions of China contain regional customs, landscape, memories, and meanings. Singing with dialects gradually formed a new branch of minyao called fangyan minyao (“dialect ballads” 方言

民谣). Many dialects, to name a few, Wuhan, Chaoshan (Teochew), Chengdu, Hanzhong, and others, are noticeable to audiences among their groups or communities. Among them, a rising band, Wutiaoren (“Five Guys” 五条人, Wu hereafter)42, keep the conventions of Fulao dialect of the Southern Min language. The early music of Wu Band extensively uses the dialect and folk songs, ballads, and narrative songs from their hometown Haifeng, a small southern town of

Guangdong Province. The introduction to Wu’s music states on their official website:

“Their first album, Xiancheng Ji (A Tale of Haifeng 县城纪), released in 2007, was highly praised and won seven awards (see Figure 15). The Wutiaoren Band usually depicts the daily life of the countryside and performs in the Fulao dialect (福佬方言), a dialect of the Southern Min language. Wu’s music has a subtle emotion and lyrics that reflect the critique of their daily life. Wu focuses on lived experiences and observes all kinds of people from the lower classes of the countryside to urban citizens.” 43

42 Wutiaoren Band does not approve of the literal English translation of their band's name, “five guys.” They insist on using the Chinese Romanization, Wutiaoren, instead because their band contained two members originally and includes one more drummer now. 43 The original online link in Chinese is gone. Photo credit goes to Douban Website.

Figure 15. The cover of the album of A Tale of Haifeng

The use of different dialects and language is a tool to enhance the audience engagement with the storytelling in Wu Band’s songwriting. They mostly draw the materials of their lyrics from news and stories in real life. Aside from Haifeng dialect, other dialects or languages often appear in their songs, e.g. Cantonese dialect, Hakka dialect, Thai language, Mongolian language, and Mandarin. In general, the broad minyao distribution doubles the physical identity of minyao producers and consumers: one results from their place of origins and the other results from their mobility. The incorporation of local dialects by pop musicians reflects a worldwide global and post-national phenomenon. This can be seen as the Cologne dialect used by a German music group Bläck Fööss and pidgin English by a Hawaiian music group the Makaha Sons, etc.

In the end, through singing their hometowns, a sense of attachment to their homelands is solidified. Singers themselves, thus, also become musical representatives of their geographical belongings. However, their sense of geographical belonging through minyao songs are stretched in a sense (Giddens 1990; Massey 1994; Negus 1996). Both singers and audiences image their presence in an abstract way in which they can be more engaged with their conceptualized places

(Mitchell 1993; Negus 1996). Minyao singers employ dialects, regional folks and instruments, and city landscapes to foster their sense of place more than as an actual physical place.

B. Civil involvement

In this section, I will address the involvement of minyao music to the social critique.

What have happened in minyao artists’ everyday lives? What are their concerns and thoughts to their living experience? And what are their responses to the receptions that general audiences perceive from their songs? The music style of Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬) and Wan Xiaoli (万晓利) are both relatively realistic. They are aware of changes and consequences in China’s society.

They are brave enough to talk about those changes through their lyrics that are a humorous satire on issues related to the everyday. For instance, Zhou’s album Chinese Kids (2007) critiqued social issues and tragedies throughout China: excessively-priced housing, food safety, the 1994

Karamay Fire in Xinjiang (northwest), abandoned children in Chengdu (southwest), HIV infections in children of Henan (central), coal mining accidents in Shanxi (north), and etc. (see

Figure 16).

Figure 16. Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬) and his album Chinese Kids Left: Minyao singer Zhou Yunpeng Right: The cover, Chinese Kids

Another of Zhou’s songs “Golden Porridge” (huangjin zhou 黄金粥) draws a picture of the class conflict in the context of the National Labor Day in Beijing city with overcrammed tourists.

Homophonic Chinese pun zhou either means “week” or “porridge.” The singer himself is good at tossing critiques by a humorous approach or satire (see Example 7 and 8).

Example 7: “Golden Porridge” (first verse), 《黄金粥》（第一段）Zhou Yunpeng, 2007 芝麻芝麻开门哟 Sesame sesame open, yo. 黄瓜黄瓜他不在家 Cucumber cucumber, he is not at home. 给你一块芝麻糖 Give you a piece of sesame candy. 这个早上你就满足了 You have been satisfied this morning. The first of May in Beijing, 五月一号的北京 Everybody is hygienic. 人人都很讲卫生 Only being afraid of the dust storm from Alxa 就怕阿拉善来了沙尘暴 League of Inner Mongolia, 把所有白领吹成灰领了 Blowing white collars into grey collars. 你呀美丽的小白领 Come on, pretty white collars, 可别瞧不起人大民工 Do not disrespect a big group of migrant workers. 民工虽然他不太卫生 They might not look clean, 总比很多人心要干净 But they have cleaner hearts than many.

In response to the reception of his music, Zhou once replied in an interview for IFeng in

2012: “I would not say my songs concern the hardship of our daily life, because that would sound like a leader’s tone. I just sing something that happens to be around me. Perhaps, as I honestly present my day-to-day life via the music, it might mirror the society or era at some point.” Similarly, in October 2016, I asked Zhou via WeChat about the connotations and social values behind his songs. He felt that “current minyao singers are more like troubadours or jongleurs because primarily, they have become indies and less bond to record labels. In doing so, we are free to give our opinions on the internet rather than other official platforms such as CCTV

New Year’s Gala. We bring our ‘land’ to sing songs which demonstrate our regional identities

and our observations to our surroundings.” Zhou next described contemporary Chinese minyao as such:

“[current Chinese minyao], starts from xiaoyuan minyao. It should be a demonstration of resurgence for a civil society. In modern Chinese history, it had many folk artists who can be seen as a kind of force of the voice. However, this voice was dominated by official power. In the present, [minyao music] is a critique of social taboo and is an introspection to our inner selves. [Minyao singers] should not be afraid of taking a risk to sing some social issues. Overall, [minyao] is a barometer to show the scale of freedom in a civil society.”

Wan Xiaoli (万晓利), moved to Beijing from its neighboring province, Hebei, in 1997, worked in music clubs nightly (see Figure 17). The experience of working at bars allowed him to interact with audiences closely and enabled him to examine mundane occurrences from all kinds of audiences. His musical style had transformed from superficial sadness to stimulating black humor that pays attention to details of daily life. The song “Laid Off” (2002), from the perspective of a laid off employee, depicted a life contrast and the situation of state-owned enterprises (SOE) being reformed (see Example 7). According to the China Daily, these layoffs caused tens of millions of SOE employers to stay at home rather than paying minimum wage in work so that the state could report a lower unemployment rate.

Figure 17. Wan Xiaoli (万晓利). The photo courtesy of Sammy Dai on Flickr.

Example 8: “Laid Off” (excerpt), 《下岗了》, Wan Xiaoli, 2002 那是一年前了, 我在单位上班。 That was a year ago, I worked in a government …… office. 我每天喝茶看报, 我自在我逍遥。 ...... …… I drank tea and read newspapers all day, carefree and 日子过的不错, 可也不算太好。 happy. …… ... … 可是有件事儿, 把我吓了一大跳。 Life was neither bad good nor good. 他妈的, 我下岗了。 ...... …… But there was one thing, freaking me out. 我有点想念从前。 Damn it, I got laid off. …… ... … 真的不像现在这样穷困潦倒。 I miss life before the layoffs. …… …... 你可以没有什么, the life was not as poor as now. …... 但你不可以没有钱。 You can have nothing, …… But you gotta have money. 就连亲戚朋友也和我疏远了。 ...... 这可怎么办, 这可怎么办？ Even my relatives and friends alienate me. 这个文明的社会里, What should I do, what should I do? 你必须要有钱, In this civilized society, 可我下岗了。 You must be rich, But I am laid off.

The second generation has turned their attention from a limited size of college students to larger groups of marginal and working classes. They present realistic ironies of life troubles related to domestic and international politics. Over two decades, the changing social conditions in China have affected both material and spiritual aspects of Chinese people. Their living status—desires, obsessions, problems, and worries—are accordingly changed, as well. Growing up as the second generation, minyao artists have increasingly realized that they make music through the lens of work, politics, conventions, and life experience and living environment. This lens goes around to the second generation audiences, too, who shape their music participation by more than one ‘culture.’44 The second generation minyao responses to problems and dilemmas of a subordinate social class audiences. Minyao artists take active roles in civic engagement. They

44 This one ‘culture’ is drawn from the theory of subcultures (Hebdige 1979). See (Negus 1996: 15).

are not aggressive in protesting mainstream culture or politics, instead, they address issues of public concern and protect the folk value in urban cities with poetic lyrics.

C. Literary attachment

The intimacy with classical literature constitutes a third connection between minyao singers and audiences. The refined minyao lyrics and the adaption to classical Chinese poetry remind general audiences of traditional literature. This familiarity with classical literature has two meanings here related to the notion of wen: one being that, in general, Chinese admire and appreciate classical literature and literati; the second implies that the audiences feel close to minyao music partly because of its poetic and literary lyrics. The second generation minyao became associated with wen by borrowing classical and modern poetry as their song lyrics.

Notably, the structure of classical Chinese poetry, the “qi-cheng-zhuan-he” pattern (起承转合), is adapted to the second generation minyao lyrics.45 This pattern is mostly seen in Tang poetry. The four-units pattern represents the beginning, development, turning point, and conclusion. Further, the structure putatively functions as a portrayal of nature, a description of an event, a presentation of an argument, and a philosophical conclusion respectively. Minyao lyricists, by and large, have embraced the aesthetics of this Chinese poetic structure and follow this pattern in creating their lyrics.

The dedication to major poets and poetry is another way to associate minyao music with the notion of wen. In addition to being a singer, Zhou Yunpeng is also well-known as a poet in

45 Again, the idea of a rhetorical pattern of “qǐ-chéng-zhǔan-hé” was suggested as the formulaic structure of Chinese popular music by Zhao Yue (2011). He analyzed measures of Chinese popular music by suggesting this structure. Here, I only adopt the idea of this classical literary pattern in connection to the Chinese poetry tradition passing down from the past to the present.

the public sphere. His album, Cattle and Sheep Go Downhill (《牛羊下山》2010), is dedicated to prominent Chinese Tang poets, such as Li Bai (李白), Du Fu (杜甫), Li Yu (李煜), Liu Yuxi (刘禹

锡), Meng Jiao (孟郊), and others by adapting their poetry as song lyrics (see Figure 11).

Although these poems talk about friendship, family, political satire, romance, and children’s ballads, the main themes are separation and war. In short, the poetry emphasizes parting, separation, and longing. This album is regarded as the most literary music album in the popular music domain. However, with this accomplishment, is there any purpose for Zhou in signaling his connection to these poets and poetry? We may look at the following account about poet Du

Fu first, which is quoted from a sinologist Stephen Owen (2015):

“whose [Du Fu] attention was always on the center of the polity and on the whole only through the political center, has been supplemented in recent times by a more capacious sense of history, which includes the local details of contemporary life that were previously considered marginal.”

