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Cui Jian is a Beijing-based, Chinese-Korean singer-songwriter, guitarist, trumpeter, music producer and film director who is often referred to as the “Father of Chinese Rock. His status in China is comparable to that of Bob Dylan in the United States. After founding China’s first world-class rock-and-roll band in the mid-1980s, Cui Jian reached the apex of his popularity during the Tiananmen Square protests of spring 1989. His original hit songs — including “Nothing To My Name,” “Rock and Roll on the New Long March” and “It’s Not That I Don’t Understand, It’s That The World Is Changing So Fast” — became the anthems of the student demonstrators. Cui performed in the square shortly before the protests were violently broken up by the People’s Liberation Army. After lying low for the rest of 1989, in early 1990 the Chinese government permitted Cui Jian to embark on his first national rock tour entitled the “New Long March” to raise money for the 1990 Asian Games. Midway through the tour, Cui gained notoriety for appearing on stage wearing a red blindfold across his eyes before performing his well-known political anthem, “A Piece of Red Cloth.” The government canceled the remainder of the tour.

Q: How did you begin playing music?

A: I grew up the only child of professional artists in Beijing. My father was a professional trumpet player in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force Band, and my mother was an ethnic minority folk dancer. We are of Korean ethnicity. I grew up listening to both folk music and Mandarin-language popular music from Taiwan and Hong Kong. I followed in my father’s footsteps and began studying classical trumpet at the age of 14. I joined the Beijing Symphony Orchestra in 1981 at the age of 20.

How did you discover rock and roll?

I first heard rock and roll in the early 1980s when professional musician friends smuggled cassette tapes in from Hong Kong and Bangkok. I loved Simon and Garfunkel and John Denver, and began teaching myself to play guitar.

When did you join your first rock and roll band?

In 1984, six other classically-trained musicians and I formed our first band, Qi He Ban (七合板, literally: “Seven-Ply Board,” referring to the band’s seven-members). My buddy Yang Le and I were in the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, and the other five were in the Beijing Song and Dance Ensemble Ethnic Minority Folk Orchestra, including my career-long suona [traditional Chinese reed instrument] player and saxophonist Liu Yuan. Liu Yuan still performs and records with me today.

Then we got turned on to The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Talking Heads. We started performing original songs — mostly soft rock and love songs — in Beijing hotels and bars. We released our first album — 浪子歸/ Return of the Prodigal Son — in 1984. The album featured commercial, pop-oriented love songs but I added some progressive and folk-rock influences, which was cutting edge in China at the time.

In 1985 we released another album entitled Cui Jian and Seven-Ply Board. This album featured a combination of Western pop-rock as well as new original songs. It also featured more prominent use of electric guitars, seldom used in Chinese popular music before then.

In 1986, I performed my original song 一無所有/Nothing to My Name — at a Year of International Peace Concert at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium. It captured the rebellious mood of the time, and turned into a hit song. Some call it our generation’s anthem.

I ‘broke my iron rice bowl’ and left my secure job with the symphony orchestra. Then I hooked up with a real rock and roll band. It was cryptically named ADO — an African word for “friend” because one of our band members, lead guitar player Eddie Randriamampionona, is African. We played world music before the term was coined. In addition to an African lead guitarist, we had a Hungarian bass player and female pianist (Yu Jin, subsequent founder of the all-female rock band Cobra).

We played sold-out shows at venues like Maxim’s Beijing, foreign bars, hotels and embassies. My first real rock-and-roll album, 新長征路上的搖滾/ Rock and Roll on the New Long March, was released in 1989.

You played at Tiananmen Square in 1989. What was that like?

It’s easy to answer that. It was like a huge party. It felt like a celebration. I went to the Square every day. I am a Beijing native. I didn’t want to stay home and not experience that moment in history. It is just a moment, but it will be forever in my memory. I wanted to see as much as I could.

How do you feel about it today?

Even now, years later, I still don’t talk about it. It’s a closed history. There is an ideology still felt among young people; you just don’t talk about sensitive things. You attempted it once and because you failed you don’t talk about it again. This is self-imposed ideology, self-imposed censorship.

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Click here to read a Q&A with Isaac Stone Fish on Self-Censorship and Engagement with China.

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Tell us about your 40-year career as a pioneer of rock and roll in China. What are you working on now?

I started creating music independently around 1984. In 1986 I wrote Nothing To My Name. That changed my destiny. It sounds like rock and roll, but blends traditional Chinese melodies and folk instruments. That’s why some people say it was the founding of Chinese rock and roll music. I continue to make music and just released a new album last year: A Flying Dog. I have been touring theaters across China and performing at music festivals.

Do you fit into Western rock traditions?

I am totally different from Western rock and roll musicians — I don’t even smoke, I don’t drink much. It is easier to communicate with foreign listeners because I play their music, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and hip-hop, and put them together, using my mother language. It sounds like rock and roll. But my story is totally Chinese.

