Gone is the importance of ‘‘real’’ live music; playing endlessriffs on a guitar until your clothes are soaked with sweat is not necessary toauthenticate yourself.

Pop stars are intertextual chameleons.

If we hear the same song a few years later, the sound will remind us of theyear 1995, when the song hit the charts.

The clarity of rock is countered by the opacity of pop

While rockmusicians are preoccupied with articulating their distinction from Gangtai pop(the south) and from perceived origin (the West), pop artists rarely display the same‘‘Chinese’’ Rock and Pop 329 urgency. Pop stars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, for instance, are concerned about theirdirect competitors, also from Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than their loudnorthern colleagues

Not only does the pop/rock dichotomy set Beijing apart fromHong Kong and Taiwan, but specific appropriations of the ‘‘Chinese’’ musicalheritage mark a distinction, in this case, between punk and, for example, folk-rockmusic where sounds from ancient China are used.

The flyer’s design is typical of an underground event. The text says, in clumsyEnglish: ‘‘Will Hold Power, Just Saying ‘No’ to Leader.’’ Such a provocative statementis not repeated in Chinese. That would be too risky. The Chinese text, then, simplyannounces a punk party. More than being a conscious political statement against theCCP, both this text and the design of the flyer, like the names of the bands themselves,signify anarchy and rebelliousness*/two core elements of the punk idiom

unk (pengke)*/journalists and bands sometimes add the labelhardcore (yinghe pengke) to differentiate it from pop-punk (liuxing pengke)*/ismarginal in China in terms of number of bands and listeners, yet it is highly visible,given its extravagant styles.

Strange, if it shows that there areindeed boundaries in music, why does foreign music manage to excite us and feelclose to us?

A Chinese rockband must safeguard authenticity by distinguishing itself from other Chinese bandsand from the West

China is lagging behind in popular music and will never be able to make up for it. Itis unclear whether Chinese youth actually wants such music’’

ndeed, when it comes to sales figures, Chinese pop by far outweighs rock.

Rock music is totally different from pop. Rock comes from our souls, it is originalmusic, composed and played from the same heart. Pop is the ultimate assembly-line product. ... There is nothing genuine about it. It is not about expressing yourtruths but about manipulating consumers

Cui Jian are indicative: ‘‘Pop music as a strictly commercial product,that is for money only, I am not interested in and am indeed opposed to’

Whereas most rock comes from the north, Beijing, the pop music that hits themainland charts generally comes from the south, Taiwan or Hong Kong (hereaftergrouped under the label Gangtai pop).

Kurt Cobain’s desperatescreams signify a tormented soul, ultimately verified by his suicide

As Herman and Sloop (1998, p. 2) say, theideology of authenticity provided the ground for a practice of judgment throughwhich musicians, fans, and critics could ‘‘distinguish between ‘authentic rock,’ whichwas transgressive and meaningful, and ‘inauthentic rock’ (or ‘pop’), which was co-opted and superficial.’’

They also differentiate themselves from what they consider to bethe commercial and inauthentic sound of Cantopop and Mandapop: the pop fromHong Kong and Taiwan that largely exceeds rock in audience appeal

Beijing youths watchThe Matrix and the Lord of the Rings; play the latest X-Box and Playstation; and listento Jennifer Lopez and System of a Down. Unlike their Western contemporaries,however, they also immerse themselves in pop from Hong Kong and Taiwan as well asrock from their own city.

Hence the striking similarities in both sound and image, for example, of hard-rockers from Beijing and their colleagues in Jakarta or Seattle, with their leatherjackets, long hair, and unruliness on and offstage.

