Introduction

It almost goes without saying that post-punk forms the bedrock of Chinese indie rock — but a rough map of the terrain is still worth having. It seems useful to start by sketching a broad picture of what post-punk in China actually looks like. To do that properly would mean wading into the history of Chinese rock, and perhaps pausing to explain what post-punk even is. All rather unwieldy. The decision was made to begin with Carsick Cars. As for the genre itself — a rough sense that such a thing exists will do for now.

Bands that genuinely rewrite the history of rock are rare in China — but Carsick Cars are one of them. They were not the first band in the country to adopt a post-punk style, yet their arrival marked the biggest shift the Chinese rock scene had ever seen. The influence they exerted spread far beyond the post-punk niche and reaches virtually every band active today.

Carsick Cars: A Sense of Their Place

Carsick Cars are a Beijing-based indie rock band, formed in March 2005 by three students at the Beijing Institute of Technology. They inherited the styles of New York bands such as The Velvet Underground, Suicide, and Sonic Youth, and were heavily influenced by contemporary composers including Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Glenn Branca. Not long after forming, they spearheaded a movement known as “No Beijing”, which served as the catalyst for the golden age of Beijing indie rock.

Their debut album, released in 2007, proved enormously influential on the bands that followed, sold an exceptional number of copies for an indie release, and prompted young people across the country to form bands of their own.

They were selected to open for Sonic Youth on the latter’s first China tour — a performance that, for reasons, did not come to pass — and subsequently served as the opening act for the band’s European tour. Through appearances at All Tomorrow’s Parties, Primavera Sound, and SXSW, and through repeated international tours, they earned consistently glowing notices from the overseas press and came to be recognised as one of China’s defining bands.

The members are guitarist Zhang Shouwang, bassist Li Weisi, and drummer Li Qing. After several line-up changes, the original trio reunited in 2017 and has remained together since. Each of them has pursued work in avant-garde and experimental music, and the results have frequently fed back into the band proper.

Lead singer and guitarist Zhang Shouwang also performs as an improvising musician and continues his work with the electronic music unit White. In recent years he has turned to producing younger artists as well. Drummer Li Qing and bassist Li Weisi are both members of Snapline, another of Beijing’s leading post-punk bands, and have occasionally released work in the avant-garde field. Li Qing was an early staff member at Maybe Mars, one of China’s foremost independent labels, and as head of Ruby Eyes Records, has introduced promising young musicians to the scene.

The generation to which they belong is known as the post-80s, born after 1980, coming of age during market reforms. They were also the first generation with direct access to overseas music and information through the internet. In an era when pirated copies and peer-to-peer downloading were the norm, before streaming services existed and before internet censorship had tightened to its current degree, they found almost nothing in the existing music that spoke to them or reflected their lives. The distance from the idealism of the generation before them felt less like a gap than a rupture.

With no scene to speak of, and no significant precedents to look to in a Beijing that was largely given over to punk and metal, they built their own style almost from scratch. Their passion for avant-garde music — driven by The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth — had a contagious effect on those around them. If the music you wanted didn’t exist, you made it yourself. Following this DIY imperative, they and their circle created new sounds with their own hands and transformed a loose collection of enthusiasts into something that deserved to be called a scene.

Many young listeners who encountered Carsick Cars picked up instruments and formed bands. The release of the debut album in 2007 sent ripples outward from Beijing to the rest of China. The band looked back on this later with wry amusement: “The songs were simple enough that anyone could copy them straight away.”

This is the foundation on which today’s Chinese indie rock scene rests. Others may have brought in the harvest, but it was Carsick Cars who broke the ground and sowed the seed.

Their early signature song “Zhongnanhai” — still immensely popular — meets every condition required of a rock anthem in this country: a memorable melody, a spare arrangement, direct lyrics, and noise in abundance. The title refers to a common Chinese cigarette brand, and when the song was played, audiences whipped themselves into a frenzy and hurled cigarettes at the stage. It is little more than a legend now, but it is a parable that captures exactly what they once were.

