Response on Cui Jian

As a result of the Open-Market Reforms under Deng Xiaoping, Chinese society was able to access outside popular music once again. In the mid 1980s, state-run popular emerged after heavily importing music from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the early 1980s. What also developed was the Chinese rock music with Cui Jian most commonly described as the “Father of Chinese rock music”. He infused Chinese instruments and melody with the qualities of Western rock to start the rock movement amongst the youth in Beijing in the 1980s. His song “I Have Nothing” was widely regarded as a symbol of the Tiananmen Square protest and turning point in Chinese culture.

Rock music in China sprang up as an underground alternative to that of popular music approved and produced by the state-controlled mass media for its freedom of expression. At the most basic level, Chinese rock music was seen as a form of individual expression, following the qualities of Western rock music focusing on anti-traditionalism and individualism. Cui Jian and other Chinese rock musicians asserted their individualism and broke the mold of mass music and revolutionary songs used for government propaganda. For the first time, people could express their (dis)satisifaction with life, whether it is about love, money, or social and political freedom. The major shift away from collective needs to individual interests can be symbolized by the growth of the urban rock scene in Beijing during the 1980s and later.

Though rock music can be apolitical, to certain urban youth in Beijing it has served as a political and cultural form of dissension about the Communist government by sparking protests and satire of government corruption. Many rock musicians see the music as a method of fighting the “oppression” of the feudal culture that they feel is closed-minded. Cui Jian described rock music allowed his listeners experience real freedom, but he says that the listener is left to interpret if this freedom is on a personal or political level. So members of the urban youth culture used his song “I Have Nothing” as a rallying point for the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, wanting more decision-making power from the Communist government in the name of democratic freedoms. With Cui Jian’s music, the democratic movement gained support from the younger generation.

Cui Jian’s passionate lyrics found ways to strike the chord with the youth wanting more freedom, though he publicly denies it is opposing the Chinese government. His song “I Have Nothing” can be a political message about the youth with respect to communism or just about a love story between a rich girl and poor young man. Either way, the lyrics provide a cathartic experience because it recognizes the powerlessness of the person singing the song. The youth, or anyone today, can relate to that feeling of powerlessness in their lives and I can see why it is such a personal song. Furthermore, listeners realize that such a situation must be changed someway and somehow, thus the song indirectly provides a need to change this circumstance of powerlessness. In “A Piece of Red Cloth”, the lyrics can be related to the Chinese people blindly following the Communist party, hoping for the riches the party says will come. However, people have their eyes cover by a red cloth that does not allow them to objectively assess the situation because they had lacked the knowledge and individual thought before the open market reforms.

Overall, Cui Jian’s rise in the youth movement in Beijing and the rest of China is symbolic with the democratic movements in Tiananmen Square and later. However, after 1989 rock music has been more commercialized due to financial concerns and less politically motivated. This stems from the Chinese government restricting rock music and musicians needing to appeal to international audiences, and thus creating limiting the political power that this subculture once had.