China: Rock responsibly?

CHENGDU, China — Nearly a year after her sister died in the earthquake that devastated rural Sichuan, Li Minhui found herself standing on a field of ruined sod outside the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, witness to yet another ground-shaking event.

This one, though, was man-made.

“Music like this is for young people!” shouted Li, 40, as she squinted across the field to a stage where a Californian rock band, Army of Freshman, was treating a mob of eager Chinese teens and 20-somethings to wave after wave of concussive pop-punk. “But I think I’m starting to like it!”

The Zebra Music Festival was one of three multi-day rock shows held in China over the Labor Day holiday this year.  In addition to a few foreign acts, the festival featured a who’s-who of Chinese underground bands and attracted more than 100,000 spectators, making it one of the largest rock festivals the country has ever seen. More notable, however, was the presence there of people like Li. 

A former migrant worker from Jiulong township, in Mianzhu County, Li made the two-hour journey to the festival to sell handicrafts — in her case, animal figurines made of strung-together beads — and cups of home-brewed rice wine out of a tent set up near the main stage by the Beijing Cultural Development Center for Rural Women. The BCDCRW, Rural Women for short, was just one of a battery of NGOs invited to participate in what organizers described as China’s first ever “consciousness-raising” rock festival.

The effort to promote civic-mindedness has long been a daunting one in China, where an obsession with material wealth and strict management of good works by the government has created conditions ripe for indifference — especially amongst the country’s increasingly comfortable middle-class youth.

But recently things have started to change, some NGO workers and social activists say. For that, many credit the event that robbed Li of her sister.

The Sichuan earthquake, which struck May 12, 2008, attracted millions of dollars in individual donations and prompted an unprecedented flood of volunteerism. The tragedy has since been widely described a watershed for civil society in China that improved the status of NGOs in the eyes of the government and mobilized members of the supposedly immobile “post-80s” and “post-90s” generations.

According to Scarlet Li, CEO of Zebra Media, plans were already in the works to hold a major festival, but the earthquake convinced her to shift its focus.

“After the earthquake catastrophe, to see the reactions of the youth in China, I was shocked,” Li (no relation to Li Minhui) said as the festival was revving up. “I think, deep in their hearts, a lot of Chinese young people do have a sense of social responsibility, but for some reason, before, they didn't have ways of expressing it.”

The festival was held in a brand new 3,500-acre park in Chengdu’s northeastern suburbs with sod laid down just days before. The main stage was a 25,000-square foot behemoth manned by visual effects technicians flown in from Hong Kong. Flat surfaces everywhere were plastered with signs proclaiming the festival’s slogan: “I Care.”   

Li said her goal was to create a Chinese version of the U.K.’s legendary Glastonbury, and the festival did end up, in some respects, resembling its model. There was a frantic human crush along the fencing in front of the main stage, the occasional Mohawk or dreadlocks sighting, and (on the first day) the hint of a flirtation with mud.

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