The Work and Life of Carsick Cars

In the Beginning, There Was The Velvet Underground

One day in 2003, a Beijing high school student named Zhang Shouwang was wandering the streets when a foreign man stopped to speak to him. “Do you know The Velvet Underground?” the man asked. The boy was wearing a T-shirt printed with the famous banana illustration — he was a fan of Andy Warhol, and had no idea who the band was.

The foreigner, an American who taught at a Beijing university, marched the boy into the nearest CD shop upon receiving this unsatisfactory answer. This was Zhang Shouwang’s first encounter with The Velvet Underground.

At the time in China, overseas popular music was not explicitly banned, but it was not available through official channels. Though the internet was beginning to take hold, the main way people listened to Western music was through dakou. These were legitimate Western albums imported legally as raw material for recycled plastic, then diverted into unofficial sale. In effect, bootlegs. The album Zhang obtained that day was, naturally, a dakou CD (or cassette tape, depending on the format).

He recalled his first experience of hearing the VU: “I felt immediately that this was music made for us.” It was a sensation he had never got from the pop or rock music he had known before.

This encounter also marked the starting point of his path as a musician. Zhang Shouwang went on to receive an introduction to underground music from this university professor — a man by the name of Michael Pettis, who was a former Wall Street banker and an insider in the New York underground scene. The student also traded information with friends he met through CD shops and internet message boards, and whenever time allowed he went to see indie bands perform. When the SARS lockdown closed schools, he spent the time practising guitar in the manner of VU (he had touched a guitar once before, but his teacher had been a metalhead, and his enthusiasm had evaporated almost immediately). Some of the songs on the band’s debut album were written during this period.

How Carsick Cars Came Together

In 2004, Zhang Shouwang enrolled at university fully intending to start a band, only to be dismayed to find that the bands active on campus were exclusively metal. In search of like-minded people, he posted a message on the university’s message board.

“Is anyone here a fan of Sonic Youth or Suicide?”

The person who replied was Li Weisi, a third-year student who would go on to become the band’s bassist. The two of them, united by their taste for niche music, began working under the name Psycho Cars in a campus studio.

The third member also turned out to be a student at the same Beijing Institute of Technology. Li Qing, then in her fourth year, was a member of the university’s band circle while running a separate band called Airbag — named after a Radiohead song — with a childhood friend from another university. Her introverted nature and her fondness for Sonic Youth had conspired to prevent her finding a bassist for four years running; the people around her were mostly metalheads. Drum parts could be handled by a drum machine. But a dedicated bassist, she felt, was a necessity.

With graduation approaching, Li Qing finally decided to act. She resolved to post a comment on the university’s notice board.

In March 2005, she visited a rehearsal studio on campus to meet the bassist candidate she had contacted online. The floor of the already cramped space was buried under effects pedals unlike anything she had seen, leaving nowhere to stand. She ended up watching them play from a perch on the drum stool.

At this point, Li Weisi and Zhang Shouwang were already exasperated with their drummer, who had stopped attending rehearsals and had gone completely silent. They were thinking about finding a replacement, and Li Qing’s timely message had reached them accordingly. Having manoeuvred her onto the drum stool, the two put a proposal to her: “Would you mind having a play?” They must have known from prior correspondence that she could play drums.

That day, the three of them played “Sunday Morning” together, and she was promptly absorbed into their band, while Li Weisi became the bassist for Li Qing’s Airbag, the band changed their name to Snapline. Everything fell neatly into place.

With a proper drummer now in place, and having changed their name to Carsick Cars, the trio set about their activities in earnest — though their relationship with the other bands on campus was not especially warm. Metal enthusiasts unfamiliar with experimental and avant-garde music worried that this gang of noisy, unconventional players would wreck their equipment.

