Cui Jian

It's hard to explain Cui Jian's impact on Chinese culture, since it was in some way the result of two opposing forces: on one hand, rock music entered the country through his cassette tapes and for years he was hugely beloved in universities all across China; on the other, the Beijing government did everything it could to hinder his rise, creating a situation in which his songs spread pervasively in the shadow of the official system, while his name almost never appeared in the media.

Even today, it's hard to say whether Cui Jian is a name Chinese audiences are truly familiar with: many know at least a handful of his songs, many recognize his iconic look with the baseball cap and red star, but that doesn't mean everyone can connect those songs to that face. The artist himself has repeatedly joked about this condition of being both a popular figure and one relegated to the shadows, capable of filling stadiums while remaining unknown among less educated social classes. What's certain is that Chinese culture before and after Cui Jian represents two different things, and for once the explanation couldn't be simpler: before him, rock music didn't exist; after him, it did.

Of course, things change if we widen our view to the rest of the Sinophone scene: Taiwan's campus folk scene in the Seventies was already tied to rock music, and by the start of the Eighties, with artists like Lo Ta-yu and Hou Dejian, it would become even more so. In Hong Kong, from the mid-Seventies onward, actor and singer-songwriter Samuel Hui reigned supreme, followed about a decade later by a full-fledged local new wave, with legendary bands like Tat Ming Pair, Beyond, Raidas and others.

Mainland China, however, was a different story: before the historic economic reform of December 1978, music from outside the country was virtually nonexistent. It was known only to the few who traveled abroad or managed to smuggle in Western records: small, well-off circles of insignificant size.

Once the gates opened, though, change was anything but immediate: Western records began to circulate slowly, almost always as bootleg editions, and their content was still considered incompatible with local artistic production. It would take until 1986, when a concert was held at Beijing's stadium to celebrate the United Nations' International Year of Peace: among the many performers invited was a young Cui Jian, who presented a song of his, the now-famous "一无所有" ("Yi wu suo you" / "Nothing to My Name"). In an instant, Chinese rock became possible.

It thus took eight years after the opening of the borders for a rock song in the local language to reach the ears of the Chinese public, and even then it found no immediate commercial outlet, though a demo, following the concert, circulated among students on bootleg tapes.

The problem wasn't Cui Jian himself — in fact, the People's Daily, the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, praised the song for its impetuous gaze toward the future, which seemed in some way to align with the 1978 opening. The problem was that in 1986 China still had no music industry of its own. Almost all records were imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Cui Jian therefore had no way to record his song with professional equipment, let alone release it. The song would only come out in February 1989, as part of his debut album, "新长征路上的摇滚" ("Xin chang zheng lu shang de yao gun" / "Rock 'n' Roll On The New Long March"): eleven years and three months after the reform.

If one were to judge purely by the stir it caused, there's no doubt that debut remains, to this day, the central work in Cui Jian's output: his three best-known songs are all on it. The album this piece focuses on, however, is "Balls Under The Red Flag" (1994), as it is the pivotal work in the artist's life. But to understand why, we need to go back to 1989 for a moment.

During the Tiananmen Square protests, which led to the massacre of hundreds of workers, the students' constant soundtrack was none other than Cui Jian's "Nothing To My Name": because of its lyrics dense with symbolism, what only three years earlier had been perceived by the Party as a favorable text now became a symbol for those opposing the regime. From that moment on, the song landed on the list of works unwelcome to the Beijing government (even today it's unavailable on Chinese streaming services — an absence that is actually counterproductive, since many people notice it and comment on it). The shift in perception surrounding Cui Jian's most famous song is a perfect example of how, in art, context matters more than anything else.

Unfortunately for the artist, this wasn't just a change in the authorities' attitude toward that specific song, but toward his entire body of work: Cui Jian would be ostracized throughout the Nineties, his record sales steadily declining due to widespread boycotting, and his concerts confined to small city clubs (he could have played far bigger venues, given that starting in the 2000s, once he managed to get the harshest bans lifted, he would become one of the main draws at Chinese music festivals).

