The Band That Accidentally Built a Scene

There is a song called “The Capital of Poland Is Shanghai” — an achingly wistful love song that carries something of the bittersweet restlessness of youth. Unnoticed at first, it became the unofficial anthem of an entire regional music scene. Wherever it plays now, people sing along. The band that wrote it never particularly set out to be famous — which, depending on how you look at it, is exactly how it should be.

你男友係碌葛 yourboyfriendsucks! (abbreviated YBS) are from Guangzhou, the port city at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta. They formed in 2010 because several friends happened to share a devotion to The Jesus and Mary Chain. They played gigs where the audience numbered five — mostly other bands. They released a debut album comprising the exact same song eleven times, each track title a different language’s translation of “The Capital of Poland Is Shanghai.” Critics called them amateurish. The band didn’t much mind. They made music because they enjoyed making it. That is a sufficient reason.

They are, by most accounts, one of the more significant indie bands to have emerged from China in the past two decades — which is worth sitting with for a moment, given everything that follows.

The Guangzhou Connection

China’s southern coastal belt — running roughly from Guangzhou up to Shanghai — has always had a character distinct from the north. The climate is subtropical. Historical ties to Hong Kong and Taiwan run deep. The music industry here once rivalled Beijing’s, though that changed with the influx of Taiwanese pop in the 1990s and a deliberate policy shift northward. Languages form a mosaic: Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, and dozens of others alongside Mandarin. Outside influences arrived here earlier and were absorbed more readily than in Beijing — a fact that shaped everything that followed.

Even as Guangzhou’s mainstream pop industry declined, it remained China’s most open city for underground music. Overseas records still largely passed through Guangzhou on their way inland. The city’s proximity to Hong Kong meant cultural osmosis was constant and unforced.

The 2000s: Guangzhou Underground

By the early 2000s, MP3 downloads were bringing overseas sounds to Guangzhou in near real-time. When emo and post-hardcore emerged as a movement across China — centered initially on Beijing acts like TOOKOO — Guangzhou responded quickly. Bands like 车头灯 Headlights, CO2, and 大話@梅 formed and gained local followings. A genuine underground scene was taking shape.

The practical obstacles were significant. Guangzhou had no hourly-rate rehearsal spaces. University rock societies had dedicated rooms; everyone else improvised — renting out vacant apartments, converting basements, borrowing whatever space they could find. Live venues were similarly scarce. Amateur bands performed in bars, in shopping mall car parks, carrying their own equipment, playing sets interrupted by management within minutes.

Then, in 2007, a real live house called 191space opened. Its owner was himself an amateur musician who worked in the civil service. Running a venue for underground music was not a profitable business then and remains so now. It operated — and still operates — on pure devotion. More independent venues followed, and a small but coherent live circuit began to crystallise.

Full Label: An Amateur Collective

Around the same time, a circle of young rock enthusiasts who had found each other through the social network Douban and by attending local gigs began gathering more regularly. Around 2006, they took a name from a local fish-ball noodle shop and transformed it into 富力保 Full Label, and that became the centre of a loose, perpetually fluid collective.

Full Label was not, strictly speaking, a label. It was not much of an organisation either — “a friend group that enjoyed playing music together” might be more accurate. Led loosely by 小赵 Xiaozhao and 小吉 Siugat, the circle was omnivorous in its tastes: hardcore punk, shoegaze, psychedelic rock, hip-hop. If something was interesting, they played it. They went to gigs together, formed bands together, and organised sets in places that defied conventional venue categories. These included a university rooftop, a bookstore, a skateboard shop, a fast food forecourt, and at least one stranger’s garden. Some sets lasted less than ten minutes before they were asked to leave. Apparently, this was part of the appeal.

The DIY ethic was genuine. When Swedish post-rock band pg.lost played at a local venue called 黑铁時代 in 2010, Full Label members performed in the venue’s bathroom. They didn’t just throw shows themselves — they actively invited bands from other cities. They contacted Shanghai punk duo Pairs through Douban and helped arrange their Guangzhou appearance. This spirit of mutual support, across distance, would define much of what followed.

Band Village

Shortly after Full Label began, members of a local emo band discovered an abandoned air-raid shelter beneath a residential complex — previously used as a rubbish dump — and converted it into a shared rehearsal space. It became known as Band村 “Band Village”.

At its peak, nearly fifty bands used the space. It was self-governed, with an elected committee, formal rent payments, and a set of rules that were taken seriously by everyone. One of its founders, describing its origins, cited a DIY arts space in Hong Kong as inspiration. Members called themselves 村民, “villagers.”