This quotation introduces the historical and political importance of Du Fu’s poetry. I would suggest that Zhou signaling his connection to these poets has two implications: first, he considers himself as a contemporary intellectual who should take up the responsibility to give social critiques; secondly, Zhou carries a similar sentiment with those poets to write down

‘details of their contemporary lives,’ and to stand for individual, subordinate, and even marginal groups in the society. As a matter of fact, in our interview in 2016, Zhou claimed that calling him a “minyao poet” is an inappropriate crossover title. However, his intention to acknowledge those major poets in his album is already a ‘crossover’ experiment.

Figure 18. The cover of Cattle and Sheep Go Downhill

Subsequently, two approaches are often utilized in connecting minyao to poetry: borrowing poetry for minyao lyrics and borrowing regional folk songs or tunes to match new lyrics. Specifically, the second approach has been developed as cipai (“poetry standard” 词牌) and qupai (“labeled melodies” 曲牌) in traditional Chinese music. These two Chinese terms refer to both poetic and musical meanings. According to Alan Thrasher (2016), qupai are melodic models for traditional Han Chinese instrumental (and some vocal) music. While ci is a type of metric-pattern of classical Chinese poetry. In the traditional model of Chinese instrumental, narrative music or operas, people put set poetic meters of lyric/poetry into fixed tones or models.

That music could be short as one poem or as long as an opera, depending on the requirements of social and musical activities. This later approach of music writing has more or less influenced the poetic lyric writing and melodic structures in the modern scene. This musical tradition builds an intimacy with classical Chinese literature to attract general audiences, which further stimulates the poetic and folk traditions in the popular music domain.

In conclusion, this chapter gives attention to the second generation of minyao, its main characteristics and related social phenomena. These three characteristics –– a sense of geographic belonging, civil involvement, and an intimacy with classical Chinese literature. I suggest that the second generation artists consider minyao more culturally and socially than the first generation. Minyao is a way to represent themselves and to say who they are. However, the first generation seems to no longer represent the second because Chinese society has changed the latter. Social mobility has a huge impact upon both artists and audiences of the second generation and, therefore, their musicking: the community moving from Beijing to Dali and a projection of utopian image yuanfang (“faraway place”) on their literary songwriting have generated a mutual response from audiences too. Dali is an idyllic faraway place to minyao artists, their musicking in Dali is an aestheticization of anxiety, which makes the pressures in daily life visually pleasing.

Based on accounts of this chapter, I suggest that the second generation of minyao beautifies the anxieties of day-to-day lives. Minyao juxtaposes harsh social critique with poetic expressions into their songs. Further, the minyao community in Dali can also be seen as a representation of this juxtaposition. However, the question remains as to why the second generation minyao artists in Dali or in other major cities are viewed by the audience as producing the same genre of music as in the first generation. In chapters three and four, I will detail the textual and musical analysis respectively in order to contribute some thoughts for this question.

Chapter IV Lyrical Analysis

1. Three Tables In this chapter, I will deal with the textual analysis of minyao lyrics in both generations.

The first part of this chapter is an attempt to provide a quantitative analysis by designing three tables: general characteristics, top five keywords, and mood of minyao lyrics, with a number of statistical analysis systems applied. The second part of this chapter will compare semiotic words between minyao lyrics and classic Chinese literature. Lastly, I will discuss minyao lyrics in both male and female lyric writings from aspects of gender.

The data result of three tables is based on a selection of 210 minyao songs from eight singers. Each generation is represented by four singers, including five males and three females

(labeled M. or F. in the table below) in total. The numbers of selected songs are individually proportional to the total numbers of their released albums. I will highlight the predefined eight categories (see Table one), which will show the characteristic similarities and differences between two generations and how the cultural idea has influenced both. Next, I will compile the top five keywords (see Table two) and musical mood analysis (see Table three) in order to strengthen the statistical analysis of Table one. The purpose of a quantitative analysis is to try to provide a scientific angle to examine the general characteristics, and further enhance the qualitative approach of interpreting cultural ideas and social values within minyao lyrics in a new light.

The method of table two and three employ the Natural Language Processing (NLP), which is to use a computer to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data, namely minyao lyrics in this research.46 Due to the relatively small amount of data (the lyrics of

210 minyao songs), the confidence value is not set as high. Otherwise, I cannot prove much results. Another limitation is that hidden meanings might be not easy to understand by AI.

Overall, these three tables offer multiple angles to generalize minyao lyrics. Considering its advantages and disadvantages, the statistical analysis for this thesis might be changeable in a different data setting.

A. Table One: General Characteristics of Minyao47

Examining table one, we can trace the life stability, songwriting preferences, and lyrical aesthetics from those designated lyricists and singers. Based on the general characteristics of these 210 minyao songs, I argue that their backgrounds and cultural contexts that have affected their musical writings as well as to audiences’ receptions.

46 The NLP technician is Liang Hongyu, a network engineering graduate student in China. The analytical tools include Python, Numpy, Matplotlib, and Baidu AI. Python is a programming language. Numpy and Matplotlib are tools for statistics and analysis. More, Baidu AI is the artificial intelligence developed by Chinese internet search giant Baidu, which plays a role in the mood in the language. The purpose of Liang’s work provides a scientific support to my intention to compare two generations and show different or contrast. Liang’s work demonstrates another angle to further explain the first table. 47 In the table one, three singers Gao Xiaosong, Ye Bei, and Junzi only released one album each before 2000. The reason of why Gao presents as an individual subject, but Ye and Junzi bond together as one subject is because most of lyrics of these two female singers are written by Gao. Thus, if I put them as a respective subject, then there would not be any data to support female singers in the first generation.

Analysis:

1. Seasons in minyao lyrics always indicate a kind of mood or atmosphere to a specific event, figure, or cultural sign. In minyao songs, the season of spring appears five times out of eight. To relate to a couple of Chinese literary ideas discussed at the beginning of chapter three, such as Peach Blossom village and the poetry “Facing the Sea with Spring Flowers Blossom,” the concepts of idyllic home, blossoming spring, and the circle of nature all compose the desire to integrate classical literati and modern middle classes. Further, it sets up a hope for a better life for ordinary people too. From this point, both minyao lyricists and audiences favor springtime more than other seasons because of the hope signified. However, the fall season does not appear at all among these 210 songs. If the absence of Fall is not coincidental, this would strengthen the argument about idealized spring.

2. Besides Mandarin texts, in the second generation, vernacular, foreign languages, and slang expressions are commonly used, too. In the first generation, only Mandarin and written

3. texts were used. In particular, Cheng Bi, a female singer of the second generation, uses three languages in her six albums. The diverse experience of both the north-and-south and of

China to foreign countries help to form their musical taste, too.

4. Color imagery is richer in minyao lyrics more than in other forms of pop music. Color imagery is related to metaphors or serves a part of description to nature. Aside from Zhou’s six, and Wan’s eight, the other singers use from one to three colors in their songs. Use of those colors are associated with specific contrasts in romantic relationships: pure and innocent vs. lost and the past, feminine vs. masculine, and hope vs. despair. Some symbolisms are interpreted by using color adjectives, for instance, blue ideal, blue heaven, blue tiger, white clothes, grey hair, red belt, red dancing shoes, black darkness, and so forth.

5. Compared to the first generation, the metaphoric lyrics are more open interpreted in the second generation. Specifically, the animal metaphor is a common literary method in minyao lyrics. The numbers and selections of animals appear in the second generation more than the first. Many Chinese idiomatic expressions use animals to convey figurative meanings. In the first generation, the portrayal of plants and animals is usually associated with lyricists’ feelings and descriptions. The typical examples are “(I) hate you so much like a cockroach hates insecticide;

(I) need you so much like a grasshopper kisses corn,” or “the noise of facing the crowd as if the house moving by ants.” The form of rhetoric analogy operates like a simile in general.

However, in the second generation, the animal functions in two ways. First, it acts as both the first person and as a cultural symbol to portray social traits. For example, the lyric “fish forgets the boundless sea… Prajna Paragaté” refers to the metaphoric relationship between the fish and Mahāyāna Buddhism. Another example “rabbit is more cunning than a fox, no fairy tales in this forest. Get off your games, I turn the tail and run” tells a cultural understanding from

a Chinese idiom “Jiaotu-sanku” (狡兔三窟) during the Warring States period (475 BC-221 BC) that a state should be thoughtful and be prepared for potential dangers as a wily rabbit prepares three burrows to keep safety. Secondly, the second generation lyricists adopt the images of birds, fish, poultry, and farm animals as part of their storytelling and rhyming. Traditionally, those images are substantially employed in classical Chinese poetry as a vehicle for delivering messages of poetry (Yu 2015). The images of animals or natural landscape usually consists of the first verse of classical Chinese poetry as a conventional writing form. Following the convention, this form and style are inherited from classical poetry into contemporary minyao lyric writing.48

B. Table Two: Top-Five Keywords

The NLP processed the top 100 words in order of term frequency for each singer. I subjectively removed modal particles (“ah,” “la,” etc.), personal pronouns (“you,” “me,” and

“we”), auxiliary verbs (“is,” “been,” “have,” etc.), and repeating words in the same song. The keywords of table two further underscore the mood of the total lyrics of individuals, which is demonstrated in table three. The purpose of the Table two gives a specific word choice to show an individual personality to lyric writing. Further, their top-five-words in the lyric writing align with their life experience, cultural and literary traditions, and social changes discussed in the chapter two and chapter three.

48 The same idea is a reference to Zhou Yue’s dissertation on Chinese popular music (2010). He suggests that the form of traditional Chinese poetry influences the structure of Chinese popular songs at large.

Analysis:

1. The first generation top-five keywords pinpoint campus experience and sentimental memory in words such as “campus, past, love, forever.” The lyricist Gao Xiaosong wrote his

‘faraway place’ for two female singers in words such as “far and spring.”

2. The second generation top-five keywords suggest relatively diverse themes, which include nature, children, adults, and relationships with friends and oneself.

3. The words “now, past, world, dear” appear in both generations. Those common words recall a nostalgic and gentle feeling to young listeners. The lyricists wander between the present and the old day, also between oneself and the whole world.

Overall, the table two indicates individual personality of each lyricist. The lyrics of four singers in the first generation are all written by Gao Xiaosong, therefore, the first three rows of keywords demonstrate his personal taste and interpretation based on his attention to lyric writing.

Whereas, the last four rows of keywords inform respective preference to lyric writings: nature

and metaphors of Zhou, daily life and young generation of Wu band, contradiction of Wan, and lightness of Cheng.