"Balls Under The Red Flag" came out in the middle of this decade, during which the authorities, without ever officially barring him from pursuing his career, tried to turn him into a kind of pariah of the local scene. Perhaps precisely as a reaction, or because he knew he wouldn't get much traction anyway, right at the moment he was being cornered, Cui Jian seemed less interested than ever in pleasing his tormentors, and recorded the most uncompromising album of his career. It's his first record in which not a single song managed to break through to the Chinese mainstream.

The album's Chinese title is "红旗下的蛋" ("Hong qi xia de dan"), which can be understood either as "balls under the red flag" or as "eggs laid under the red flag": Cui Jian doesn't specify which reading is correct, and in fact offers conflicting clues on the matter. The English title of the album seems to point to the first option, while the lyrics of the title track seem to suggest the second.

Of the eight songs that make up the album, three describe interpersonal and romantic relationships, while the rest — aside from one instrumental — carry a strong sociopolitical charge.

A prime example of the first group is "宽容" ("Kuan rong" / "Tolerance"), whose simple, spare lyrics suit the song's repetitive structure well, building in intensity as it accumulates overdubs.

My body is leaning against you, eyes closed

My hands keep touching myself

I want to give myself pleasure and give you a stimulus

I want to tell you everything, but not make you angry

I don't love you anymore, I don't even hate you

Even though you're still you

I have neither the strength nor the need

To oppose you

I'll leave, damn it, I'll leave

I'll curse you behind your back

We'll see which of us can

Hold out until the end

My eyes are wide open, but full of complaints

Watching your expression, I feel even more depressed

I want to sing a song about tolerance

But a strange sound comes out of my throat

The song's sound moves between alternative rock and jazz-rock, with a noise-pop aftertaste that could recall the more melodic Sonic Youth. The two elements that stand out most are the saxophone's incessant wandering and Cui Jian's rough voice. The arrangement is essentially built by four musicians, who alone hold up the scaffolding of the entire album: Cui Jian himself, on guitar, the Madagascan Eddie Randriamampionona, a key figure in the Chinese underground of the Eighties (he worked at his country's local embassy), on bass and guitars (including all the acoustic parts), the renowned jazz musician Liu Yuan (saxophone and flute, but also Chinese instruments like the suona and dizi), and Quan You on drums (information on him is scarcer, he's essentially known as Cui Jian's drummer).

The most complex lyrics are the ones that dissect Chinese society and the political upheavals of that era of great change, like for instance on the title track:

The sudden opening

It wasn't so sudden

The chance is now

But no one knows what to do

The red flag still flies

With no fixed direction

The revolution goes on

The old revolutionaries are stronger than ever

Money floats in the air

We have no ideals

Even though the air is fresh

We can't see far ahead

Even though the chance is now

We don't have the courage

Our personalities are blunted

Like eggs laid by the red flag

Heads are popping out

We have waited all these years

Looking up and screaming

It's in our nature

Of course we understand

Whose descendants we are

It doesn't matter whether our actions are good or bad

Our heart is still pure

[Political] power floats in the air

Often striking us from behind

Suddenly we get the idea

To go our own way and follow no one else

Even though our body is still soft

Even if all we know how to do is scream

We look toward the morning sun

Like eggs laid by the red flag

We are no longer hungry

We've thought it over

Let's not call it kindness

Because we'll never pay it back

We are no longer chess pieces

Following plans decided by others

We want to try to rise up

Walk and look around us

Reality is a rock

The spirit is an egg

Even if the rock is harder

Only the egg is alive

The mother is still alive [*]

The father is the flagpole

But if you ask us, we are

We are eggs laid by the red flag

[* meaning the mother of the eggs, that is, the Chinese flag]

[Note – the translation contains more than one arbitrary choice, as is often necessary when translating from Chinese, while also trying to smooth out any repetitions and cacophonies]

The meaning is direct, with no recourse to metaphors beyond the one in the title, which is itself particularly explicit: the artist is disillusioned with Deng Xiaoping's China, which was growing at breakneck speed but seemed to be sinking the communist utopia into a consumerist whirlpool, as well as generating stark social disparities, as often happens in extremely poor countries that suddenly develop.