The Band Village lasted five years. In 2012, a nearby building fire triggered stricter fire safety regulations, and the space was forced to close. What made it remarkable was not the initial conversion — people had been rehearsing in basements for years — but its scale, its longevity, its self-management structure, and its role as a genuine community centre where gigs, parties, and the basic social life of the scene could happen. It represented something difficult to achieve and easy to lose.

The members of the Band Village circle would later organize their own music festival — the 430 Music Festival — and establish a new base at SD Livehouse in the 1850 Creative Park.

yourboyfriendsucks! Assemble

In 2010, from within the Full Label circle, YBS came together. Several friends had developed a shared obsession with The Jesus and Mary Chain and wanted to play together.

The founding lineup was guitarists 小吉 Siugat and 史悲 Space, bassist 羅密欧 Romeo, and drummer 晓鸣 Xiaoming (who would serve as the band’s primary drummer through its entire run; other members sometimes mistakenly believed there were multiple drummers due to his nickname 施总 being used almost interchangeably). Siugat initially handled lead vocals.

Every show opened — and would always open — with a cover of “Just Like Honey.” The sound leant more towards trash and freak-rock than proper shoegaze, but something about that roughness made the pop instincts underneath — the JAMC inheritance — come through more clearly, not less. It worked in ways that were difficult to predict in advance.

In the summer of 2011, Zoey joined as lead vocalist, and the band found its voice. She was not, perhaps, a virtuoso in a technical sense, but she brought a warmth and directness that became inseparable from what YBS sounded like. Her lyrics moved between English, German, Mandarin, and Cantonese — sometimes within a single song — which gives you some sense of the kind of band this was.

In 2012, YBS self-released their debut “album,” 死 (Death): eleven tracks, one song, eleven different translations of the same title. 波兰首都是上海 “The Capital of Poland Is Shanghai” Some listeners were baffled. Others were charmed. It was a gesture of formal playfulness that nonetheless meant something. Reviews described the band as crude and amateurish. The band moved on. After all, they made music because it made them happy. Only that.

They were willing to carry their equipment anywhere. A ten-minute set before being asked to leave happened as often as proper gigs at actual venues. They gradually started receiving invitations to play in other cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu. They approached these trips with a tourist’s ease. In this way, isolated underground bands and rock enthusiasts across the southern coast found each other, exchanged information, and stimulated one another.

In 2014, Full Label organized a relatively large-scale event that brought together 秘密行动 STOLEN from Chengdu, 鸟撞 Birdstriking from Beijing, Chinese Football from Wuhan, and The White Tulips from Xiamen. Friendships forged at this show would influence the southern scene for years.

Everyone Loves Sarah Records

Whilst YBS were playing to five people in Guangzhou, something similar was taking shape in nearby Shenzhen. A collective called 无聊制造 Boring Productions had set up along much the same lines: book gigs, form bands, invite bands, repeat.

Its founder, Jovi, had developed a thorough obsession with Sarah Records — the Bristol indie label that released twee-pop and jangly guitar music from 1987 to 1995, then closed deliberately on its own terms. Jovi showed the Sarah Records documentary to anyone who would sit still long enough, and the enthusiasm spread readily. The British independent music of the 1980s and 90s, disseminated through this single documentary, became a common reference point across the southern scene. In effect, Sarah Records became the foundational literacy of a DIY scene in southern China — a geographic and temporal distance that would have seemed impossible just years earlier.

Full Label began making fanzines, inspired by this same documentary. A common sensibility — modest melodies, DIY principles, emotional directness, genuine indifference to commercial music — spread through Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and beyond. The phrase “C86” began circulating through the scene like a secret handshake.

On the 20th anniversary of Sarah Records’ dissolution, in August 2015, Boring Productions and Full Label jointly released a tribute compilation, Our Secret World. Boring Productions pressed the CD; Full Label handled the cassette. The tracklist included figures from across the southern scene: 车头灯 Headlights’ Hover, Chinese Football’s 徐波 XuBo, and others who had become essential to what was quietly becoming visible as a regional movement.

The Sarah Records founder, in Bristol, later sent Boring Productions a personal message of gratitude. This reportedly moved several people to tears — which feels entirely appropriate.

Qiii Snacks Records

Shortly after Our Secret World, Full Label quietly wound down. Around autumn 2015, 小赵 Siugat Zhao, the principal organizer, stepped back from music entirely. (He now runs an audio equipment rental business.)

Siugat and the remaining members regrouped and, in October 2015, formalised as 琪琪音像 Qiii Snacks Records. The name comes from a local snack shop the members used to frequent — 祺祺小食店 Qiqi Snacks — combined with the word for “video shop” (音像), a nod to the nostalgia of childhood media rental (before streaming). The logo is a bottle cap.