C. Table Three: Mood of Minyao Lyrics

Based on expressive sentiments of vocabularies, the orange bars in the chart below represent positive feelings, whereas blue bars reveal negative feelings. In the mood analysis, the result shows between 0-1 as the confidence of the data, and the analyst chose 0.2 as the final confidence, due to the small data. The confidence of the data between 0-1 shows positive, negative, and neutral, respectively, according to the subjective descriptions in the lyrics data.

From the result, it clearly shows three positivity (Lao Lang, Gao Xiaosong, and Cheng Bi), two negativities (Ye Bei, Junzi, and Wan Xiaoli), and two neutrality (Zhou Yunpeng and Wu band).

©The data is analyzed by Liang Hongyu

Analysis:

1. This statistical mood data generates an interesting contrast. For example, Gao wrote lyrics for himself and two females, however, his lyric style shows an opposite extreme. Gao’s own lyric writing is a happy association with the nostalgic memory of campus life during 1980s and early 1990s and the good old days from one’s past. Surprisingly, His lyric writing for two female singers tends toward sentimentality. Another example is Zhou’s lyrics. His lyrics are the most poetic in style, especially with separation poetry. In a general sense, this style of lyrics is supposed to be gloomy and negative, but the data shows Zhou’s lyrics have a neutral feeling.

2. In general, the mood is related to lyricists’ intentions. Their intention changes depend on their changing life experiences. The data incorporates those differences to show the result. For instance, Wan’s lyrics show the most negative mood. In a magazine interview, Wan reflected on his lyric writing that it was inspired by loneliness before 2015 because of his personality and living experience in Beijing. Since he moved to Hangzhou, a beautiful historical city in south, he started to write more relaxed lyrics.

3. The neutral mood of Wu band’s lyrics might be a result from their straightforward and colloquial lyrics. From the neutral mood from both Wu band and Zhou Yunpeng’s lyrics, it indicates a common style in their lyric writings, which tell stories and criticize social issues but with less personal comments or judgments.

4. Compared to the rest, Cheng’s lyrics create the most positive mood. She tends to write or adapt innocent and upward lyrics or poetry to appreciate nature and independent life. This mood analysis is coordinated with top five keywords of table two to outline their ideas and personalities to each lyric writing.

Overall, the utilization of three tables in the first part of this chapter attempts to emphasize major features of minyao lyrics. The combination of quantitative and humanities- oriented approaches displays two perspectives to the data of 210 minyao songs. I feel that the audience perceptions have affected by those lyrics and have carried sentiments correspondingly.

In chapter three, minyao-related social activities seem to offer an escape that allows people to run away from their problems. This raises a debate about whether minyao music works as a comforter to keep people in stasis and not to change the conditions that create the anxiety or whether to provide a new perspective to people so that they can see their burdens in a new light.

Despite nostalgic pasts and current burdens in life, from the above keywords and mood analysis, both generation of minyao lyricists seem to believe in hope and place their nature-emotion into the spring season.

2. Literary References and Gender Stereotypes

The symbolic meanings are ubiquitous in minyao lyrics to some extent, and the connection to classical Chinese literature is evident. The signified images in minyao lyrics such as spring, flowers, women, hair, and others are intertextual with cultural connotations and contexts. Particularly, those conventional images were commonplace in classical poetry and paintings. For example, images of falling of spring flowers and a loved one’s hair carry specific literary and cultural connotations. According to Professor Tian Xiaofei, “the image of the falling of spring flowers adds new meaning to ‘spring’ as a cultural sign. It serves as a dark token of death and decay in the most ebullient season and reminds people of nature’s indifference to human feeling and desires. It also signifies, if not a new-born sensibility, then a new-born

discourse on a sensibility. It coincides with the configuration of a feeling we refer to as

‘melancholy.’”49 (see Figure 19).

Figure 19. Painting: Red Orchid (Leaf) in Birds and Flowers (Album). Mid 18th Century by Huang Shen, Qing Dynasty

Hair is a typical image used in minyao lyrics. The explicit meaning of hair shows physical beauty. In Asian cultures, hair also symbolizes life force and vitality (Ebersole 1998).50

However, in this part, I will reference hair to minyao lyrics in a romantic meaning, where strands of hair can reference threads of love and marriage. In dynastic China, the bride and groom each cut a wisp of hair to knot together. This ceremony, called jiefa ( knot hair 结发), signifies the promise of a lifelong marriage. Hair is a rather intimate concept in Chinese culture. The semiotic intimacy of hair delivers a commitment to romantic relationships in different levels; thus, extra meanings of hair are also included within grey hair (baifa 白发) for longing and waiting, cut hair

(duanfa 断发) for heartbreak, and others. As a reference, I will quote the image “hair” both in the

49 Tian, Xiaofei. “The Pleasure of the Superfluous: Palace Style Poetry and Resistance to Canonization.” In Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502–557), 162-210. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. Accessed June 5, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1dnn9f8.8. 50 Hiltebeitel, Alf., and Miller, Barbara D. Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Book of Yuefu Poetry and minyao lyrics.51 The purpose of quoting the Book of Yuefu is to suggest cultural continuity through dynamic changes. From this context, we can see the collected folk songs and refined poetry since the Han dynasty are reflected in contemporary popular songs (see

Example 9). In contemporary China, a woman with long hair wearing a white dress or a man wearing a white shirt is a typical image of pure love. The continuity of using a symbolic vocabulary remains Chinese cultural aesthetics through the form of literature.

Example 9. “Hair” in Yuefu poetry and minyao lyrics

Yuefu Poetry, “Ziye’s Love Song,” No. Three (《子夜歌》其三), Around 266-420 AC 宿昔不梳头， I had no time to comb my hair last night; 丝发被两肩。 My hair is spreading loosely o’er my shoulder. 婉伸郎膝下， I crouch beside my sweetheart with delight, 何处不可怜。 With a lovely charm, still shy but bolder. 52

Minyao Song, “dandelion” ( 《蒲公英》), 1998 你听啊 You listen, 掠过林梢的歌唱。 The song is sweeping upon the trees. 谁飘着 Who blows the long hair? 让我心碎的一卷长发。 Making my heartbroken.

Minyao Song, “I Am not Yet Sure” (《我还不能确定》), 2012 窗外的柳树已经发芽了， The willow has sprouted out of the window, 而我们是不是应该恋爱了。 We should fall in love. 夏天的风啊， The wind of summer, 吹啊吹啊吹， Blows, blows, and blows, 它吹散了我的头发， It blows away my hair, 也吹乱了我的心。 And also blows my heart.

These metaphors, such as hair, nature, and springtime, frequently occur in minyao lyrics.

I suggest that on the one hand, they impart a feeling of wen to minyao lyric writing; on the other

51 The version of the Book of Yuefu Poetry referred to in this chapter is edited and published in the Chinese language by Zhonghua Book Company in 2015. ［《乐府诗》，曹旭，唐玲选注，中华书局，2015.］ 52 The English version of the Yuefu poetry is translated by Zhang Rongpei, the resource is found online, https://www.en84.com/dianji/shi/201011/00005097.html.

hand, they generate an empathetic response in the audience through associations with classic literature and cultural connotations, especially as they relate to gender perspective. Some studies suggest that women are more sexually objectified in popular music produced or sung by males especially (Rasmussen & Densley 2016). In minyao music per se, sexual expressions are exposed neither in music videos nor lyrics. “Hair” is a subtle objectification of women associated with their bodies and appearance to some extent. Western feminist theory argues that a feminine appearance is valued, conformed, and decorated for men (Bartky 1990; Bordo 1993; Saul 2003).

In this way, some minyao lyrics support feminist theory that women are objectified by portraying their hair or hair accessories, clothes, appearance, gaze, back, visage, eyes, hands, and others (see Example 10). The traditional role of female is portrayed as affectionate, innocent, devoted, and subordinate. The following examples are excerpted from the lyricist Gao Xiaosong.

Example 10. Gao Xiaosong’s lyrics

“Campus in Winter” (《冬季的校园》) 1994 我亲爱的兄弟 My dear friend 陪我逛逛冬季的校园 Show me around the campus in the winter; 给我讲讲 Tell me more About that pretty woman. 那漂亮的女生

“The Brother Sleeps in My Upper Bunk” (《睡在我上铺的兄弟》) 1994 睡在我上铺的兄弟, The bro who sleeps in my upper bunk, 睡在我寂寞的回忆, Also sleeps in my lonely memories. 那些日子里你总说起的女孩, The girl you talked a lot in those old days, 是否送了你她的发带。 whether or not gave you her hairband.

“No Regrets in Youth” (《青春无悔》) 1996 你说你青春无悔包括对我的爱恋 You said the regretless youth, including loved me. 你说岁月会改变相许终生的誓言 You said time would change the lifelong promise we 你说亲爱的道声再见 made to each. You said dear, farewell. 转过年轻的脸 Turn around the young face, 含笑的带泪的不变的眼 with smiley, tearful, and unchanging eyes.

The majority of xiaoyuan minyao lyrics were written by male lyricists such as Gao

Xiaosong (高晓松), Yu Dong (郁东), and Shen Qing (沈庆), who also use their male perspectives to write lyrics for female singers (see Example 11).

Example 11. Male lyrists for female singers

Lyricist: Gao Xiaosong. “Who I am” by Ye Bei (《我是谁》) 1998 我是谁我是空气是雨水 Who I am, I am the air and rain 我是谁猜不透也说不对 Who I am, It’s hard to guess and tell 我是谁我是阳光的点缀 Who I am, I am the decoration of the sun 我是谁我是你的一滴泪一滴泪 Who I am, I am your dropping tear, one by one

Lyricist: Gao Xiaosong. “I Will Go Wherever You Wander” by Junzi (《天涯相随》) 1997 隔壁的男生去哪儿啦都去哪儿啦 Where are the boys next door? Where are they? 不再回来啦 (They are) no longer coming back. 世界太大啦他们太小了 The world is too big, and they are too small. 他们的名字刻在墙上啦 Their names carved on the wall. 他们都已经长大啦 They have grown up, 把回忆留在相册里啦 Engraving the memory in the album.

Compared to the first generation male lyricists, female lyricists in the second generation have shed the restriction on the love theme and have developed their own value in lyric writing.

They more independently compose, produce, and market their own music online. Female singers have gained more channels to distribute their music in a digital music era. Cheng Bi (程璧), a second generation female singer, is a representative case of independent music release. She had education and work experiences in Japan, therefore, Japanese poetry influences her lyric writings. Not only does she borrow Japanese poetry by Rofū Miki, Misuzu Kaneko, and

Shuntarō Tanikawa, she also adopts Japanese folk songs and sings in the Japanese language (see

Example 12).