Carsick Cars held a handful of small shows for friends in the studio before playing their first proper gig at a small bar called What Bar — one of the few venues in the city willing to let a band like them through the door, and a place they would return to repeatedly. Their live repertoire at the time consisted of a few originals alongside covers of post-punk bands such as Joy Division and The Cure. Snapline shared the same stage that night, with Zhang Shouwang sitting in on drums as a support member — a drummer-free line-up that would remain their permanent configuration.

Not long after that first gig, on 28 May, a Joy Division tribute event was held at No Name High Land, one of Beijing’s established live music bars. Carsick Cars appeared as the opening act. Their performance caught the attention of some other musicians and fans in the room. It helped their name begin to spread within Beijing’s underground scene. The bill included some of the finest independent bands in Beijing at the time — Re-TROS, New Pants, and Joyside among them — suggesting that the city was tilting toward post-punk.

A Conductor, a Critic, and the Birth of No Beijing

In the summer of 2005, John Myers — who had served as a conductor in the Glenn Branca Orchestra — was staying in Beijing. By day he pursued study into ancient Chinese music; by night he moved through the capital’s avant-garde music circles.

Exactly how the connection was made remains unclear (though Michael Pettis seems the most likely intermediary), but Myers also took part in a live performance by White, a Glenn Branca tribute band that Zhang Shouwang had formed with friends — or possibly a band assembled specifically to perform with Myers. Whatever the case, the connection bore fruit: in 2006, Zhang Shouwang travelled to New York, where he performed as a guitarist in Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 13 and had the opportunity to meet a number of legendary musicians. Philip Glass among them, for instance.

The world of people who listen to this kind of music is a small one. It was entirely natural that a university student modelling himself on New York underground music would find his way into contact with Beijing’s leading avant-garde practitioners. In September, White performed at Waterland Kwanyin, an experimental music event, at the invitation of Yan Jun — one of the country’s foremost rock critics, and the organiser of the avant-garde collective Sub Jam. In October they participated in the Mini MIDI Festival, for which he served as curator. Yan Jun resolved to bring Beijing’s new wave — embodied by White and the students around them — to wider attention. The idea that took shape became “No Beijing”.

On 14 October, the first gig under the No Beijing banner was held at What Bar. That the name was a riff on No New York was obvious to anyone, but according to Zhang Shouwang, the man behind it, the intention was less an homage to the no wave movement than a declaration that a new generation had arrived. Additionally, the other bands themselves were not much influenced by no wave.

The performance was released as a double CD-R and made available online (regrettably it is now quite difficult to find, and by all accounts the sound quality is dreadful). That same month, Carsick Cars, Snapline, and their friends Queen Sea Big Shark — backed by Sub Jam — undertook a series of gigs titled the “No Beijing! Tour” in Hangzhou and Shanghai. Over a hundred people turned up to the Shanghai show to see this new wave arriving from Beijing (Hangzhou, it seems, attracted a less enthusiastic crowd).

On 18 December, the four bands most closely associated with the No Beijing movement — Carsick Cars, Snapline, Queen Sea Big Shark, and Nazha — shared a stage at Yugong Yishan. All four had been in existence for under a year.

There were apparently those who, expecting no wave from the name, were disappointed to find rock bands instead — a charming footnote to the story. Nevertheless, No Beijing went on to be recognised as the new rock movement sweeping through Beijing.

Notebook: A Scene Born from the Essence of Indie Rock

In practice, what they were playing was niche underground music. The number of artists wanting to perform always vastly exceeded the available venues. The limited slots were mostly already taken, and bands with no existing audience found it hard to compete for the remainder.

Michael Pettis — the American who had first introduced Zhang Shouwang to VU — set out to solve this problem. With the help of associates, he opened a venue called D-22 on the outskirts of Beijing, in the Wudaokou district: a neighbourhood surrounded by universities, cosmopolitan in character, home to international students and a substantial foreign population.