And you sometimes use Chinese instruments?

I use a lot of instruments found in Chinese folk art. That isn’t because I want to broadcast or promote Chinese traditional art. It is really because when I use those instruments it helps me to express my true emotions. Music can provide a sense of dignity to a nation.

How do you think rock music helped shape the Chinese youth of the 1980s and 90s?

It opened a window to see the world. At the time, a lot of artists only copied very superficial styles from Western rock and roll. They adopted certain lifestyle obsessions with sex, drugs and had long hair. But for me, these are all fake. Musicians today haven’t been able to withdraw themselves from commercialization and allow their creativity to flourish.

What does rock ‘n’ roll mean to you?

I don’t play rock and roll music because I want to go to America and make money. I hate that concept. Rock fuels my passion for life. Even anger can evoke passion. You get the energy from your hormones. For me , passion evokes music. This is rock and roll.

What do you think of the state of censorship in China?

Censorship is very, very strong here. If we have fear, it really works for those in power. Before you write anything, you start to worry. So we have to compromise before we start writing. It is such a terrible, ugly thing.

With the ‘Long March’ tour, why did you don a red blindfold while singing the political anthem A Piece of Red Cloth?

The piece of red cloth, the blindfold — this song changed my life. A lot of people think it is a political song, but it is very emotional. In the last verse I feel that the land is dry and I feel very thirsty. It is for a girl, for a country. Both.

Beijing has been a muse in your music and art — for example the film Beijing Bastards — which you wrote the music for and starred in. Please say something about your hometown.

Beijing is a city of energy, and my bond with it is built on my parents’ generation. I used to have no idea how much this city meant to me. I still feel the pressure and energy from all directions. It also seems to always be full of possibilities and always leaves an opportunity for me.

In the 1999 film 兄弟姐妹/Siblings you played the role of a music teacher. Your own parents were professional musicians, and you grew up in a song and dance troupe, so you must have had access to formal education as a child?

The opportunity to appear in the film came about by accident. I don’t think it had that much to do with my rock music career, except for a children’s chorus song I wrote, which was later named Dancing Across the 38th Parallel. I recorded it for my 2005 album Show You Colors.

My parents’ greatest influence was to teach me that it is an honor to create music and art for a living. Most of the kids I played music with were like me — from artist backgrounds. We had opportunities and conditions to learn music that other kids didn’t have. My first guitar teacher was the elder brother of a Mongolian classmate. We played some folk tunes and covered some foreign pop songs and movie scores. More than ten years later we still played music together. He played the Chinese kettle drums on my 1994 album Balls Under the Red Flag.

Looking at that time now, it had an impact on my later life. What I learned at the time is that groove is a body language. Also, because my parents are from an ethnic minority — Korean — they had friends from all ethnic minorities. They used to dance at parties with their friends. So groove was a bridge for me to understand western rock music and world music generally.

What is the status of music education in China currently? Is there a regularized music curriculum being taught systematically in China’s public schools? What do you predict in the future for music education in China?

I believe that systematic educational resources for music exist only in classical and jazz music. The earliest and most rigorous music education in China is in Beijing and Shanghai, with the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in Shanghai. The next best are in Shenyang, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chengdu and Guangzhou.

I don’t think it’s necessary for other types of music to enter the education system. It should exist commercially and among the common people and that’s enough — except for music research of course — so that its development will be more natural and even more protected and passed on.

Your Snow Mountain Music Festival was the first outdoor festival of its type in China. How do you see the evolution of the music festival industry in China since then?

The Live Vocals [no lip-syncing] movement and Snow Mountain Music Festival were both launched in 2002. They have really pushed the boundaries of large outdoor music events away from just big government-run variety shows. It also expanded the visibility of the venues and increased the flow of tourists. But more importantly, they helped the community see the positive side of rock music and gave professional musicians the opportunity to perform, face large audiences, and often even run the show. While most festivals are funded by the local government, there are others that have become branded and commercial whose success is very much desired by young people. Rock music, on the other hand, is best suited to the festival stage. Personally, I prefer to play in concert halls or special concerts, because sharing a stage with many bands at a festival doesn’t guarantee the quality of the performance. But the good thing is that you get to meet a lot of young people, especially those who are new to rock music.

Your 2010 project Rock Symphony Live was an important event for you in a very personal way. Can you tell us why? How did the project come about?

It was more than ten years ago, and I remember that there was no special purpose, just a desire to appear in a new way on the stage where we first appeared, the Beijing Workers’ Stadium.

I think music is only good or bad, and can’t really be categorised. Classical music has always been the foundation of my love of music. What I’ve learned from it has helped me so much.

Your WeChat broadcast from Shanghai in 2022 via internet streaming was a landmark achievement in all aspects of music and media technology. What were the important hurdles you had to overcome to make that production happen?