Example 12. Cheng Bi’s minyao lyrics

“One in the Road” (《一个人上路》) 2013 厦门的天空很蓝 The sky is very blue in Xiamen. 风吹过南海到北岸 The wind blows over the south sea to the north shore. 海看过很多很多 (I) have seen many sea views, 心里面有一点失落 (But I) feel a little bit lost. 说好的旅行啊 Promised travel together, 你已经错过了啊 (But) you have missed it. 于是啊我决定 So, I have decided to 一个人继续前行 go ahead, myself.

Japanese poem: Misuzu Kaneko. Lyrics in Chinese translation: Cheng Bi.53 “A Bell, a Bird, and Me” (“私と小鳥と鈴と”《我和小鸟和铃铛》) 2016 我伸展双臂私が両手をひろげても、 No matter how I spread my arms 也不能在天空飞翔お空はちっとも飛べないが、 I can not fly at all, 会飞的小鸟儿却不能像我飛べる小鳥は私のやうに、 But unlike me, a flying bird Can not run fast on ground. 在地上快快地奔跑地面(じべた)を速くは走れない。

Though I rock my body back 铃铛小鸟还有我私がからだをゆすっても、 and forth 我们不一样, 我们都很棒きれいな音は出ないけど、 It makes no pretty sounds, あの鳴る鈴は私のやうに、 Yet unlike me, a ringing bell 我摇晃身体たくさんな唄は知らないよ。 Does not know many songs. 也摇不出好听的声响会响的铃铛却不能像我鈴と、小鳥と、それから私、 A bell, a bird, and also me, 会唱好多的歌みんなちがって、みんないい All are different, all are good.

From the above examples, the second generation female lyricists seem to break the gender stereotype of females and have transformed the image of women from silent and pretty figures to strong and ambitious urban women. Further, gender stereotype is also reversed from male lyricists. In their lyrics, the image of men lacks romantic authority and dominance, and also reveal their weak and sensitive sides (see Example 13).

53 The English translation is cited from Doodle on April 11, 2017, in the memory of Misuzu Kaneko’s 114th birthday. https://www.google.com/doodles/misuzu-kanekos-114th-birthday

Example 13. The image of a sensitive man in minyao lyrics

Yao Shisan (尧十三). “Being confident” (《有信心》) 终于明白了，你不是我的。 I finally understood that you are not mine. 面对结局，让自己深呼吸。 Breath deeply in and face it. 喔。。。。。。。 Oh...... 你说你不爱我， You said you don't love me, 我以为你开玩笑， I thought you were kidding, but you did not 可以是你没有。

Moreover, from the perspective of male lyricists, the image of women has shifted to the image of mothers, or even a combining of both images in one song. I suggest that this alternative implies the rootlessness of the second generation minyao singers whose interpretations result from the mobility of China after the new millennium. This sheds a new light in the second generation of male singers, such as Zhou Yunpeng, Wan Xiaoli, Ye Band, Li Zhi, and Wu band

(see Example 14).

Example 14. Lyrics about the image of mothers

Wan Xiaoli. “Mom” (《妈妈》) 2002 妈妈还曾经对我说 Mom had told me, 你要学好功课 “you have to study hard, 妈妈给你缝个新书包 mom make a new backpack for you 将来去北京上大学 to go to college in Beijing in the future.” …...... 我肩上的东西太多了 My shoulder burdens too much 我要统统放进我的书包 I want to put them all into my backpack Mom, sing a song for me again 妈妈再给我唱首歌吧 Singing that nursery rhymes, you taught me 就唱你教给我的童谣

Zhou Yunpeng. “Roaming Alone” (《荡荡悠悠》) 2008 我是一个离开了家门没有工作的人， I am a man who left home without a job, 漫无目的的四处飘荡， Aimless roaming around, and 寻找奇迹的人。 Looking for a miracle. 我也渴望着一种幸福名字叫作婚姻， I am also longing for a kind of happiness called 我也渴望着一种温馨名字叫作爱人。 marriage, I am also longing for a warmness named love. 我的家里还有个母亲， I have a mother still at home who always worry about 她时时为我担心， me, 为了她我还有一点怕死， For her, I have a little afraid of death, 不敢让她伤心。 (I) can't let her be sad.

Ye Band. “Gone”(《走了》) 2004 你那善良的姑娘， That good woman, 坐在别人的怀里慢慢把往事埋葬。 Sitting at other man’s arms slowly burying memories. 看看天空没有光亮， Look at the sky, and there is no light, and 看看昨天爱过的故乡。 See loved hometown yesterday. 想起妈妈脸上挂满悲伤， (I) think of mom's face with sadness, 明天的路还长。 Tomorrow is still a long way.

The male and female lyricists in two generations have interacted their lyric writings with the image of women, from a campus setting of objectified women to an urban setting of independent women, further, to a reminiscence of mothers. In the first generation, minyao lyrics mostly reflect the dominance of men. The nostalgia and collective memory in campus life are men’s fantasies, the role of women is objectified and missing. In the second generation, female lyricists broaden their topics to diverse cultures, observation of nature and mundane occurrences, traveling experiences, childhood memories, and reflections on their own lived experiences. The lyrics from a gendered perspective are concluded in observations aspects: 1) The image of women has multiple angles: the male gaze, self-independence, and comfort object. 2) The image of men is not only dominant but also weak in romantic relationships. Finally, both images of women and mothers inform an importance of family relationships to male lyricists. Even though female minyao singers have gained more channels to distribute their music online and have also gained voices in a primarily male-owned and operated minyao industry, the gender hierarchy still marginalizes female lyricists at large.

3. Conclusion

This chapter examines minyao lyrics from both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Three tables provide a statistic result and enable comparative interpretations of both generations of minyao lyrics in order to examine their development and continuity. The first generation lyrics

are rather specific, while the second is more imaginary, which allows people to listening, and to connect to another way. Most importantly, the lyrical data suggests preferences and tastes of lyricists and shows how their lyric writings interacts with literature, present society, and life experiences. The second part of this chapter emphasizes the gender aspect of the text. The gender stereotype of the feminine is inseparable from minyao lyrics in both generations, however, we can see a shift in lyrics from objectified women in the first generation male lyricists to independent women in the second generation. To finalize the textual analysis, I will further discuss two more considerations related to gender.

First, in the second generation lyrics, a gender stereotype to both genders is signified by geography and powers. It is common to see that male lyricists sets women in the south while setting men in the north. This gender stereotype in China correlates to language, geography, history, climate, agriculture, physique, and politics. The Southern Chinese are raised in abundant fields. Their manners develop as cultured, scholarly, gentle, and exquisite. Northern Chinese reverse these qualities and are said to be taller, outspoken, masculine, and battle savvy. These regional traits carry the traditional Chinese philosophy of “yin and yang,” “soft and hard,” and

“wen and wu.” The gendered view of feminine south and masculine north, therefore, is developed and widely known to Chinese. In minyao lyrics, this gendered view is signified through women representing a reminiscence of the past in the south, whereas, men represent the future and ideals in the north. These gendered signifiers significantly inform a political implication in imperial China. The changes of regime between north and south in Chinese history accounts for southern China as a place to flee or escape for defeated emperors. Northern

China has remained a political center for a long time. This stereotype in geography and power

has influenced the mobility to the second generation minyao artists, from Beijing to Dali, as we discussed in the chapter three.

Second, there are several words to refer to women from the male lyricist’s persepctive, the most common one is guniang (“girl” 姑娘). Baranovitch contextualizes this word guniang in male-centric Chinese rock music and compares conquering a female other as similar to state conquest.54 However, the difference is that, at the end of minyao songs, the female other is unobtainable. Therefore, the argument is reversed here that masculinity is reconstructed as non- invasive in minyao music since the late 80’s and the early 90’s. It is an intriguing question as to why the same signifier “girl” directs to opposite musical ideologies during the same period. One consideration suggests that masculinity can be interpreted by means of showing the nostalgic and romantic promises from a woman in some minyao songs. The “promise” as a language of philosophy is utilized in the minyao lyrics to objectify a subordinate woman whose role is to wait. Their masculinity again is reconstructed with a feminine tenderness, not entirely demanding.

Chapter five will analyze the musical styles of both generations of minyao songs. The musical analysis aims to demonstrate the signature “minyao style” that fits in a nostalgic setting of the first generation and to demonstrate the diverse regional styles in the second generation.

54 The quotation from Baranovitch: “… women are always the female other, referred to by the male-centric, objectifying word guniang, which means ‘girl.’ The ‘us’ and the ‘you’ in the song are both males. The female other is transformed into yet another challenge or test for manhood, very much like the state, and the struggle against the state is even compared at the end of the song to conquering a girl” (Baranovitch 2003:117).

Chapter V

Musical Analysis

The musical analysis in this chapter displays the changes of style in minyao music over two generations through musical examples. In general, the most distinguishable musical features are “minyao style” and “regional and diverse sounds,” which are relevant to the first and the second generations of minyao, respectively. For the first generation, I suggest that a particular chord vocabulary (referred to as the “minyao style”) occurrs regularly in minyao songs. The most popular hits were written by the same songwriter, Gao Xiaosong, and his style was heavily influenced by American folk music. As a result of this homogenizing influences, I suggest that the songwriting style of Gao, to some extent, molds the musical style of xiaoyuan minyao. Added to this, the second generation songwriters also explore a variety of instrumentations, sound effects, and vocal techniques to demonstrate regional styles. Overall, the first generation is dominated by one writer, while the second generation has more diversity.

Moreover, the second generation is also attentive to the value of folk songs in different ethnic groups of China. They either collect folk songs or adapt folk tunes as inspiration for their minyao writing. This musical activity corresponds to the trend of world music generated from

Western scholars across to its Asian origins.

I transcribed the following examples, which are selected from the following minyao songwriters: Gao Xiaosong (高晓松), Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬), Wan Xiaoli (万晓利), Zhang Zhi (张

智), Huanqing (欢庆), Cheng Bi (程璧), Yehaizi band (“Wild Child” 野孩子), and Wutiaoren Band

(“Five Guys” 五条人). In the chapter text, I will show fewer than ten measures of each musical

examples in order to balance the content. The complete transcriptions will be attached as an

Appendix II, Minyao Transcriptions.

1. The First Generation

A. Minyao style: A voice with acoustic guitar accompaniment provides the basic foundation for both generations of minyao songs. The guitar is a more affordable and easier instrument to carry compared to others, and it has also been the most popular instrument to young people in China since the 1980s. As a western instrument, the guitar recalls the American folk style in minyao songs to produce a fairly predictable minyao chord style. On the one hand, this is a rather recognizable style signature. On the other hand, by doing so, the specific chordal vocabulary of the first generation is constrained by a singular musical style. There are three musical features of this minyao style:

a) During the 90’s, most minyao hits were typically in compound duple meters or a simple triple meter that could be heard as compound. b) The songwriting structure was verse-chorus form. The melodical lines were largely syllabic with stepwise motion and occasional large leaps for dramatic effect. c) The chordal vocabulary follows the similar basic pattern of American pop songs, mostly written with a combination of I-IV-V-vi interspersed with occasional ii and secondary function chords.