‘‘for Indians to playcricket was to experiment with the mysteries of English upper-class life’’

However far-fetched drawing a parallel between cricket and rock music may seem,both share a similar perceived origin (the West), and both traveled quite successfullyto the East (India and China).

one might suggest that it is we,not they, who ‘don’t get it’

In other words, uninitiated audiences lack the necessarybackground to appreciate, or indeed comprehend, the nuances of the story beingunfolded before them

For the most part,such comments come from Westerners who do not speak Chinese and/or have notpaid attention to the lyrics which, most fans agree, is the strength of Mandopop songs

Mandopop does have several standardised guidelines. Most songs are aboutheartbreak. Many of the popular singers are what might be defined in the West asandrogynous men, or women who, though more sexualised in the last few years,present relatively sexually restrained images in comparison with their hyper-sexualised US counterparts. Many of these songs include the occasional English wordor phrase and are heavily influenced by US melodic styles. Most have simple melodiesthat avoid syncopation or too wide a vocal range – making it easier for the songs to besung in karaoke

Another failure of English language condemnation of Mandopop is that itimplicitly refers to ‘boy-toy bands’ and ignores the majority of individual performers,some of whom are quite talented

As Howard Becker points out,there is a cultural consensus in the West that rock and roll should be written by theperformer whereas composers of classical music may also perform, but it is not expectedthat they do so

This, in turn, reflects on larger culturalconceptions concerning the superiority of group effort over individualism.

Mandopop, as an enduring if always shifting marker of modernity, shouldalso be given its own space as an alternate cultural/musical form.

In the above examples, Westerners tend to sum up Asian pop music as amirror of Western identities, with the West at top of the transnational hierarchy

econd, they assume that what Taiwan has to offer is an integration of traditionalChinese sounds and instrumentation, thereby attempting to force Taiwan into theposition of representing a Chinese minority through their association with traditional‘ethnic’ music

lthough they do not express concern with thepernicious degenerate effects of pop, they quickly dismiss it with the implicit critiquethat it does not live up to the authors’ Western expectations of what the music shouldbe.

f this analysis seems more familiar to a Western reader than the PRC rhetoricoutlined above, it is because of the dramatic influence that Western political andacademic developments have had on Taiwan’s growing feminist movement

. Somewhat predictably, Liu linksthe pace of change in both music and society with ‘foreign influences’ (

Taiwan’s scholarship shares this last set of concerns. Liang Hongbin, forexample, uses Mandopop as an emblem to express a fear that Taiwan is losing itscultural identity because it has absorbed so many influences from countries such asJapan, Korea and the US (

they only go to China to make aquick buck, concluding with the question, ‘but when they leave with their money,what is left for us’

Beijing rock musicians share the PRC government’s anxiety that Taiwan’sMandopop will usher in commercialised values and an ensuing loss of nationalidentity; disparaging Taiwan- and Hong Kong-style Mandopop as inauthentically‘Chinese’

The lyrics are full of sexual incitements and dissolute and licentious interests [. . .] The use ofstrong rhythms and ‘slippery’ sounds enforces the effects of frivolity and sexual arousement[sic]. Moral decline, a life sunk in drunkenness and dreams, and hysterical behavior are allshown through the use of great wave-like trills of reeds and throaty musings of saxophones.

In the 1980s, people in the PRC could be arrested simply for listening to Mandopopfrom Taiwan which had not been authorised by the State

evil influences’ (

too loud and too vulgar’ ( Brace1991, p. 59 ), ‘morally decadent and aesthetically empty’ ( Brace 1991, p. 43 ), and goingso far as to label the music as pornography

Taiwan’s Mandopop was atthe forefront of the PRC’s introduction to the outside world.3

This article willexplore the cultural biases of such critiques ( including comments made in the PRC,Taiwan, and in English language publications ) in the hopes of coming to a betterunderstanding of why the largest population in the world’s favourite music is soreadily dismissed.

In spite of its wild popularity, Taiwan’smusical production has virtually been ignored in English language scholarship.Taiwan’s music sales are the third largest in Asia – behind Japan and South Korea butahead of much bigger countries such as the People’s Republic of China ( PRC ) andIndia

These highly commoditized performers are young, good-looking, stylish, and usually possesslittle or no talent at all.

Taiwan’s scholars have critiqued Mandopop for promoting patriarchal gender roles, and Englishlanguage publications complain of a lack of individualism in that songs are produced in teams ofcomposers, lyricists and performers.

Mandopop ( Mandarin Chinesepop music