The official attendance figure for that concert was 46 million but I think it was affected by the pandemic. People had just left their quarantined homes and some were even still in quarantine. There was a desire for a catharsis, and that’s exactly when we showed up. So I don’t think it’s representative of the numbers of my real audience.

We did face challenges on many fronts with that campaign, but we had a great team. The final finish wasn’t perfect, but it was still relatively high quality. Technically the biggest challenge we faced was the vertical screen. All the traditional choreography, we had to adjust in a short period of time. But fortunately, it also gave us the opportunity to show the creativity of our multi-layered choreography. Musically we had the security of working with a band of musicians who know each other very well.

It’s true that a lot of online concerts have appeared since then, and the ratings are high, but not more than 46 million. Most of them have been pop music, and the number of times rock music has made it to online concerts is still limited.

Is live music activity back to where it was before COVID?

Personally I don’t think much has changed. A good portion of the shows have been canceled or delayed, but some of them have been rescheduled. On holidays, rock festivals explode. There are huge festivals in every major city at the same time, so some bands have to choose between them.

How is the underground rock scene in Beijing? Are there as many hot spots as there used to be?

Nowadays, the ‘underground’ rock scene in Beijing has faded out of the daily conversation. There are some bars where they can have regular performances, some of which are authorized and some of which are not. I’ve heard that some new ones are appearing, and I’ve also heard that some live houses that were just opened a year or two ago couldn’t hold out during the epidemic and closed down.

[Rock and roll] gave me passion about life. Even getting angry, the wonderful feeling is you have passion. You get the energy from your hormones. For me this is the music, this is rock and roll.

You have been involved with underground film in China since its earliest days. What do you think about the scene these days?

I haven’t been involved in movies since Blue Sky Bones, but I’ve heard of some very good TV series that have gotten some good reviews at film festivals abroad and have been released in China. There are also some movies or documentaries that have used my music. That’s about it. I think Chinese movies have a lot of talent and plenty of money, but the space for creativity is still limited. There are many commercially successful movies, but I don’t pay that much attention to them. I have one or two friends who are documentary filmmakers, and they are very busy, but their work is mainly broadcast abroad. I don’t know if there’s even a so-called underground movie scene. Maybe I’m too insular.

I once said at the premiere of Blue Sky Bones that if you think of me as a director, then Blue Sky Bones is not a movie, and if you think of Blue Sky Bones as a movie, then I’m not a director. The main reason I say this is; I’m not a professional director; I’m a person who wants to express himself through a movie. I did write the script with all my heart and I was involved in the whole process of filming and did the post-editing as well. I went through the whole process. I’ learned a lot from it, and I’d love to have the opportunity to share my experience with you if time and circumstances permit.

Do you think much about playing shows outside of China? The English translations of lyrics on your latest record, A Flying Dog, are clearly more poetic and intended to connect with English-speaking audiences.

I had the lyrics of A Flying Dog translated by an American Chinese scholar who plays music. I was able to communicate with him very well through email, and I felt that I could sing all of his translations. This experience gave me confidence to have a chance to sing my songs in English, but it has to be natural. If a song is written specifically for singing in English, it doesn’t seem to be my style. Translating my Chinese lyrics and singing them in English, I find this interesting but challenging. I hope one day I can realize it.

Of course I would like to perform abroad, there are many places I would like to visit, including of course New York and other cities in the U.S. and Europe! I haven’t been to South America, I haven’t been to Africa, I haven’t been to the Middle East, I’d like to go anywhere through my music. It just depends on the opportunity.

There’s a song in A Flying Dog called Doomsday Beach, and one of the lyrics is; ‘I long to be blown by the gale, I long to be pushed by the waves, but the sea is dry as the wind, and the wind is soft as the water’.

Russia and China are enjoying extremely friendly relations right now. This brings to mind the strange parallel between yourself and the father of Russian rock, Victor Choi, who even shares your last name. Apparently the two of you once met. Can you tell us about that? Do you follow any Russian musical artists now?

Yes, we played together in Paris in early 1989 and I was interviewed on stage with the guitarist of the band. I didn’t have much contact with Choi, which is a pity now. I haven’t had much contact with other Russian musicians and their music since then, which is also a pity.

What do you love most of all about living on this planet?

Thank you for asking this question because I’ve been thinking about the ‘where we came from and where we’re going’ question lately. There are so many things I want to know and thankfully the Internet has given us the opportunity to learn so much and question facts that we don’t think about.

One of my questions is; the internet is nothing more than a world of information, there are two other worlds that coexist; one of matter and one of energy. When any two worlds are aligned in the same direction and have the same interests, the world is bound to be destabilized. This is also what I sing about in my song [Blue Sky Bones]: ‘A tripod has three legs to be stable, without any one of them it is in constant motion.’ But I’m still thankful that there are so many people online who are willing to share their knowledge and experience. I feel deeply fortunate in that regard.

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