The overall effect created a smooth, flowing melody that was easy to remember, easy to sing along with, and that resembled love ballads. The examples as shown in Ex. 15 are transcribed from three representative xiaoyuan minyao (campus ballads) of Lao Lang, written by

Gao Xiaosong.

Ex 15. Minyao style

15-a. “My Desk Mate” (《同桌的你》), chorus, 1994

15-b. “My Pal Sleeps on My Upper Bunk Bed” (《睡在我上铺的兄弟》), chorus, 1994

15-c. “Dust in the Wind” (《恋恋风尘》), strophic form, 1996

B. Mixed musical styles: Compared to the prevailing “minyao chordal vocabulary,” the minority of the first generation songs also experimented with mixed and exotic rhythmic influences such as bossa nova, flamenco, R&B, jazz, and rock. The following song example is performed by a female singer Ye Bei and written by Gao Xiaosong (See Ex. 16).

Ex. 16. Bossa nova style

“Dandelion” (《蒲公英》), singer: Ye Bei, 1997

16-a: Bossa nova pattern

The song “Dandelion” has bossa nova rhythmic elements mixed with Latin percussion at the beginning, the latter of which has bossa nova rhythmic elements with other general and less- defined Latin American percussion elements. However, this type of combination is common when listening to bossa nova produced outside of Brazil. The bossa nova character of this song comes from the pattern of singing tchu tchu tchu... in the introduction with the addition of the bass line. Furthermore, the harmonic progression at the beginning is also characteristic of bossa nova. The two transcriptions here each show the bossa nova pattern and the instrumentation of the first four measures of the introduction.

16-b: Intro excerpt of “Dandelion”

2. The Second Generation

In this section, I will provide transcriptions representing regional style and collected folk tunes, which are typically oral traditions. The second generation incorporates an array of diverse musical styles that vary among artists. Each artist displays their own musical styles. For example, Cheng Bi, as a female singer, carries a gentle, calm, and peaceful mood. Zhang Zhi’s music appears to work as world music by using regional instruments in different ethnic groups.

Zhou Yunpeng also utilizes a wide range of Asian instruments, in combination with western classical instruments. In particular, his music shows various musical styles and a degree of harmonic dissonance not shown by other artists. Compounding this, the form of Zhou’s music is varied; occasionally he will begin with just the voice instead of instrumental accompaniment,

such in his song “Three Chapters of Dufu” (《杜甫三章》). The same feature can be found in Wu

Band music too. Generally, there are four distinct, new musical characteristics in the second generation of minyao songs:

a) There is a greater variety of instruments, more so than the first generation. Accordingly, various advanced techniques are utilized for each instrument, and the orchestration is well-blended.

b) Minyao artists began to be aware of the value of folk music. They either collect folk songs from different ethnic groups of China or write music with regional styles. Some media call their musical practices as world music in order to promote music within the global trend.

c) Sound effects are used in the second generation, such as those found in nature and cities.

d) Two kinds of vocalizations, speech-singing and folk style singing, are shown in some minyao songs.

A. Instrumentation

The guitar retains its important role in the second generation’s songwriting. Additionally, as minyao artists come from different regions all over China, regional music has also influenced their songwriting. Well-known singers and bands have their own representative instruments.

Examples of distinctive instruments and their singers include the accordion of Yehaizi Band and

Wu Band, dombra [long-necked lute] of Zhang Zhi, sanxian [three-stringed lute] of Wan Xiaoli, kouxian [jaw harp] of Huanqing. Other instruments such as ukulele, banjo, harmonica, pipa, and other Chinese instruments are also frequently used to showcase musical diversity.

Percussion instruments also feature more prominently in the second generation, such as the drum set and conga. The use of percussion enhances the texture of the music. Zhang and Ye band both represent the musical style of north China that borders Mongolia, Russia, and other countries of South Asia. As such, the musical styles of Zhang and Ye Band display either dance- oriented or expressive styles. The percussion, such as various types of drums and bells, and synthesizers, integrate with other parts of the instrumentation to create their typical styles of regional identities. Also, the function of the major instruments varies from playing the melody to serving as a chordal accompaniment. The transcriptions below are excerpted from singers Zhang

Zhi and Yehaizi Band (Ex. 17).

Ex. 17. Instrumentation

17-a: Yehaizi Band (Wild Child Band), “Dance of Death” (《死之舞》), 2014

The guitar line is not transcribed exactly here because the guitar accompaniment style is nuanced and performed differently between the studio recordings and the live version of Yehaizi

Band. Due to the flexibility of the guitar line, the chord progression is also marked on the transcription.

17-b: Yehaizi Band (Wild Child Band), “Stone House” (《石头房子》), 2018

17-c: Zhang Zhi, ‘Ichicklick’ (《依奇克里克》), 2010

17-d: Zhang Zhi, The intro of ‘Altyn-Tahh Mountain’ (《阿尔金山》), 2014

This song is without the exact meter. Therefore, the transcription utilizes a dashed bar line to indicate the direction of the melody.

B. Folk tunes

Ethnic groups in China, especially in the southwest, have passed down numerous folk tunes via oral tradition. These traditions are valued from both academic and popular music domains today. Under globalization, westernization, and other international impacts on musical production and consumption, minyao singers have begun to recognize the significance of folk tunes for two reasons. First, many minyao singers of the second generation have a strong connection with ordinary people in urban and rural places because of their mobile experiences in work and daily life. Secondly, they desire to make a change in music writing. The change surfaces in two ways: one is with playing techniques, and the other is regarding musical identity.

Minyao singer Mo Xizishi (莫西子诗) comes from Daliang Moutain, South of Sichuan

Province. Mo’s song “Mom’s Ballad” directly adopts a folk song passed down from generation to generation from his home. Members of the Yishi Band (衣湿乐队) live in Zhuhai, Guangdong

Province, but they sing in Yibin dialect of Sichuan Province, and they also arrange folk tunes and include percussion of Sichuan Province in their music. Others also give attention to Chinese folk songs by either borrowing tunes as main melodies of their songs or consciously collecting or preserving folk tunes/songs in cities and villages. Example 4 next shows folk tunes and representative folk instruments in Ni (彝) and Wa (佤) ethnic groups in Huanqing (欢庆)’s minyao albums Deep in the Southwest discussed in the chapter three are shown in Ex. 18.

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Ex. 18. Folk tunes, collector: Huanqing (欢庆)

18-a: “Jaw Harp Maker Singing,” Ni Ethnic Group (《口弦制作者的歌声》彝族), 2003

18-b: “Wood Drum,” Wa Ethnic Group (《木鼓》佤族), 2015

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C. Sound Effects

As technology develops, minyao artists are attracted to electronic sounds. Not only do they think about the lyrics, but they also seek to make the music more delicate. They consider the sound effects and tone colors, attempting to make the music sound richer and more interesting.

Overall, the second generation of songs use more sounds from nature. Artists such as Zhou

Yunpeng, Cheng Bi, and Wu Band include natural sounds such as oceans, frogs, birds, raindrops, people’s talking, noise, and urban soundscapes into their music. In particular, the album, Cattle and Sheep Go Downhill (mentioned in chapter three) by Zhou Yunpeng creates a pastoral atmosphere to reflect the hermitic state of living in Chinese history and poetry traditions.

Considering this musical idea, three of Zhou’s nine songs on the album are instrumental. He also employs a synthesizer to mingle natural sounds with main instruments, producing longer musical phrases and breaths for the lyrics, such in a song “The Moon at the Fortified Pass” (《关山月》).

Minyao bands tend to experiment with different kinds of sound effects to create a broader spectrum of sounds.

D. Vocalization

Vocalization is varied via a method of speech-singing. It is not as dramatic as

Sprechstimme in opera. In minyao songs, they sometime flatten or raise the ending syllables of lyrics, sing a glissando, or sometimes heighten the speech. The speech-singing vocal style can be viewed as a strong regional style by using dialects and the folksy vocal style. Because of the significant use of dialects in Wu Band’s music, it creates a storytelling style in their musical narrative. Speak-singing can be heard in most of their songs, aiming at different functions, such as call and response, or harmonizing with different voices. Further, the use of dialects greatly interacts with folksy vocal styles originating from rural regions of China, which is known as

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minge changqiang (“folk song vocal style” 民歌唱腔). Wan Xiaoli tends to raise the ending of vocal lines. This vocal style is similar to regional narrative music in Hebei province, which is characterized by the combination of narration and singing.

3. Conclusion

This chapter analyzes musical elements of both generations of minyao. The “minyao style” chordal vocabulary in the first generation sets a fundamental tone for the popularity of minyao music in 1990s. This fundamental style plays on the nostalgic remembrances of listeners.

I suggest that “minyao style” musical vocabulary fits its nostalgic lyrical setting to find marketability in the music business. This success is built upon the proven appeal of American folk music. In the second generation, this “minyao style” has a further influence on both songwriting and listening, but it is no longer the dominant style. The engagement with various

Chinese regional instruments, tunes, and folksy vocal techniques are supportive examples of finding their own identity, either geographically or culturally. From the singular guitar to several-part ensembles or even adding a choir, the development of musical accompaniment has witnessed the liberal explorations of the second generation on minyao song writings. The artists also actively learn new technologies of sound recording, compositional skills, new instruments, and performing techniques.

Based on these musical examples, I argue that through the years, the development of the music is slow, however, minyao artists continually show different attempts to improve their music. More importantly, I argue that the popularity of minyao music over two generations is continued by two developed musical ideas. These two developed ideas have progressed from a simple westernized chordal vocabulary to an attempt to discover Chinese musical elements. This

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shift of “musical nationalism” in minyao music shows that in addition to mainstream popular music, there is a niche to reflect Chinese musical identity in global popular music market and to rediscover the traditional meaning of minyao in successive generations. Chapter six will examine the meaning of minyao in order to obtain the core value of it from audiences’ perspective. Still, the question remains here whether the artists will develop minyao music as a Chinese style popular music or as part of the trend of world music.

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Chapter VI

The Social Gap

“Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own phantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship. A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images—of home and abroad, of past and present, of dream and everyday life. The moment we try to force it into a single image, it breaks the frame or burns the surface.”

“Reflective nostalgia dwells on the ambivalences of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity.” Svetlana Boym

“The innocence of youth as portrayed by nostalgia, is actually an absence of politics—the memory of which would corrupt the idyllic image of a joyful and pure adolescence.” Primož Krašovec

1. Longing and Belonging55

This chapter will delineate the musical practices and social structures of the middle classes in the two generations. My goal is to explore the social gap between these two middle class groups. Finally, I will employ Svetlana Boym’s concept of “the longing and belonging of nostalgia” to show how minyao music bridges the gap between the two generations. Beyond the generational gap, this chapter addresses the continuity and the core identity of minyao in consideration of the previous discussions on historical background, contemporary social changes, and different focuses on minyao lyrics and songwriting.

