Remembering China’s Past: Punk Songs and Alternative History

Abstract

On December 2017, a complaint was posted on the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture’s website against the Wuhan-based punk band SMZB. It stated that the band “depreciates the Communist Party” by “praising the Guomindang [Chinese Nationalist Party]” in their song “A song for Chen Huaimin”, dedicated to a Guomindang soldier who died during the Sino-Japanese War, and the grand-father of SMZB’s lead guitarist. Since its emergence in the mid-1990s, Chinese punk has tackled a lot of issues in its songs, but the most sensitive may be history. Against the official version of history, punks have questioned the Liberation era, the Maoist period, or even the 1989 Tian’anmen protests in their songs and their discursive productions. The figure of Mao is constantly criticized by punk bands – in “Heil to Who” by Anarchy Boys or “Smash His Statue” by SMZB for instance – during concerts and in their daily conversations. This paper thus aims at analyzing Chinese punk community as a producer of alternative narratives on Chinese history, and one of the only cultural community that provides a space for repressed and sensitive memories. Through a study of lyrics and interviews with participants of the Chinese punk subculture – both musicians and members of the audience – we will show how punk contributes to the development of a popular, non-official, historical education. During interviews, people often stated that they learnt about sensitive historical events through their participation to the Chinese punk community. Bands indeed provide their audience with historical materials – for instance SMZB’s 2014 album A Letter From China featured pictures of the Tian’anmen protests, and Ordnance’s 2011 E.P. Becoming Citizen included a message from the Tian’anmen Mothers. More than just noise, punk music conveys meaning and memory, and participate to the production of an alternative memory on contemporary China.