It's striking how Cui Jian manages to vary his vocal register despite having a technically very limited voice: whereas on "Tolerance" he was fully melodic, here he's clipped and aggressive, as befits this alien hybrid of funk rock, jazz fusion, noise and Chinese folk, complete with local percussion played by Eddie and Quan You, and the suona, an ancient wind instrument dating back to the Jin dynasty.

"盒子" ("He zi" / "The Box") is perhaps even more experimental: it takes the same blueprint and adds a rapped vocal line, on which Cui Jian proves to be an unexpectedly skilled performer, plus a choral, folk-flavored refrain.

The lyrics are the most aggressive on the album, an accusation against the Party with no shortcuts, both for its betrayal of the old communist ideals and for its ruthless methods of suppressing dissent:

My ideals are that box wrapped in a flag

What's inside the box, no one has ever seen

The flag is blood red, red is the winners' favorite color

In the end, what the box contains isn't so important, what matters is the winners' pride

The proud winners are the strongest, they sit on the box

The blood of the flag is soaking through, the blood stains the winners' red trousers

My ideals are that box wrapped in a flag

But where's my body? It's been obscured by the flag and by bloodied legs

My ideals are there, my body is here

My body without ideals shrinks, becomes smaller than a damn rat

I gnawed at the flag in secret, I want my ideals to see that I'm still alive

But my ideals are too big, how can they see through that tiny hole?

I put all my strength into it and made it through the hole, only to realize the box contains more boxes

How could the idiots out there know there are so many boxes inside the box

Where the hell are my ideals, I check one box after another

I look into the last one, but I still haven't found them

Suddenly I realize I've been deceived, I panic and stamp my feet

My ideals are there, my body is here

Suddenly my foot breaks through the bottom of the box, opening up a deep hole

Through the tunnel, [which] grows wider as I go down

I don't understand how long I've been walking, I've forgotten what I'm doing

Suddenly a beam of light blinds me, I keep going with my eyes closed

[Then] Because of the light I can only stand, and I realize how weak my body is

Suddenly my ideals are calling me, I don't know if they're ahead of me or behind me

I turn back and I raise a fuss, I turn back to tear down that rotten flag

To tell the winners they were wrong, that the world changed a long time ago

My ideals are there, my body is here.

[Note – in the Italian translation, the recurring expression "suddenly" creates an effective anaphora]

It's worth stressing once again how Cui Jian was critical of the Chinese Communist Party of the Eighties and Nineties, but not of communism itself: raised on the myth of Maoist doctrine (both his parents were state musicians), he never renounced it. At the same time, he has always denounced every form of state violence, then as now (which is why he still fails to win favor with the authorities: and given that Xi Jinping's policies are increasingly repressive when it comes to freedom of expression, the future doesn't look bright).

Every track is marked by eclecticism: from the mutant, distorted blues of "最后的抱怨" ("Zui hou de bao yuan" / "The Last Complaint"), with slapped bass and dizi (traditional Chinese flute) flourishes, to the blend of rap, jazz-rock and noise found in "飞了" ("Fei le" / "Flying"), a track with a distinctly more pop feel than the rest of the tracklist, so much so that it was chosen as the single (it's the only one that, aside from the jarring saxophone and no wave guitars, could have been played on the radio: which, as already mentioned, never happened anyway).

The instrumental "误会" ("Wu hui" / "Misunderstand") is a triumph bringing together all the album's winning elements: folk, jazz, alternative rock, melodies crossed by dissonance, modernist West and ancient East crashing into one another. Its structure is also notable for being split into three sections, all in odd time signatures (the first in 9/8, the second in 7/4 and the third in 11/8).

Looking at the album's tracklist, it's immediately clear that six out of eight songs run longer than seven minutes: it's an extremely difficult work to categorize, dense with instrumental excursions, reiterations with wild variations, streams of sound spilling out in every direction, great technical refinement, and interlocking arrangements elevated by an obsessive attention to production — but above all, it resembles almost nothing else that could be heard at the time, in China or anywhere else.

The lyrics, as brilliant and daring as few others, never manage to overshadow the seething cauldron beneath them: almost thirty years on, the balance still seems perfect, and it gives off a startling modernity.

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28/05/2023