I suggest that the first generation minyao focused on songwriting as a means to calm the political turmoil following the student protests of the late 1980s. Minyao producers and

55 This pair of concepts, longing and belonging, is borrowed from Svetlana Boym. She suggests that longing could be paired with a particular notion of belonging to rearticulate one’s identity.

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consumers expressed a “reflective nostalgia” for college days and dreamy college girls. In the song, they repeated happy memories and celebrated the innocence of their youth, in order to rebuild a sense of positivity in daily life. Primož Krašovec describes the joy of nostalgia as “a set of intimate memories of everyday life under socialism.” In this way, the first generation of minyao singers expressed their longing not for a physical home or homeland, as Svetlana Boym defines, but for an imagined homeland — the college “campus” — which connected their happy memories to the present.

In contrast, the second generation is tackling a different psychological crisis: struggling to understand their cultural identity and to recapture a sense of geographical belonging. Their hometowns are distant, while their daily anxieties are close at hand. Singing of “far away places”

(yuanfang) in the second generation of minyao songs is an act of comforting one’s anxieties.

Likewise, singing of one’s daily stress or the “blues” – an aestheticization of anxiety – connects singers and audiences by their shared experiences and sufferings. In this way, the poetry of contemporary minyao allows migrant workers to recapture their sense of geographical belonging, and to articulate a critique on social issues. With this second generation of minyao, the campus nostalgia of the first generation is left behind, and the lyrical influence of classical Chinese verses are strengthened.

These concepts of longing and belonging in contemporary minyao delineate between past, present and future. The social classes of the two generations of minyao artists diverge, and their divergent status in socioeconomic terms affects the production and distribution of the music, as discussed in the Chapter two. This chapter will focus on the class distinction between the two generations. This chapter also further explores participation and responses to minyao music in order to redefine the contemporary meaning of minyao.

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2. The Social Gap Between Old and Marginal Middle Classes

While the terms regarding middle classes reference various meanings in different contexts, based on a British sociologist John Goldthorpe’s class scheme, Li Chunlin, as a

Chinese sociologist, shows four subclasses of the middle class in the Chinese context, to have differing economic, conditions, living standards, and sociopolitical attitudes (2012). These four subclasses are capitalist class, new middle class, old middle class, and marginal middle class.

Among these four, in this thesis, I refer “old” to the “new middle class” and “marginal” to the

“marginal middle class” in alignment with the first and second generation of minyao, shown in

Table 4.

Minyao Thesis Li Chunlin

the First generation the Old middle class the New middle class

the Second generation the Marginal middle class the Marginal middle class

Table 4. Comparison of Terms of Middle Classes

According to Li (2012), the new middle class is comprised of professionals, managers, and government officials; while the marginal middle class consists of low-wage workers, and blue-and white-collar employees. The social functions of these two middle classes differ from each other that the new middle class has institutional affiliations that provide them with access to policymakers and elite groups; while the marginal middle class has lower socioeconomic status than that of the regular middle class and higher than that of the working class. As Lin points out, the “marginal middle class has lately gained a high profile in the media, mass culture, and on the

Internet. Its members are the most active participants in grassroots social movements and display much more political liberalism than the new middle class.” With those concepts of middle

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classes in mind, I will examine the two minyao generations of post-socialist Chinese in terms of their family and educational backgrounds, and in terms of their social networks.

As outlined in Chapter two, the tastes and experiences of the first generation of minyao in post-socialist China were influenced by a strong sense of nostalgia. The romantic bent of minyao songs spoke to these feelings of loss, a psychology explained by Boym’s theory of reflective nostalgia. The leading producers, singers, and songwriters of the first generation of minyao

(xiaoyun minyao) were born to professional, military and government families in Beijing. Their parents and even grandparents helped build modern China in both political and intellectual terms.

They attended top universities in Beijing and shared the same social circles in their music- making. They enjoyed access to Western popular music and culture, acquired through both legal and black-market sources. Finally, they had professional training in music from the time they were young and were able to cultivate their tastes for popular music as soon as China opened at the end of 1970s.

One such music producer was Huang Xiaomao (黄小茂), who released the very first minyao album in 1994. He was born to a military family in Beijing, enjoyed singing and songwriting as a university student, and went on to work as a music director for state-owned television, as well as for Phoenix TV in Hong Kong, Dadi Music Records, Fengxing Music

Records, Warner Music China and others. As mentioned in Chapter two, it was Huang’s personal feelings of nostalgia for his youth, following a decade of professional experience in multiple cities and various enterprises, which inspired him to produce the first “minyao” album. While the album was novel, it attracted youngsters already familiar with the album’s style of campus songwriting.

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Huang’s album instantly appealed to audiences familiar with campus songwriting and gave birth to a new commercial genre. As is often the case, the audience for Huang’s album included many of the songwriters who participated in defining the genre. In such a context, it is also the audience who engages in musical creativity: “fans are imaginative, discriminating people who are capable of making a number of fine distinctions and who actively participate in creating the meanings that become associated with popular music” (Negus 1997). Further, Lisa

Lewis proposes that “fans create communities with a collective shared sense of identity that is built around their appreciation of a particular performer” (Negus 1997:26). Drawing on both these arguments, I suggest that minyao music emerged from collective imagination and consumption, through both artists’ and audiences’ participation and creativity, as a popular counter-narrative to the social and political tensions of post-socialist China.

This original minyao audience was a small community, primarily consisting of those with access to university education in Beijing in the 1980s. According to Goldthorpe, university education is one of the criteria essential to defining a middle class, and higher education was embraced as one of the first priorities of Open Door China. Without schooling for ten years, from

1966 to 1976, China resumed the National College Entrance Examination in 1977. However, college enrollment was less than 10% of the population until 2000 (see Figure 20). Only a small portion of students could access higher education. Therefore, they had less competition in job markets while searching for well-suited work positions. The college students in the 1980s and early 1990s are regarded as social elites now.

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Figure 20. College students before and after the policy change in 1999, China, 1990-2007.56

In contrast, the majority of the second generation minyao artists come from working class families. They either attended average-level colleges, or they graduated from specialized postsecondary colleges. Neither their educational backgrounds nor work experiences elevated them to elite/old middle class. The policy of college enrollment expansion in China since 1999 changed the public attitudes toward college students who were no longer “God’s favored ones”; this was a departure from the policy found earlier in the 80’s and early 90’s. After graduation, the competitive job market aggravated their anxieties while they moved to big cities to find their dreams and new lifestyles. Therefore, we can see an increase of social mobility in the marginal middle class after 2000, according to the survey “Share of Four Subclasses of the Middle Class,

Urban China, 1982-2006,” shown in Figure 21. Compared to the new middle, the marginal

56 Figure 1 and Figure 2 are cited from the article “Profile of China’s Middle Class” (Li 2012,90).

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middle population is on the rise in urban cities. I suggest that this arising class forms a new middle stratum in the second generation of minyao.

Figure 21. Share of Four Subclasses of the Middle Class, Urban China, 1982-2006

The second generation minyao artists are self-taught and acquired music performance skills mainly through their guitars. They work as freelance singers at bars, heading first to

Beijing and then moving around in artists’ communities and other suburban or satellite districts.

Their settlements and communal musicking created a subculture in urban cities for the second generation of minyao music. The migrant geographies of those minyao singers can be traced, as they move from north to south, from the capital of the country to the capitals of provinces. Their migrations relate to music production that connects musical life in cities. The music practices and communities of the second generation have thus transferred from campuses to live houses where they interact with city lives of particular groups of audiences. The musical path of minyao

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singer Zhang Zhi (张智) is a typical example of the second generation artists. As a Han Chinese,

Zhang comes from a working-class family. His parents worked for the petroleum industry, moving to Xinjiang, which is home to many Uyghurs. Zhang majored in fine arts in college, and he later worked as an art teacher in elementary school. He told me:

“In my childhood, I was fascinated by various instruments. Unfortunately, the financial condition of my family could not support my interest. But, an enthusiasm for learning guitar swept to young Chinese in 1987, so that I had opportunities to self-learn guitar and keyboard in college. My learning process was ba daizi (“mimicked music in facsimile recordings 拔带子), [a prevalent method to learn western music in the mid-1980s (Zhao 2010)]. In this way, I had learned songs from Cui Jian (崔健), Qi Qin (齐秦), the Beatles, and other singers. When I worked at the elementary school, I spent all my money and time on music. The turning point of my career was the Mongolian Music Festival in 2005. Since then, I quit my job and moved around cities in northern China. Finally, I decided to move back to Xinjiang and started minyao compositions and also to learn dombra [a long-necked string instrument in Uyghur, namely Xinjiang]. For a living, I worked for music studios, music festivals, recording studios, etc. But I do want to write music that is down to earth. The music is more than for one’s hometown and nostalgia, it is for the origin of oneself. Now, I live in Lijiang [next to Dali], because I feel free to move to an interesting place, not like people working for governmental departments.”57

Zhang’s brief biography provides a different path of being a minyao singer vis-à-vis the first generation. They are limited in resources financially, socially, and musically. However, the vital distinctiveness – looking for origin or for self-identity – connects audiences to their music.

The second generation audiences also belongs to the marginal middle class. They are contributors to Chinese economic growth but are limited consumers unlike the old middle class.

In the next section, I will discuss ethnographic data regarding minyao audiences collected from their online debates, interviews, and online questionnaires to demonstrate their minyao activities.

Their accounts and responses to minyao music contribute to the core meaning of contemporary minyao.

57 This citation is based on the interview with Zhang Zhi on December 15th, 2017. The interviewer is Yanxiazi Gao, via WeChat video call.

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3. The Audience

One critique regarding the active audience suggests that active listeners, as well as the power of media and cultural forms, are shaped by preferred or particular meanings and social uses (Hall 1980; Curran 1990; Frith 1991; Morley 1993; Negus 1996). In raising this point, I will first address the debate between minyao fan groups, interviews with minyao audiences, and the results of an online minyao questionnaire. Next, based on this research and fieldwork, I will identify the marginal middle class audience. Lastly, I will argue that there is a social gap between two generations of minyao audiences and that this gap can be imagined to be filled.

In recent years, groups of financially unstable minyao audiences have become associated with a derogatory term, diaosi (“loser” or “slacker” 屌丝), which mainly refers to male audiences.

Some general popular music listeners satirize them as pseudo-art-buffs, who are poor but fantasize having good taste as the old middle class by listening to minyao music. A minyao aficionado, Bai, mentioned this intellectual competition in minyao fan groups in our interview in

2016, saying, “those fans of minyao singer Zhao Lei (赵雷) always deliberately wish to show their ‘uniqueness.’58 They comment Li Zhi (李志)’s most minyao songs are extremely ‘dark.’ But, a huge number of fans love Li’s songs.” 59 Bai continued to explain: “Because they want to show their ‘uniqueness’ from others, they want to show their intellectual superiority to other general audiences.” Likewise, similar posts are also seen on Chinese mainstream websites. For example, on a Chinese question-and-answer website, Zhihu (知乎), one posted: “When people listen to a minyao song like “South by South,” they expose their low taste, and they are actually passive listeners who follow the trend of indie art.”

