Remembering China’s Indie Rock Glory Days

During China’s rock (or yaogun, as many young Chinese gig goers call it) boom circa the 2008 Summer Olympics, Andrew Field was a steadfast concert chronicler. From his perch at the side of the stage, Field, an American writer and historian, straddled two worlds, and time and again he panned his camera between them. 

Unlike the label and venue-hired throngs of photographers who would crowd the lip of the stage and bring new meaning to the phrase “in your face photos,” Field would often capture the crowd of ecstatic concert goers (a combination of Chinese and expat), then train his lens on the Chinese musicians who were by turns arty, boundary pushing, and hungry members of a nascent scene. 

Field released his documentary “Down: Indie Rock in the P.R.C.” in 2012. This spring marked the publishing of Field’s book – full not only of his perceptively framed concert photos, but also his more impressive prose detailing the rapidly unfolding early developments in China’s indie rock scene. Titled “Rocking China,” Field’s book is an instantly essential text for readers eager to learn about a key subculture in one of the world’s most dynamic nations. 

One particularly memorable concert when Field bridged the audience-performer gap, camera in hand, was a SUBS show. During an interview with The Diplomat shortly after the book’s release in May, Field recalled seeing, and later writing about, SUBS’ frantic frontwoman Kang Mao. A gripping early chapter of his book detailed her performance at a festival at Dos Kolegas, a now-defunct music haven at a drive-in movie theater park in Beijing, in the summer of 2007. 

“She’s doing everything,” Field recalled when asked about SUBS and Kang Mao, describing the memory in present tense as if to convey just how powerful it was. “She’s taunting the audience. Ridiculing them. Pleading with them. She gets down on her hands and knees. Whatever she does is for the audience. And there’s not one moment they don’t feel viscerally connected to her.” 

All this – along with “the rhythm and the power of the band’s music” – made SUBS stand out for Field among the abundant bands in China’s scene.

Aside from being entertaining and more than memorable, Kang Mao’s rip-roaring performance style speaks to something much deeper, in Field’s view. “To me the the measure of a good band is how much they could get the audience flowing with some kind of movement. So they aren’t just standing there like zombies. If the lead singer is just standing still, the audience tends to imitate them,” Field said. It is therefore incumbent upon the singer to jump, dance, wave their arms, shout at the audience – do whatever works for them and the crowd, to shake off the proverbial rust. Field deemed “Kang Mao a genius at this. At every SUBS concert, there was no question people were going to be dancing their asses off.”