Great piece, would love to see more of these collab convos. Just subbed Active Faults.
Though I haven’t watched much yet, nice to hear The Big Band seemed to allow for a bit more cultural expression than The Rap of China, which I gave up on after one episode because it felt too 和谐 & sanitized. Was Rap for Youth any better?
As one who frequented the shows of 二手玫瑰, RE-TROS, Hedgehog & Helen Feng’s various projects during the 00’s at smaller venues, it’s awesome & pleasantly disorienting to see them featured on The Big Band.
Just to chime in regarding Rap for Youth - it was definitely, 100% more provocative than concurrent rap shows or any rap related reality before or after. The range of social criticism was surprisingly wide: gender, sexuality, bullying, abusive provincial academies etc. Performances touched on class, dialects and regional cultures, climate change, wars and conflicts, depression and suicides to the point where the more episodes it aired, the more people got scared of it suddenly disappearing. Its low-budget, humble production with almost 0 warmup promo and popularity it later attracted served as protection from censorship. However as Jake said, multiple controversies with the show's winners gave Bilibili an excuse to halt the series (perhaps also due to fear of clampdown). I fully thought they were going to continue and make it a franchise, but I highly doubt it now. Fun fact: Rap of Youth and Rap of China share a main producer 车澈 who spun the two shows in completely different ways.
Rap for Youth was a bit more interesting to me. It really did feel younger for one thing, but it also had actual rappers as judges / mentors -- whatever you think of Higher Brothers, you have to admit they have more clout than Kris Wu and Will Pan; and I think they stole MC Hotdog, if I remember correctly, the only real rap judge on the first season of Rap of China. Unfortunately, the first series ended in controversy when a rapper seemingly had his lyrics criticising sexual harassment of women cut from the final.
You've captured exactly how I feel about seeing those bands on The Big Band after seeing them live in smaller venues. But I have to admit that after watching the first series pretty closely out of curiosity, I found it hard to devote as much time to the second, and the third I've barely touched (outside of watching a few videos of the actual songs). Obviously it's not made for people like me, but the novelty has definitely gone for me.
Great conversation, happy to see so many of the 'indie' rock names hitting bigger stages now (with all the reservations you mention, of course) !
What is so great about 五条人 is that on their older albums, they mostly sing in a dialect related to 潮汕话, which in a sense is even more obscure to mainstream listeners in China than Cantonese, but it was/is a part of their DNA, really reflecting people's lives far away from bigger, Mandarin-only spaces. They've been one of my favorite bands of the past couple of years, although I think the stuff they have put out after their success on this show has not been as appealing.
1. Is 正能量 seriously an official government stance? As someone in the U.S. who can only see what bits of Chinese content I can find and understand, I legitimately thought that was just a massive meme lol.
2. Is 瓦学 an actual thing too? I looked it up but didn’t really see anything. But yeah to me the whole 土味 stuff never sat right with me because some of it felt inauthentic or an avenue for rich ppl in first tier cities to cosplay or vicariously live a working class or seemingly poorer lifestyle. Maybe that’s not exactly right, but I’m fairly confident that some of that stuff would be subject to some serious scrutiny by The Discourse if it were exposed to western media forums like Twitter or something.
1. Ha! Hate to break it to you but yes, it really is. Not really explicitly mentioned in government papers, per se, but it's definitely been reiterated in editorials from official outlets like People's Daily etc which indicates its significance. 清朗行动, the internet cleanse campaign since 2021 called for "positive promotion and communication" as well ensuring the "the general traffic" to "rumble with outflowing positive energy" (确保大流量始终澎湃正能量). This is a direct quote from Guangming Daily.
2. 瓦学 was definitely a thing (a distinctly Douban thing too) when the show was still airing in September, although nowadays the Douban threads on it are harder to locate or deleted. I couldn't find as much evidence as I wanted to, but it sounds like the criticism was coming from a feminist angle as well as a class one, saying how "Fallacy" hid women from the narrative and Vareihnaz's image as rural elites is a stunt to monetize commoners' suffering.
For me 土味 influencers really sit on a spectrum. There are some who are genuinely from a rural background and are sharing their lives, but others, like you said, would be cancelled the second they make it onto western platforms for pretending to be poor for the traffic. Don't know if you remember the incident of a rich girl vlogging her field trip to a factory to experience the life of a 农民工 (or something along the lines of this, have to dig up the exact example)...
Great piece, would love to see more of these collab convos. Just subbed Active Faults.