58 Bai was a graduate student in the Meteorological department at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, in 2016, while I had an interview with her in Honolulu, HI. (Interview: Dec. 6, 2016; Interviewer: Yanxiazi Gao) 59 Liu and Bai both female popular music listeners. When I had interviews with them in 2016, they were both graduate students at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, and were both around age 25.

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When I asked for a comparison of two generations of minyao artists and audiences, another interviewee, Liu, from the post-90s generation, said: “Under a strong influence from new media, our generation used to listen to K-Pop, J-Pop, and English songs. Hence, we are westernized and Hallyu-ized in a significant way. But, sometimes we recall the minyao music in the 1990s because it is a kind of nostalgia. Nowadays, it’s chaotic. An audience listens to the first generation of minyao in order to imagine one’s innocent youth, and to resist the dissatisfaction of reality.” Next, Bai responded: “The second generation minyao songs show less superficial love and feelings than the first generation; instead, they have subtle emotions and deep reflections on lives and society. The lyrical messages pass more broadly through working classes where people feel minyao listeners are poor and belong to the marginalized group.” In Bai’s opinion, minyao music is a niche market for groups of young singers and audiences. Music websites strategize desired listeners; by doing so, online music and festivals boost the re-popularization of minyao music. However, regardless of its popularity, when it comes to minyao, people still relegate it to the poor members of a small music market.

I interviewed another group of audience members after the performance by minyao singer

Zhang Zhi (张智) at a live house, Jie Lu (结庐), in Dali in 2017. Based on my fieldwork in Jie Lu, the audience members range from their early twenties to early fifties, and they come from different walks of life. They are mostly college students, new graduates, freelance artists, and private entrepreneurs. The audience members in their early fifties imply constant participation in minyao music across two generations. As can be inferred, the composition of the second generation of minyao audiences includes more than just young people, and their active participation is underestimated. In this section, due to the discrepancy in gender quantity, I selected one female and three male audience members in different ages and occupations as case

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examples. There were two main questions in this interview: what is the definition of minyao and why do they listen to minyao?

Brother Shen (沈哥), a businessman in his early fifties, preferred listening to experimental and world music, such as Zhang Zhi’s musical style. “I traveled to Xinjiang, China, that’s why I came to this live house to listen to Zhang’s music. Because I had the same traveling experience in the same place as he did.” When I asked him for the definition of minyao, he believed: “I am not sure what is the definition of minyao, but I think those who have power then who define minyao.” Later, he continued: “From my perspective, minyao is local, folksy ballads.”

Xiao Yu (小俞), a freelance woman in her early forties, acknowledged that she started to listen to minyao music in last ten years. She was introduced to it by friends, and she was notified by online music preferences and stations. She responded: “Minyao means ballads spread among people. Its most notable characteristic is regionalism. Different regions nurtured their characteristics. Of course, Lao Lang (老狼) is an unforgettable imprint of the early period of minyao. The reason I listen to minyao is because of the lyrics and catchy melodies.”

Chong Yang (重阳), a photographer in his early thirties and a self-styled grassroots participant, explained, “minyao is a popular music singing style with traditional Chinese narratives. Listening to minyao songs is an alternative way to return to tradition, which are sophisticated expressions in classical Chinese literature and culture. This tradition helps us to think about westernization. When the western things come to China, should we adopt it or not? Compared to other popular music genres, minyao is a niche market, but minyao songs comfort listeners like me because it talks about love, individuals, and society. In other words, it talks about people’s lives. There are many songs titled after cities’ names, so I can travel to one city and listen to a minyao song titled with the same city name. In this sense, I feel I am with singers when I listen to minyao songs, and, spiritually, we are in the same page. I like Li Zhi (李志) and Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬), because of their lyrics. Although I am a grassroots participant, I still pursue spiritual fulfillment and yearn for success. The poetic minyao lyrics consider the relationship between an individual and society.”

Xiao Pang (小胖), an early twenties college graduate, was enthusiastic about attending music live performances. He said: “I like listening to this kind of music (Zhang Zhi’s) because it visualizes music in my head. I am not too fond of Zhao Lei (赵雷)’s music, but I am fond of Li Zhi (李志) and Zhang Zhi (张智). The definition of minyao is too broad now. Anyone plays guitar, and then they tell people they are minyao singers.”

Some general conclusions can be mined from the previous accounts of minyao audiences.

First, the contemporary minyao is variously defined; second, minyao is about folks, their lives, experiences, and aspirations. Overall, the general ideas of minyao are based on two features: regional identity and lyrical expressions. To particularize the structure of general listeners and their attitudes to minyao, I designed a questionnaire with 14 questions in Chinese language to

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Chinese readers via PowerSurvey, an online platform of survey design, data collecting, and data analysis.60 The types of questions included were multiple-choice, open-ended, demographic, and rating questions. This questionnaire is presented with a small number of respondents (19) among friends of friends in social media.

1) Age

2) Gender

3) Education

60 This questionnaire was posted on WeChat, a Chinese text-message-based social media, on November 03, 2017.

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4) Listening Habits

5) Is Minyao a mainstream popular music genre in China?

6) How often do you listen to minyao?

The remaining eight questions required writing responses detailing the reason for listening to minyao. I choose the most representative three questions and summarize their open- ended feedback afterward.

7) Do you like listening to minyao, and why?

13 yes answers out of 19, and they like minyao music because of its simplicity, storytelling, life-related lyrics, comfortable melodies and mood, imaginary lyric settings, popularized style, closeness, and down to earth lyrics.

8) What minyao singers or songs do you like, and why?

The most mentioned minyao singers are Song Dongye (宋冬野), Chen Li (陈粒), Wan Xiaoli (万晓利),

Zhao Lei (赵雷), Xu Wei (许巍), Li Zhi (李志), Pu Shu (朴树), Hu Defu (胡德夫), Teresa Teng (邓丽君), and the

Beatles. The mentioned minyao songs include “Miss Dong,” “South by the South Mountain,” “Rice Grocery,” and

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some 90’s popular songs from the mainland and Taiwan. The respondents chose to listen to minyao because of its lyrics and catchy melodies.

9) In your opinion, what are the features of minyao music?

There are three features. From a lyrical perspective: the lyrics are close to our lives; they are either poetic or critical, with artistic perceptions in it. From a musical perspective: melodies are flowing, simple, comfy, and catchy; it is easy to spread out. From a general style: it sounds nice, touching, and feels sentimental. It reflects the beauty in our lives, and it is like an indie-pop style.

The first three charts to some extent demonstrate the limited results especially in genders, due to participants through my friend circles on WeChat. However, the results show 20-40 years old adults and undergraduate degree holders are main audiences. Their listening habits and the access to minyao rely on online notifications. In other words, the feedback demonstrates that minyao is a small music market and its definition is blurry to participants. Some the first generation participants are not able to distinguish minyao singers and other forms of popular music singers. Notably, in question 8), the musical style of singers like Chen Li, Xu Wei, and Pu

Shu are blurrily defined between popular, minyao, and alternative rock. Teresa Teng was a

Taiwanese pop singer. Additionally, Hu Defu is a renowned Taiwan minyao singer who moved to the mainland in the late 80’s. However, all of participants agree that they like minyao lyrics and minyao melodies are catchy. Finally, to general audiences, the features of minyao include simplicity, sentimental melody, and reflections on people’s live.

4. Conclusion

There is a further clarification regarding the minyao audience, which is related to their socioeconomic status between two middle classes. The term diaosi (“loser”) discussed in the beginning of the section of The Audience gives an attention to male audiences in a lower

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socioeconomic status. However, the dismissal of minyao fans as lowbrow is commonly seen between different fan groups or non-minyao listeners. The attitude of the “upper” end of the class gap to the diaosi audience needs further research. Nevertheless, the first generation fans, now middle-aged, appreciate the second generation minyao performances. Whereas, the second generation listeners are familiar with the first generation performers. The second generation therefore aligns themselves with the first generation by listening to the first generation music. In short, the generation gap plays a role in the cultural alignment of the second generation audience.

Lastly, I take a further consideration of minyao fans. Lisa Lewis argues that “fans create communities with collective, shared senses of identity built around their appreciation of particular performers” (Negus 1992:26). In a similar vein, artists and audiences both create minyao communities with their collective and shared day-to-day experiences, a sense of geographical belonging, and regional identity. In the second generation, to manage live houses and to perform at festivals is a way to produce a musicking-and-participating circle and to retain the popularity of minyao music. There is not for one party to stand for the popularity of minyao, not only the artistes. The fan groups also generate important meanings of minyao in that their activities and class aspirations meaningfully support minyao musically, socially, and culturally.

Li (2012) reckons that some members of the marginal middle class will join the old middle class or the capitalist class in the future.61 If that becomes true in minyao’s case, what will be the next generation of minyao? What would be the social gap expressed through minyao music? If the socioeconomic status of the second generation changes, what becomes of their audiences?

61 Here I changed Li’s original term “the new middle class” into “the old middle class” in order to continue using the same term to reference the first generation, which in Li’s concept includes professionals, managers, and government officials.

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Conclusion

This thesis compares two generations of contemporary Chinese minyao music in terms of artists, audiences, lyrics, and music. The emergence of contemporary Chinese minyao music ties to post-socialist politics and the cultural milieu since the 1980s in China. The production of minyao plays a decisive role in the diversity of Chinese popular music, as Chambers suggests that “powerful new sounds emerge from the margins and challenge existing musical conventions.” From its debut album (1994), xiaoyuan minyao 1983-1993 I, to the concluding of this thesis (2020), minyao music has developed over two generations spanning 26 years. Its characteristics have transformed from nostalgic campus experience to regional identity. The lyrics have developed from themes of love, friendship, and old times to a sense of geographical belonging, civil involvement, and attachment to classical Chinese poetry. The musical style has evolved from western folk music to richer instrumentation and Chinese musical elements.

The argument of the thesis is that minyao is to fill the imaginary social gap between audiences of old and marginal middle classes. The artists have developed from contract singers to independent artists to both. The audiences have been involved in two middle classes, old and marginal. In particular, the second generation of minyao music has established a new model where the role of artists is multi-faceted. Many of them are in charge both production and distribution of their own music. Therefore, they work as singers, entrepreneurs, producers, copywriters, salesmen, tour planners, and more. In turn, the audiences look at these singers from multiple perspectives too. In this sense, this new model brings a more intimate feeling to fan

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groups, who perceive artists as close friends instead of idols and feel the same class aspirations with the second generation artists, who want to be accepted but saying their aspirations indirect, poetic, and ambiguous. After all the accounts, I will conclude with the essentials and further research in regard to minyao music.

