Dorm matrons' punk farewell rocks graduation concert in Hubei

The lights cut out, and the audience fell silent. The drummer raised her sticks, held them in the air for a beat, then brought them down with a crash. Then the singing began.

"Hey, you folks in West Zone Dorm 19! What are you doing up after lights out?/Girls living in Sanli Dorm! If you don't sweep up all that hair on the floor/I'll think I've wandered into the Spider Cave!" (This final lyric is a reference to the lair of the spider demons in the classic novel Journey to the West.)

On the floor, thousands of glow sticks swayed across the darkened hall. On the stage stood five dormitory matrons the students saw nearly every day, though never like this. The women, with an average age of around 50, were performing a graduation concert on June 14 at Hubei Engineering University in Xiaogan, Hubei province. They'd turned themselves into a rock band.

Usually seen darting between dorm buildings in work uniforms, the five took to the stage in full punk outfits to perform an original song, Go Shine, as a farewell gift to the graduating class. A video of the four-minute performance has since drawn more than 3 million views on Sina Weibo.

"I don't have any personal connection to them at all, yet tears are streaming down my face right now," one netizen wrote. Many commenters said the song reminded them of their own university days.

The crowd-pleasing lyrics, sprinkled with local dialect, were drawn from campus life itself. Ouyang Chengxiu, a teacher at the university's School of Literature and Journalism who guided the performance, led students in writing the song's words and music after interviewing schoolmates and dorm matrons. The material they gathered filled the song with small, funny moments shared between the two groups: students pretending to be fast asleep at the jangling of keys, hiding laptops under the covers, tucking takeout food into the corners of wardrobes, or climbing over the wall in the middle of the night while claiming to be out buying medicine.

The five matrons themselves had almost no experience playing music. They practiced secretly in a duty room for a month, though some students guessed what they were up to.

Drummer Liu Shuangqing, who has no drum set at home, lined up washing basins, rice bowls, and pot lids in a row, took up a pair of chopsticks as drumsticks, and tapped along to tutorial videos on her phone.

"My husband made fun of me at first for turning the kitchen into a makeshift band, but later sat with me every day to time my rhythm practice," she said.

Lead vocalist Li Wei said her favorite lyrics are: "If you're wronged and have nowhere to turn, just buy a ticket and come back/A window in the dormitory building will always stay open for you."

"I want to tell them that if they face difficulties, there is no need to force through everything alone," she said.

Lei Wenjia, a graduating English major who attended the concert, said she was stunned when the matrons walked onstage in punk gear, and that the energy in the hall never let up, making it a graduation concert she won't forget.

She said her eyes welled up at the lyrics "Staring at piles of cartons lining the corridor and empty dorm beds/truth be told, I hate to see you go". It's a line that, along with the song's memories, reminders, and warm wishes, she believes she will carry into the next chapter of her life.