Nearly 30 years after it hosted “China’s Woodstock,” a small central Chinese city is still home to a music culture that rocks in its own way
It took me three years of planning before I finally decided to visit Xinxiang (“New Township”), a city in Henan province that some people jokingly translate as “New York.”
This February, I found out that there was a rock ’n’ roll festival in the works for Xinxiang. I was tickled pink when I saw a call for bands from the municipal government—musicians had to be between 18 to 40 years old. No dinosaurs allowed! That aside, I was curious about another bullet point in the notice: What’s rock ’n’ roll got to do with boosting employment and the local economy?
My motivation to cover the rock ’n’ roll scene in Xinxiang came from a video clip I’d once watched. It showed a middle-aged lady rolling up aboard her mobility tricycle just as some band wrapped up a street performance in town. “Show’s over, Auntie,” the musicians said to her.
Well, Auntie was not having any of that. She got all pumped and shouted to the applause of the crowds, “There’s no end, there’s only a beginning!”
Comments from viewers poured in as well. “No wonder this is happening in Xinxiang, the city of rock ’n’ roll.”
The whole thing made me recall a day trip I once took to Xinxiang in July 2005. I was on my way back from trekking through the Taihang Mountains. That sultry summer night had nothing on the bunch of folks I saw downtown, garbed in black leather and carrying their guitars and speakers down the streets. As a tourist from Taiwan, this piqued my curiosity. “There are rockers in this small town?”
What I didn’t know was that just a few years ago, in 1998 and 1999, this “small town” hosted two rock concerts that would go down in history.
Liao Xinzhong is the author of the book “Our Taiwan in These Years (《我们台湾这些年》).” He has lived on the Chinese mainland for around two decades. In 2016, he started writing about his travels on his self-titled WeChat account in order to introduce readers to the “real China” through his eyes. He has posted over 200 pieces on WeChat as of July 2023.
Translated By
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a Spanish translator, writer and creative currently based in Beijing, where she is part of Spittoon International Arts Collective and a regular contributor to The Beijinger. You can find her prose and poetry featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Womanhood, Sledgehammer and more. Her comics and linocut prints have appeared in Shaving in the Dark, F*EMS and Celestite Poetry. Her literary translation work has been published or is forthcoming with a series of publishing houses and magazines, such as Penguin, De Gruyter, Spittoon Magazine and Books from Taiwan.