First, the definition. As we concluded in chapter six that the contemporary Chinese minyao music is variously defined. Who defines it? Let’s review the literal meaning of minyao first, which means “folk” and “unaccompanied singing”. In other words, it is about people’s daily life. However, when this term is situated within its history, the first and second generation and the artists and audiences have become entangled. From the perspectives of singers and audiences, both acknowledge that minyao music talks about people’s lives and social issues around them.

Zhou Yunpeng (周云蓬): “Current Chinese minyao, starting from xiaoyuan minyao, demonstrates the resurgence of civil society. During the Republic of China in the mainland (1912-1949), there were artists who performed as a power of voice for folks. Since 2005, xin minyao (“neo-folk ballad”) writes personal lived experiences, home places, and local things from small perspectives. The various singing talent shows commercially mix minyao music with other genres of popular music. But I believe that the fundamental concept of minyao is the desire to sing about the folks’ lives and society. The critiques of minyao is actually an introspection toward our inner selves. As minyao artists, we should not fear to take a risk singing social issues.” [2016]

Zhang Zhi (张智): “Now, some minyao hits are pseudo-minyao songs, because singing with a guitar does not mean it is minyao. The media named some of my music as a world music style. I think minyao originates with folk music, involving living customs over generations, local climates, and dialects. The core of minyao is the regional identity that grows up various musical expressions and makes this musical genre lively. [2017]

From the perspective of producers in the first generation, they initially adapted this concept and term from the U.S. and Taiwan, which broke up the conceptual continuity between historical meaning and the second generation. Instead, music companies and artists of the second generation have resurged this genre to its historical meaning. However, there is still attention

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needed on how contemporary Chinese minyao establishes its Chinese style among other forms of popular music.

Second, minyao gives voice to the marginal middle class that has become more prominent with the economic openness, massive need for workforces, and the urbanization and migration within China. On the surface, it blurs the origin of migrants; in fact, it highlights the regional identities. The migration experiences bond the musical connection built between minyao singers and audiences. Their music activities and participation help the growing numbers of live houses in major cities of China. In each representative live house, a sense of geographical belonging is conceivable by singing local stories in minyao songs. The utilization of dialects, local instruments, and folk tunes sonically reminds us of audiences’ belongings in a broader sense.

Third, the imaginary social gap is filled by admiring minyao lyrics in association with the value of identification with Chinese poetry. Literary sophistication is regarded as the marrow of a refined man, specifically in imperial China. The intellectuals were selected as civilians from the imperial examinations since the Han dynasty (202 B.C. – A.D. 220). Education has thus been an effective path toward become a government official. In the meantime, the talent of writing poetry also retains its value to contemporary Chinese. In other words, the literary sophistication stands for a stable work and a middle-class statue. Therefore, the poetic minyao lyrics furnish the second generation of audiences with an imaginary cultural alignment. The second generation, namely the marginal middle class, thus fulfills their class aspirations by listening to minyao music.

Fourth, from aspects of gender, there are three features shown in the minyao songs.

Women are subtly objectified in terms of their appearances and feminine dress. There are

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particular vocabularies that reference classical Chinese poetry and social phenomena. Moreover, those references imply a middle class identity and a class aspiration from the marginal middle class. The female lyricists have elevated their roles in the male-dominant social hierarchy, but the gender stereotype is still distinct in minyao lyrics.

There will be other aspects for further research. In the socioeconomical aspect, the involvement of communities has its significant role in minyao musicking and distribution, such as gentrification issues are associated with mobility. In the musical aspect, such as dialect minyao, urban minyao, and other subcategories of minyao music are in respective need of research. The exploration and development to music style is a significant point of view from minyao artists. With the regional style, the Han and minorities musical styles incorporation into minyao music will be a worthy research topic, too. Overall, minyao shows a life style, a response to social changes. The function of minyao with Chinese context is a complex and intriguing research topic for further research.

Through the study of contemporary Chinese minyao, I hope to introduce this genre of music to broader array of readers who can access it, see its music from multiple angles, and evaluate its music-related phenomena in broader ways.

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Glossary

balinghou/jiulinghou 八零后/九零后 Post-80s and -90s generations bei piao 北漂 Beijing-drifters; migrants in Beijing bentuxing 本土性 Sense of Chineseness cipai 词牌 Poetry standard diaosi 屌丝 Loser, a Chinese cyberculture

The oldest Chinese lexical dictionary Er-ya 《尔雅》 Developing the quality of the people fazhan shushi jiaoyu 发展素质教育 as a whole gangtai gequ 港台歌曲 Hong Kong and Taiwanese popular songs ge 歌 Song guniang 姑娘 Girl

He Jiuba 河酒吧 River Bar

A Chinese idiom, meaning one must Jiaotu-sanku 狡兔三窟 make precautions for self-protection jiefa 结发 Knot hair

Maque washem 麻雀瓦舍 MAKO live house, in Beijing minge changqiang 民歌唱腔 Folk song vocal style minyao 民谣 Folk Ballad piao’er 漂儿 Drifter, migrants qi-cheng-zhuan-he 起承转合 Opening-holding-turning-closing, a syntactic structure of Chinese Tang poetry

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qinghuai 情怀 A rocker at heart qupai 曲牌 Labeled melodies sanshi erli 三十而立 An old Chinese mantra refers to a man at age 30 should be responsible and independent

Scar literature or literature of the wounded, writing about shanghen wenxue 伤痕文学 the experiences of the Cultural Revolution (1967-1977)

“Down to the Countryside”, a movement during the 1960s shanghai xiaxiang 上山下乡 and 70’s China

Shijing 《诗经》 The Book of Songs shi yu yuanfang 诗与远方 “poetry and a faraway place”, a slogan for dreaming of an idyllic lifestyle

“The Peach Blossom Spring”, Taohuayuan Ji 《桃花源记》 a classic Chinese essay talking about an untraceable utopian village

Plain song; singing without tuge 徒歌 accompaniment wangluo gequ 网络歌曲 Internet Song wen 文 Civilized, refined, literary and feminine sophistication

wu 武 Military

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xibeifeng 西北风 “Northwest wind”, a Chinese popular song style

xiaoyuan minge yundong 校园民歌运动 Taiwanese campus folk song movement

xiaoyuan minyao 校园民谣 Campus folk ballad xidan minzhu qiang 西单民主墙 The Democracy Wall on Xidan St. in Beijing during 1980s xin minyao 新民谣 Neo-folk ballad yao 谣 Ballad

Yidairan 《一代人》 “The Generation”, a famous Chinese poem by Gu Cheng

Yiwen Leiju 《艺文类聚》 An encyclopedia of reference books

Faraway place, a metaphor in yuanfang 远方 Chinese poetry

Bureau of Music of Han Yuefu 乐府 dynasty

“Chinese characteristics Zhongguo tese de minzu 中国特色的民族 nation”, a Chinese policy

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Appendix I: List of 210 Minyao Song Titles

1995, “Lianlian Fengchen.” Performer: Lao Lang. Record label: Taihe Rye Music Co. Ltd. 《恋恋风尘》.老狼. 太合麥田. 1. Tongzhuode ni 同桌的你 2. Shuizaiwo shangpude xiongdi 睡在我上铺的兄弟 3. Lianlian fengchen 恋恋风尘 4. Meiren 美人 5. Lanse lixiang 蓝色理想 6. Weini nanguo 为你难过 7. Laizi woxin 来自我心 8. Zuotian jintian 昨天今天 9. Yinyue chongzi 音乐虫子 10. Zhiyouni peiwo yiqi changge 只有你陪我一起唱歌

1996, “Qingchun wuhui.” Performer: Gao Xiaosong. Record label: Taihe Rye Music Co. Ltd., 《青春无悔》. 高晓松. 太合麥田. 11. Haofeng changyin 好风长吟 12. Mofan qingshu 模范情书 13. B xiaodi yuhou B 小调雨后 14. Dongji xiaoyuan 冬季校园 15. Qingchun wuhui 青春无悔 16. Baiyi piaopiaode niandai 白衣飘飘的年代 17. Yueliang 月亮 18. Huisheng 回声 19. Huangzhong 荒冢 20. Jiuwei de shi 久违的事

1998, “Chunzhen niandai.” Performer: Ye Bei. Record label: Taihe Rye Music Co. Ltd. 《纯真年代》. 叶蓓. 太合麥田. 21. Pugongying 蒲公英 22. Huamulan 花木兰 23. Wo shishui 我是谁 24. Zaijie nantao 在劫难逃 25. Bai hualin 白桦林

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Appendix II: Transcriptions

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Appendix III: Questionnaire

Original questionnaire in Chinese

民谣问卷调查: 您心中的民谣音乐这是一份关于中国当代民谣的问卷调查。链接正规无病毒，问卷结果将用于本人的学术研究，无个人隐私会被泄露。

1. 性别男性女性社会性别／跨性别

2. 年龄 18 岁以下 18-25 岁 26-37 岁 38-50 岁 50 岁以上

3. 家乡填空题

4. 教育程度初中／高中大专本科硕士博士／博士后

5. 职业填空题

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6. 您平时听民谣吗? 经常听偶尔听／朋友推荐听很少听／完全不听

7. 您觉得现在中国的流行音乐是以民谣为主吗? 是不是

8. 如果您喜欢民谣，请告诉我们理由。如果您不喜欢民谣，也请告诉我们理由。填空题

9. 您喜欢哪位民谣歌手或者哪首民谣歌曲，为什么? 填空题

10. 您觉得什么是民谣？填空题

11. 您觉得民谣的特点的是什么？填空题

12. 您选择在哪里听民谣？（多选题）网上：电脑／手机 LIVE HOUSE 演唱会电视：选秀节目／歌唱比赛

13. 您觉得新民谣（2006 年以后）和 90 年代的民谣有什么不同？填空题

14. 您觉得民谣现在为什么这么火？填空题

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Translation in English

Minyao Questionnaire: What Does Minyao Mean to You?

This questionnaire is about contemporary Chinese minyao. The link to the questionnaire is valid and safe. The results and findings of this questionnaire will be used as an investigator’s academic research project. There will be no violation of your privacy and confidentiality.

1. Gender

2. Age

3. Hometown

4. Education

5. Occupation

6. How often do you listen to minyao?

7. Does minyao music dominate the Chinese popular music domain today?

8. If you prefer to listen to minyao, please write down the reason why it appeals to you; if not, please let us know the reason why.

9. Which minyao singer or minyao song do you like? Why?

10. How do you define minyao?

11. What is the main feature of minyao music?

12. Where do you usually listen to minyao?

13. How do you differentiate from new minyao (the second generation of minyao) and minyao from the 1990s (the first generation of minyao)?

14. Why is minyao popular today?

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