Though I haven’t watched much yet, nice to hear The Big Band seemed to allow for a bit more cultural expression than The Rap of China, which I gave up on after one episode because it felt too 和谐 & sanitized. Was Rap for Youth any better?
As one who frequented the shows of 二手玫瑰, RE-TROS, Hedgehog & Helen Feng’s various projects during the 00’s at smaller venues, it’s awesome & pleasantly disorienting to see them featured on The Big Band.
Thanks for the sub!
Just to chime in regarding Rap for Youth - it was definitely, 100% more provocative than concurrent rap shows or any rap related reality before or after. The range of social criticism was surprisingly wide: gender, sexuality, bullying, abusive provincial academies etc. Performances touched on class, dialects and regional cultures, climate change, wars and conflicts, depression and suicides to the point where the more episodes it aired, the more people got scared of it suddenly disappearing. Its low-budget, humble production with almost 0 warmup promo and popularity it later attracted served as protection from censorship. However as Jake said, multiple controversies with the show's winners gave Bilibili an excuse to halt the series (perhaps also due to fear of clampdown). I fully thought they were going to continue and make it a franchise, but I highly doubt it now. Fun fact: Rap of Youth and Rap of China share a main producer 车澈 who spun the two shows in completely different ways.
Rap for Youth was a bit more interesting to me. It really did feel younger for one thing, but it also had actual rappers as judges / mentors -- whatever you think of Higher Brothers, you have to admit they have more clout than Kris Wu and Will Pan; and I think they stole MC Hotdog, if I remember correctly, the only real rap judge on the first season of Rap of China. Unfortunately, the first series ended in controversy when a rapper seemingly had his lyrics criticising sexual harassment of women cut from the final.
You've captured exactly how I feel about seeing those bands on The Big Band after seeing them live in smaller venues. But I have to admit that after watching the first series pretty closely out of curiosity, I found it hard to devote as much time to the second, and the third I've barely touched (outside of watching a few videos of the actual songs). Obviously it's not made for people like me, but the novelty has definitely gone for me.
loved this--I'd be open to reposting on chinatalk if you guys would let me!
Well done you two. Super interesting tête-à-tête.
Great conversation, happy to see so many of the 'indie' rock names hitting bigger stages now (with all the reservations you mention, of course) !
What is so great about 五条人 is that on their older albums, they mostly sing in a dialect related to 潮汕话, which in a sense is even more obscure to mainstream listeners in China than Cantonese, but it was/is a part of their DNA, really reflecting people's lives far away from bigger, Mandarin-only spaces. They've been one of my favorite bands of the past couple of years, although I think the stuff they have put out after their success on this show has not been as appealing.
this was awesome!
1. Is 正能量 seriously an official government stance? As someone in the U.S. who can only see what bits of Chinese content I can find and understand, I legitimately thought that was just a massive meme lol.
2. Is 瓦学 an actual thing too? I looked it up but didn’t really see anything. But yeah to me the whole 土味 stuff never sat right with me because some of it felt inauthentic or an avenue for rich ppl in first tier cities to cosplay or vicariously live a working class or seemingly poorer lifestyle. Maybe that’s not exactly right, but I’m fairly confident that some of that stuff would be subject to some serious scrutiny by The Discourse if it were exposed to western media forums like Twitter or something.
1. Ha! Hate to break it to you but yes, it really is. Not really explicitly mentioned in government papers, per se, but it's definitely been reiterated in editorials from official outlets like People's Daily etc which indicates its significance. 清朗行动, the internet cleanse campaign since 2021 called for "positive promotion and communication" as well ensuring the "the general traffic" to "rumble with outflowing positive energy" (确保大流量始终澎湃正能量). This is a direct quote from Guangming Daily.
2. 瓦学 was definitely a thing (a distinctly Douban thing too) when the show was still airing in September, although nowadays the Douban threads on it are harder to locate or deleted. I couldn't find as much evidence as I wanted to, but it sounds like the criticism was coming from a feminist angle as well as a class one, saying how "Fallacy" hid women from the narrative and Vareihnaz's image as rural elites is a stunt to monetize commoners' suffering.
For me 土味 influencers really sit on a spectrum. There are some who are genuinely from a rural background and are sharing their lives, but others, like you said, would be cancelled the second they make it onto western platforms for pretending to be poor for the traffic. Don't know if you remember the incident of a rich girl vlogging her field trip to a factory to experience the life of a 农民工 (or something along the lines of this, have to dig up the exact example)...
Thanks for the detailed reply. All of this was super insightful, and I definitely remember that vlog getting some Twitter attention.