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Cui Jian is an intense performer. When he sings “Tolerate” (originally released on his 1994 album Balls Under The Red Flag), his voice ranges from a whisper to a scream that makes the cords on his neck grow taut like ropes. He dances with his eyes closed, showering the crowd with gentle shimmering notes from his guitar. The juxtaposition of his angry lyrics and his quiet strumming creates an uncomfortable tension, which adds to the shock when he shouts, “I hate you—fuck you!” But when Cui steers the song toward the topic of masturbation—a taboo subject not many rock songs ever deal with, even in the U.S.—he’s treading on true rebel ground.
“It could be masturbation, but some understand it differently,” he says matter-of-factly from his Beijing home. He speaks slowly, in English that’s almost without accent. “I didn’t write explicitly. Chinese listeners might think about sex, but not the same way [as an American.] I don’t want to make it too clear what I’m singing about. I don’t sing a love song or a political song that’s straightforward.
“If you stay in China, and have relationships with Chinese friends, you’ll find Chinese communication is complicated,” he continues. “It’s not like in the West, where ‘yes’ means ‘yes.’ In China if you say yes, it can be yes or no or something in between. It’s not black and white—it’s mostly gray, but that’s our culture. Rock lyrics can talk about all subjects—love, anger and politics. In the West, people think I’m angry about everything, but Chinese people know it’s not about politics. It’s poetry.”
Cui Jian (pronounced Sway Jen) is China’s top rock ’n’ roller—the most visible musician in a Chinese rock scene that exists largely underground. But unlike so many musicians elsewhere, he didn’t grow up wanting to be a rocker. “I was born in Beijing during the time of the Cultural Revolution,” Cui explains. “I’m of Korean descent, but I only speak Chinese because the government was intent on wiping out minority languages and culture.” Cui’s father played trumpet professionally, and his mother was in a Korean dance troupe, so the family home was full of music. At age 14, Cui began taking trumpet lessons from his father, and by the time he was 20, he had joined the Beijing Philharmonic. “When I was in the orchestra, China had become open to Western music,” he explains. “We played music by Chinese composers who wrote modern classical compositions.”
Cui’s colleagues in the orchestra exposed him—on the sly, of course—to American and British rock music. “It was underground, with people trading copies of tapes made from tapes,” he recalls. “Friends coming back from America or Canada would make copies of their albums, or American students studying in China would tape albums and give them to us.”
Chinese pop and folk music drew Cui to the acoustic guitar, but soon after hearing the amplified sounds of rock, he plugged in and went electric. He started his first rock band, Seven Ply Board, with a fellow musician from the Beijing Philharmonic and five players from a Chinese folk music band called the Beijing Song And Dance Troupe. “We combined rock with Chinese folk music,” he says. “I tried to sing in English, but it was too strange, so I sang in Chinese.”
Seven Ply Board eventually became a hot item at local parties, which at the time was the only way the band could get gigs. “You need government permission to play at a proper venue,” Cui explains. “If it’s a party, that’s okay. The government didn’t know what to make of the rock bands at first. We were the first generation to have bands and write songs about our own feelings, so the government ignored us.” By the time the government understood the free speech implications of Chinese rock, it was too late to clamp down.
In 1986, Cui performed his own song “Nothing To My Name” (also known as “I Have Nothing”) at an official concert that was broadcast on state television. The song made him a sensation, and later became an anthem of the Tiananmen Square protests he would often perform the song wearing a red blindfold.
“In China the government runs the record companies,” Cui notes, “so they don’t care if you make a profit—they only want to put out good music. They let me make an album because people loved that song.”
Rock And Roll On The New Long March was the first official Chinese rock album, and took part of its title from the original Long March of the Red Army that was forced into retreat during the Chinese Civil War of the 1930s—an event that led indirectly to Mao’s rise to power. Cui supported the album with the “The New Long March Tour,” which was the first sanctioned rock tour of China. Although the album was a massive hit and made him famous, it didn’t make him rich. “At that time, 90 percent of albums were pirated copies,” he says. “I didn’t make any royalties at all.”
Since then, Cui has produced four more albums—Solution (1991), Balls Under The Red Flag (1994), Power Of The Powerless (1998) and Show Your Colors (2005)—the latter based on music he composed for a show produced with the film director Zhang Yuan and the Hong Kong Modern Dance Company. “It was music for a modern dance opera,” he says. “The colors are the music. The color red is rock ’n’ roll, blue is hip-hop and blues and yellow is Chinese pop.”
Like any artist with a nose for longevity, Cui’s music is constantly evolving, which has caused some concern among his fans. “I started with Chinese folk rock,” he says, “but I use all kinds of colors—folk, jazz, hip-hop, punk, funk, everything. Some people say I play too many different styles in the same song, but it makes it fun for me. The classical music I listened to as a boy made me curious and open to all kinds of music. I’ve lost my audience at different times, but I want to play anything I like.”
Playing rock music in a country known for repressive tastes has its challenges, but Cui says that people outside China don’t understand what’s going on within the country’s non-political population. “As a musician, I’m not in a bad situation,” he insists. “I’m not angry and yelling—I’m having big fun. I think artists have international minds and politicians are national. Politicians have hate in their minds, but artists just want to communicate and tell people how they feel. They put their heart and soul into their jobs.”
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