The Art of Protest In China

Cui Jian

The  Marlowsphere Blog #48

The  name Cui Jian is virtually unknown in the United States, let alone in the  western world. But mention his name in China and it will spur a strong  response—from legions of his rock fans and from the Chinese  government.

Trumpeter,  lyricist, and vocalist Cui Jian (pictured left) is an icon in China’s rock world. Rock guitarist  Dennis Rea, writing in his book Live at the Forbidden City (iUniverse,  2006, p. 103) describes Jian as follows:

In  Post-Mao China, Cui Jian was Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain all rolled  into one, a one-man rock-and-roll revolution whose moving songs of alienation  spoke volumes to a generation [in China] searching for meaning in a rapidly  changing and increasingly globalized China. As the reluctant spokesperson for  China’s disenfranchised youth, Cui Jian will forever be linked in the public’s  mind to the democracy movement that was crushed by the tanks at Tiananmen. The  image of the rocker defiantly rallying hunger strikers with his stirring  outsider anthems epitomized a generation’s struggles and aspirations.

Rea  provides some background on this protester:

Born  in 1961 to musically inclined parents of ethnic Korean descent, Cui Jian soon  revealed a gift for music, and by age twenty he had landed a job playing trumpet  with the prestigious Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra. . . .[However], Cui Jian  had already been smitten by the rock and roll he was hearing on tapes spirited  into the country by Western tourists and students. Initially inspired by the  likes of Simon and Garfunkel and the rough-hewn “Northwest Wind” genre of  contemporary Chinese folk music, he learned to play guitar and started singing  in public, at first covering tunes by well-known singers and eventually writing  his own material.

. . . .

Cui Jian Nothing to My Name CD coverCui  Jian released his 1986 opus “Rock and Roll in the New Long March” soon to become  the defining statement of China’s new lost generation. A solid collection of  original tunes, the album raised the bar for all future Chinese rock music and  provided a potent and timely anthem in Cui Jian’s most enduringly beloved song, “Yi Wu Suo You”—“Nothing to My Name.” [Album cover pictured right.]

Jian’s  songs showed a preoccupation with such sensitive topics as individualism,  sexuality, blind adherence to tradition, and, by inference, the integrity of the  Chinese Communist Party. The government was not amused. He was dismissed from  his Philharmonic position and at one point forbidden to perform in public for  one year.

Now  in this early fifties, Cui Jian is again protesting—this time not from the  stage, but from the rock and roll audiences’ perspective.

According  to a late November 2012 report, recounted from the China Daily, Cui has  been disheartened by observing how security guards [dressed in military  uniforms] tend to stop audiences from “standing up and interacting with the  performers.” And so, like at many other points in time when he saw something in  need of repair, he aims to step up.

“I  want to have a company to train people to become real security guards,” the China Daily quotes Cui as saying. “Serving instead of controlling the  audiences and guaranteeing that the audience have a good  time.”

The  report goes on to say

Part  of that good time, of late, has involved his invitation to the more excited  female fans in crowds to join him onstage as part of the finale. This, one might  say, is the latest incarnation of his career-long testing of the boundaries of  the live music sphere, particularly as far as security personnel have been  concerned. In the past, rather than exciting fans by holding out the prospect of  joining him onstage, Cui’s music, and the expression it represented, affected  audiences in such deep ways that security folks were dealing with people so  emotionally, and physically, affected by the music that they literally didn’t  know what to do with their bodies.

Elvis and Bobby-soxersThis  last description is remindful of film footage of “bobby-soxers” in the early  Frank Sinatra era, teenagers responding to the Beatles initial visits to the  United States, and Elvis Presley’s below the waist gyrations. The young women  appear to be out of control.

“Rock  music has been considered noisy and dangerous in China for the longest time. But  I can tell you that rock fans are very peaceful, pure and simple, just like rock  music itself,’” Cui is quoted as saying.

While  a rock concert is certainly not a battleground in a military sense, it is in a  cultural sense. In China adherence to a central authority is a cultural more  drilled deep into the society. To be out of control is anathema to traditions  that were established thousands of years ago in that part of the world.

What  is amazing is that Cui Jian continues to this day to be a cultural icon whose  voice of protest has not been silenced. But there are other artists who have  been, but somehow have managed to get the “word” out.

This  is from a very recent review of a documentary of artist Ai  Weiwei:

Ai wei wei 1 artspeakchinaPoor  China. So isolated, so misunderstood. And why is the rest of the world always  picking on it over the business of stifling personal expression and trampling  human rights? Using sarcasm as a diplomatic strategy may not work very well, but  in the intimately revealing documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, it is doled out  in equal measure with irony and outrage as a way of conveying the danger and  absurdity of some of the country’s more egregiously oppressive policies. The  artist and activist Ai Weiwei has been captured in unique profile by the  American freelance journalist Alison Klayman, who had unfettered access to this  near-heroic figure as he traveled around China and the world to promote his  exhibitions and his fight for a variety of human causes, which were often one  and the same. Until the government shut him up, that is, in an incident that  made world headlines and that Klayman revealed as best she could after his 81  days of detention and an official gag that left his powerful voice and  deliberate actions all but paralyzed.

The  issues of China’s oppression of Tibet notwithstanding, even more recently (as in  the last few days), it has been revealed that Chinese operatives have hacked  into the electronic files of The New York  Times and The Wall Street  Journal.

The New Digital AgeAccording  to Tom Gara’s review of The New Digital  Age, (Random House) which debuts in April, authors Google executive chairman  Eric Schmidt together with Jared Cohen, a 31-year old former State Department  big shot who now runs Google Ideas, the search giant’s think tank, China. . .“is the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information” as  well as “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign companies. In a  world that is becoming increasingly digital, the willingness of China’s  government and state companies to use cyber-crime gives the country an economic  and political edge, they say.

Gara  further writes,

But  for all the advantages China gains from its approach to the Internet, Schmidt  and Cohen still seem to think its hollow political center is unsustainable. “This mix of active citizens armed with technological devices and tight  government control is exceptionally volatile,” they write, warning this could  lead to “widespread instability.”

In  the longer run, China will see “some kind of revolution in the coming decades,” they write.

Perhaps  Schmidt, Cohen, and Gara have not heard of Cui Jian. He has been protesting for  more than a generation—and inside China yet! Jian’s protest is a protest against  the outcomes of the Mao-ist revolution, and of the post-Mao government still  clinging to out-moded traditions. Ironically, even with the opening up of China  economically following Mao’s passing in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party won’t  or can’t let go of the central authority concept.

Please  write to me at meiienterprises@aol.com if you have any comments on this or any  other of my blogs.

Eugene Marlow,  Ph.D.
February 4,  2013

© Eugene Marlow 2013

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