On this rock i stand

Over 15 years, Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau has watched the music scene in Beijing grow

There are probably few people who know as much about Beijing's music scene as Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau. In fact, as a student of Chinese at Leiden University in his hometown in the Netherlands, his master of arts thesis was about an underground rock band from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region called Tongue. As a follow-up, for his doctoral dissertation, he looked at mainstream Chinese musicians such as Faye Wong and Second Hand Rose.

At the end of the 1990s Groenewegen-Lau, now 35, played drums in a band at college, which soon broke up, but he continued drumming as a hobby.

Brand members of Second Hand Rose Yao Lan (above left) and Liang Long (above right) performing at a show. Photos Provided to China Daily

He first came to China in 2001, he says, and before that, what he knew about the country was distilled mainly from Chinese ancient poems and essays he read in Chinese textbooks at university.

In 2011, after obtaining his doctor's degree, he returned to China and started to play the drums in several bands. At the end of 2012 he joined the local rock band Second Hand Rose and had his first show with it, which made a deep impression on him, he says.

That was at the Starlight Live, now called the Tango club, in Beijing. All tickets, 1,600 of them, were sold, he says, and as the band walked to the front of the stage, the curtain fell and those in the audience waved red or green plastic fans at them crazily.

"It was the first time I had played before so many people," Groenewegen-Lau says, in a cafe on the south gate of Chaoyang Park in Beijing.

Groenewegen-Lau, who has just been swimming when he speaks with China Daily, orders a smoothie and then proceeds to ruminate, in slowly delivered standard Mandarin, about his musical career and the early days of Beijing rock..

In the two years to the end of last year he was drummer in the band Second Hand Rose, but he quit this year, he says, and drumming is more of a hobby now.

"Second Hand Rose is a very professional rock band, and I was having to give so much time to it that I could find no time to write anymore. I identify myself more as an intellectual, more adept at thinking and writing."

Besides writing and drumming, he teaches American students Chinese culture at a school in Wudaokou, Beijing. In doing that he leans heavily on Chinese pop music, including local rock, the Taiwan pop star Jay Chou, and hit songs such as My Skateboard Shoes and The Song of Fifth Ring.

Huge changes

It is obvious that there have been huge changes in Beijing's music scene, he says.

From the end of the 1990s to 2005, Wudaokou was a very important place in China's music scene, Groenewegen-Lau says, with many overseas students introducing new albums and new styles of music to the place. As demand for these new styles of music began to grow, many important live music venues began to appear, including the earliest incarnation of Yugong Yishan, a club that has become a venerable institution on the local music scene.

"There was no subway at that time," Groenewegen-Lau says. "Wudaokou was a poor place, with a lot of bungalows, and there were prostitutes and live houses as well. There was one place that was used for roller skating during the day and as a punk show venue at the weekend. They had really bad equipment and charged five to ten yuan to get in. The boss was said to be a madam who liked that kind of music."

Clubs including Scream, which later became a record label that was bought by Beijing Jingwen Records, opened, as did the club D-22, which would eventually close in 2012. Now almost live-entertainment venues or music clubs are in Wudaokou.

Tongue

Groenewegen-Lau says he thinks a lot about China's music scene, the relationship between music and politics, the kinds of things that hamper growth of the country's rock music and the differences between China's yaogun (rock music) and its Western counterpart.

"I chose the band Tongue as the topic for my MA thesis because at that time in the West, when it came to China's rock music, researchers would analyze it from an overly political angle, which I think was problematic. So I found the most political and critical Chinese rock band to do the research, and found out that I could not treat Tongue simply as an anti-cultural, marginalized rock band.

"The band members grew up in Xinjiang and are Han people, and their given names refer to the Red Army and revolution. They are clear about their identity, so they are not so anti-mainstream. Besides politics, they also sing about love."

Groenewegen-Lau says that in China rock used to be regarded as an underground, marginalized culture. The concept of China's yaogun is different from that of rock music in the west.

"In general, music other than mainstream music in China is regarded as a part of yaogun, even if it is jazz or blues, but in the West, rock is rock," he said, "and this is just due to different social circumstances."

Chinese children, thanks to the pressure of college entrance examinations, were not allowed to form bands, whereas in the West, teenagers often start bands when they are school students. However, in recent years, he says, the atmosphere for rock has gradually changed.

For a long time, it was very hard for underground indie music to go mainstream that was supposed to help cultivate more local bands, he says.

"Now changes are coming as a result of music festivals and talent shows such as the Song of China on television, in both of which live music is presented to the public, including students and their parents, and that greatly influences the music scene here."

The Internet is also providing more possibilities for obscure small bands to gain greater exposure, he says.

However, China still lacks skilled, professional people and companies to support bands and musicians.

"If the music industry is to develop further, China needs more professional talent besides bands, including professional music media. It needs time."