Popular Music and Local Youth Identity in the Age of the Internet*

CHAPTER SIX POPULAR MUSIC AND LOCAL YOUTH IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET* In the previous four chapters, I have discussed the burgeoning use of local languages in the field of television production. While most TV shows rendered in local languages appeal to the local audience, the younger and comparatively better educated segment of that audience has migrated to a new medium—the Internet. Ever since its introduction to China in the early 1990s, the Internet has been passionately embraced by Chinese youth. As of January 2010, according to a state-sponsored study by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), more than 70 percent of Internet users (384 million total) were young people under 35 years of age, and the age group between 18 and 24 years old consis- tently accounted for a much higher portion (usually 35–42 percent) of users than any other age group. Regarding their level of education, approximately half of the users had a college or associate degree. Roughly one-third of China’s netizens were students, and the incidence of Internet use in urban areas was 6.5 times greater than in rural areas. As part of a distinct urban youth culture in China, the Internet plays an increasingly prominent role in promoting and disseminating the use of local languages among urban, educated Chinese youth: through local-language texts paro- dying Chinese characters and the writing system; through standard tests of local-language competence that mimic the format of official English exams; through downloadable cell-phone ringtones recorded in local languages; through blogs, cyberfictions, and recently micro-blogs (weibo 微博) and other social media employing local slang and expressions; and through independent and city-government sponsored websites devoted to promoting regional dialects.1 Alongside this online cultivation of local languages, popular songs rendered in local languages, aided by cybertechnologies, have become the * Part of this chapter is based on my forthcoming article: “Alternative Voice and Local Youth Identity in Chinese Local-Language Rap Music,” positions: Asia Critique 22.1 (2014), and is presented here with permission from Duke University Press. 1 For an overview, see Jin Liu, “The Use of Chinese Dialects on the Internet,” in Chinese under Globalization, 59–78. 144 chapter six vogue among urban educated youth. The Internet-age phenomenon of the promotion of local-language use by educated youth can be traced to what was arguably the first Internet-mediated hit song in 2001, Xue Cun’s 雪村 “The Northeasterners Are All Living Lei Fengs” (“Dongbeiren doushi huo Leifeng” 东北人都是活雷锋). This song, with a strong Northeast flavor, initiated a trend of Internet songs (wangluo gequ 网络歌曲) rendered in local languages. Besides reworking popular songs whose lyrics were originally in the dominant Standard Mandarin, Internet-savvy youth began to write rap songs in the various Chinese regional languages. Rap music and hip-hop culture, usually perceived as originating in the local African-American street culture of the South Bronx area of New York City, have been continually relocalized and thus globalized by youth speaking different languages all over the world. The distinctive linguistic feature of the localization of rap music in mainland China is not so much that it is rendered in the official Standard Mandarin, but rather that the rhyth- mic vernacular transforms into distinct colloquial, nonstandard local languages. A handful of (semi-)Chinese rap songs, largely in Putonghua, predate the Internet.2 However, the emergence of rap songs performed in Chinese local languages was clearly made possible by the Internet. Par- ticularly since 2001, there has been a proliferation of rap songs, sometimes blending English and Standard Mandarin words, in Shanghai Wu, Hang- zhou Wu, Suzhou Wu, Wenzhou Wu, Yixing Wu, Jinyun Wu, Changsha Xiang, Hakka, Nanjing Mandarin, Yangzhou Mandarin, Wuhan Mandarin, Beijing Mandarin, Northeastern Mandarin, Sichuan Mandarin, Qingdao Mandarin, Guangzhou Cantonese, and so on.3 2 Cui Jian’s 崔健 “It’s Not That I Don’t Understand” (“Bushi wo bu mingbai” 不是我不明白, 1987), Zang Tianshuo’s 臧天朔 “Let’s Chat” (“Shuo shuo” 说说, 1995), and Dou Wei’s 窦唯 “Advanced Animal” (“Gaoji dongwu” 高级动物, 1994) are sometimes credited as being the first compositions in China to incorporate rap into a primarily rock-music style. Yet the music critic Li Wan dismissed Cui Jian’s song, for example, as being merely a ver- sion of the traditional, folk kuaiban(shu) performance, in which the performers recite lines rhythmically to the beat of bamboo clappers that they hold. Li Wan, “Rap, shuode xiaqu ma?” Rap, 说得下去吗? [The prospect of rap in China], Dushu 5 (1994): 85–88. Similarly, an anonymous reviewer is critical of a 1994 rap mixtape for its lyrical incoherence and incomprehensibility. See “Daoban: guoyu rap zhuanji”《盗版》: 国语 rap 专辑 [Pirated copy: A rap album in the national language], Yinxiang shijie 3 (1995): 18. 3 A couple of hip-hop scholars have mentioned in passing the use of multiple dialects in Chinese rap songs, without delving into detailed analysis. For example, Jeff Chang describes this “unusual” linguistic feature in an annual “Iron Mic” rap battle in Shanghai in 2007: “One rapper spits out words in a distinctive Beijing accent, scolding the other for not speaking proper Mandarin. His opponent from Hong Kong snaps back to the beat in a trilingual torrent of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin, dissing the Beijing rapper for not .

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