Bittersweet sympathy

The connection between New Pants and The Flowers dates back to 1996, the year Peng first met Shen Lihui. Shen founded one of China's biggest indie music labels, Modern Sky, the following year, where he signed New Pants as the label's first act.

The same year, Zhang Wei, better known by his stage name Da Zhang Wei, who was 14 years old then, founded The Flowers with his schoolmates: drummer Wang Wenbo, bassist Guo Yang and guitarist Shi Xingyu.

The Flowers gained instant success with their debut performance at a bar in Beijing in 1997. Among the audience were some of the biggest names in the country's rock scene, such as Cui Jian, Dou Wei and Ding Wu, who paved the way for China's developing rock music scene.

Since The Flowers split up, Zhang has gained commercial success with albums featuring dance music and is among the most popular celebrities who broke out into reality TV.

However, he lost a group of fans who missed his punk rock songs and received mix reviews about his music, which is heavily influenced by dance music.

This summer, both Zhang and New Pants participated in a reality show, The Big Band, produced by streaming platform iQiyi, which has successfully pushed Chinese indie music into the mainstream.

After Zhang sang the song Guo Shi (Outdated), while playing guitar and standing next to Peng onstage, Zhang said to the audience: "Maybe I have gained much more fame by appearing in reality shows but for me, New Pants is more famous than me and they are my idol".

"It was the first time that I expressed my love for New Pants out loud. It reminded me why we still rock after all these years," Zhang says.