At this bar, passion for music and the ability to play an instrument were all that was required — unknown bands were welcome on stage. Performers were paid, and the drinks policy — free drinks for those who played — was generous by the standards of the time. No Beijing and the bands around it gathered night after night to play, and it was not uncommon for an audience member one evening to be standing on stage the next. The year after it opened, a regular event called Zoomin’ Night began, run by students with avant-garde inclinations. Still small, but growing: the D-22 scene had become the eye of a storm in Beijing.

The foreigners contributing to Beijing’s underground music scene at the time were not limited to Pettis and Myers. Those dissatisfied with mainstream music had formed a distinctive community in the city; some became energetic presences at parties, others formed bands themselves, and some threw themselves into the work of driving the country’s nascent indie rock scene forward.

As word spread, world-class artists began to take notice. Brian Eno — who had once produced the sophomore no-wave compilation album No New York in 1978 — visited Beijing for a recording session, and happened to wander into the adjacent studio where Re-TROS were working, sitting in on their session as a spontaneous participant. In 2006, Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten, who was living in Beijing at the time, was so struck by a White performance — by then a duo featuring Zhang Shouwang and Shen Jing, formerly of Hang on the Box — that he offered to produce them. A recording session duly took place the following year.

When Martin Atkins, best known as the drummer for Public Image Ltd., visited Beijing in 2006, he was taken to D-22 on the recommendation of a local guide and became captivated by the music he heard there. He was particularly taken with Snapline, going so far as to record their performances on various pretexts and producing an album without the band’s knowledge or consent — a record that was subsequently given an official release as the band’s debut. Atkins signed a number of other bands as well, though for reasons that remain unclear, most of those agreements eventually came to nothing. The events of his visit were captured in the documentary 16 Days in China, and the recordings were released on his label, Invisible Records, where they remain available on major streaming platforms.

The Debut Album and an Independent Label

In 2006, Carsick Cars decided to make an album of their own. To produce it, they approached Yang Haisong, the frontman of P.K.14 — a pioneer of Beijing indie rock who would later be described as the godfather of Chinese post-punk. He had no experience as a producer, but he understood the importance of what a producer could do in a recording context, and saw the project as a good opportunity to pass on what he had learnt to a younger generation. He accepted. It was the beginning of what would become an extensive career supporting the debuts of several dozen, or possibly nearly a hundred, young bands.

Having somehow raised the money (Michael Pettis’s name surfaces here, too) and completed their work with Yang, the trio brought the finished album to Modern Sky, at that point virtually the only independent label in China. The terms they were offered were unacceptable — the label proposed buying out the rights for a pittance — and the three of them walked away in disgust.

When the producer and the livehouse owner heard what had happened, they suggested starting an independent label themselves. They acted on the idea immediately, and Maybe Mars was born. Pettis himself took on the role of owner, and the label, like his other venture D-22, operated with a policy of supporting talented artists regardless of commercial return, making a significant contribution to the development of the scene.

As the label’s first release, on 27 September, the self-titled Carsick Cars debut appeared alongside albums by Joyside and Snapline. The participation of Joyside — long established as a name in Beijing’s underground — gave the unknown new label an immediate credibility with local music fans.

The response to the debut was exceptional. It sold a remarkable number of copies by the standards of indie music at the time, and prompted young people across the country to start bands.

An Invitation to Voyage, Courtesy of Sonic Youth

While Carsick Cars were recording their debut, it was announced that Sonic Youth — the New York band they revered — would undertake their first China tour. The band rejected a support act proposed by the promoter as “too commercial” and nominated Carsick Cars instead. There are rumours that the recommendation came from Blixa, or perhaps from Eliot Sharp, but the true story remains unknown. Regardless, it is hard to imagine that the young people of Beijing were anything other than beside themselves with excitement.

On the day of the concert, however, events took an unexpected turn. Just as Carsick Cars were about to take the stage, they were abruptly ordered by the authorities to stop. The internet buzzed with speculation that the cause was past political statements made by Sonic Youth’s members, but the truth was never established.

The month after the Sonic Youth China shows, Zhang Shouwang travelled to Berlin — to the studio belonging to Einstürzende Neubauten — to record the White album. On his way back, he stopped in New York, where members of Sonic Youth invited his band to join their European tour. It would have been harder to find a reason to refuse.

In August 2007, their domestic tour behind them, the three members of Carsick Cars set off with freshly pressed copies of their debut album on their first international tour.

The Golden Age: The Second Album and a Life Spent on Tour

The following year, the band received another invitation from Sonic Youth, this time to appear at All Tomorrow’s Parties in London. By now, Carsick Cars had earned praise from critics abroad and had become the Chinese band most closely watched in the West. The Sonic Youth effect was formidable.

Beijing’s underground rock scene was at its peak. D-22 was being compared to legendary venues such as CBGB’s and the Hacienda.

In 2009, the band made their second album You Can Listen, You Can Talk with Wharton Tiers — a bandmate of Glenn Branca’s during the no wave era — producing, and released in June. The style had not changed dramatically, but a cleaner, sharper mix gave their noise still greater definition. The trio had been working under considerable pressure and expectation, and they met the moment with a superb record.

That year the band mounted a large national tour of 16 cities alongside The Gar — fronted by the former vocalist of Nazha — and in between returned to Europe for Primavera Sound. In October they toured Europe again, and in November they joined P.K.14 and folk singer Xiao He for a showcase of Chinese indie music touring the United States. A relentlessly busy year.

Into 2010 the pace barely slackened, with numerous shows at home and abroad. The China Invasion Tour 2010, organised by Maybe Mars, brought Carsick Cars alongside Snapline, P.K.14, and AV Okubo on a month-long American tour that included an appearance at SXSW in Austin.

Notebook: The Side Projects, If Anything, Are the More Interesting Half

Even amid all this activity, the members of Carsick Cars were pursuing a variety of side projects simultaneously — many of them in fields far removed from rock: avant-garde music, experimental music. The results sometimes fed back into the band proper, and sometimes did not.

Zhang Shouwang has worked as an improvising musician in parallel with the band for almost as long as the band has existed. White, which began as a Glenn Branca tribute project, evolved into something more like his personal electronica unit — White by name, varied by nature — releasing one album before going dormant, though related projects under similar names (White-2j, White No.2, White Ensemble) have appeared over the years. The duo White+ with Wang Xu, drummer of The Gar, began in 2010 and was still active as recently as 2023. He also served for a period as the director of Maybe Noise, the experimental music sub-label of Maybe Mars.

Li Weisi and Li Qing, alongside their work with Snapline, established the experimental electronic music unit Soviet Pop, releasing an album in 2010.

These various activities suggest that the members are not devotees of “rock’n’roll” or “alternative” as such. Carsick Cars is one form of expression among several they have available to them — and it is possible that “avant-garde” and “experimental” are, in the same way, simply tools in their hands rather than identities they inhabit.

The End of the Early Carsick Cars

The band’s reputation and standing continued to grow, both at home and abroad. However, on 16 November 2010 — the night they supported the Danish noise rock band The Raveonettes — the band announced online that Li Qing and Li Weisi had left. Musical differences were given as the explanation. Exhaustion from the relentless grind of touring and live work may have been a factor; straightforward boredom with the band cannot be ruled out either. The truth remains with the people involved. The two of them turned their attention to Snapline and their own unit, Soviet Pop.

Before long, He Fan of Birdstriking and Ben Ben (Lin Yile) from Boyz & Girl had somehow found their way into the line-up, and Carsick Cars continued. The early story of the band ends here, with the original trio going their separate ways. The golden age of D-22 had not yet faded. Carsick Cars’ path through the venues, the label, the overseas tours, it is the very definition of what is that an indie band would be able to do in China. But the ground was already shifting — for the band, for Beijing, for the music industry at large. That chapter will come later. The rest of that story will have to wait.

→ Chinese Postpunk Anthology