Qiii Snacks was essentially Full Label with marginally more structure — still entirely amateur (everyone has a day job), still resolutely DIY, but now operating recognisably as a record label. The stated motto, “粗制滥造” (translated roughly as “cheap, rough output”), was meant partly as self-deprecation about the quality that limited resources could produce, partly as defiance against the perfectionism of professional operations. “Maximum output given limited energy,” essentially.

The label’s finances are notably transparent: revenue from gigs and record sales is directly reinvested in the next activity. The most reliable income, according to Siugat, is the interest on a savings account — approximately twenty yuan, or about three dollars. They seem perfectly at ease with this. Because they don’t treat it as work, they’ve managed to preserve the uncomplicated enthusiasm for music that work tends to corrode. For a small independent label, operating at break-even is actually a form of success.

The label’s first significant project was bringing Taiwanese emo act 透明雜誌 Touming Magazine on a four-city mainland tour — which is, by some accounts, the reason Qiii Snacks was formalised at all. More precisely, it was a joint bill with Hong Kong emo band Emptybottles. Members pooled money, arranged accommodation, booked venues, and sorted the logistics themselves. The tour turned a modest profit. That profit funded the next thing.

In May 2016, YBS released their first proper studio EP, 第一集 (Volume 1), through Qiii Snacks — six songs, with cover artwork by Space, whose cartoon illustrations — cute, slightly absurd. Shortly after the EP came out, Zoey left for Germany to study, and the band went on hiatus.

Qiii Snacks as Hub

From hardcore punk to hip-hop to emo to city pop, Qiii Snacks developed into something promiscuously eclectic — a big-tent label with no particular stylistic consistency other than a shared sensibility: that small things matter, that music should be warm, that friendship is its own justification. The roster eventually included YBS, The White Tulips, Cheesemind, and others.

Simultaneously, the label’s network extended across the region: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo, Singapore. They maintained extensive contact with labels elsewhere — 根茎唱片 Genjin Records and Nugget Records in Beijing, 野生唱片 Wild Records in Wuhan, Sweaty & Cramped in Hong Kong — operating less as a competitive scene than as a distributed network of people who cared about similar things.

The EP circulated. Streaming platforms helped. People who had never heard of Guangzhou’s underground scene found “The Capital of Poland Is Shanghai” and clearly felt something strike them. By the time YBS briefly reunited in 2019 — to considerably larger audiences than anything from their original run — the song had become something of an anthem for a generation of southern Chinese indie listeners. The band hadn’t changed. The rest of the world had simply caught up.

The Southern Resonance

Around the mid-2010s, what had begun as scattered circles of likeminded people across the southern coast began to cohere into something recognisable as a scene — a multi-city network with genuine communication and mutual influence.

The connective tissue was, unexpectedly, 1980s and 90s British indie music. Shoegaze became a particular focus. In Shanghai, Forsaken Autumn, a veteran shoegaze act, launched Luuv Label. In 2013, they organized the first 东亚自赏音乐节 East Asia Shoegaze Festival — a series that would become one of the most significant events in the southern scene. The festival brought in overseas bands, connected Chinese and Japanese shoegaze communities, and created a sense of something coherent taking shape among people who had previously thought of themselves as isolated.

Another connective event was a touring series called “Express,” organized by former City Flanker vocalist 王客观 Wang Keguan and The White Tulips. It functioned as a rotating platform for exchange — bands and audiences meeting across different cities.

Nick, a member of Shanghai shoegaze outfit Soft, attended an Express show in Guangzhou, saw what Qiii Snacks was doing, and was moved by it. He returned to Shanghai and started his own label — 生煎唱片 SJ Records. Its first release was Beijing band 缺省 Default, followed by 動物園釘子戶 Zoogazer, 波卡利甜 Pocari Sweet, and others. As SJ Records gradually developed, a capital shadow eventually appeared behind it. Nick found this uncomfortable and eventually departed. In 2019, he and Pocari Sweet guitarist 爵儿 Jueer established 信唱片 Letter Records, attempting to return to more private, personal expression. Both became too occupied with other work; Letter Records is currently on pause, and its releases have been delisted from overseas platforms — a loss for listeners.

The pattern repeats itself across the scene: someone encounters something that feels right, and goes away wanting to do it themselves. This is how networks become ecosystems.

YBS: Final Run and Dissolution

By 2019, Episode 1’s reputation had accumulated through streaming. People who had no connection to Guangzhou’s underground heard the song and felt something land. Zoey returned briefly, and YBS reunited for a small tour. The crowds were vastly larger than anything from their original run. It felt like vindication, though for a band that had never particularly sought validation, vindication was beside the point.

Then COVID-19 arrived. Venues closed. Touring stopped. Many labels went silent. Zoey was unable to return to the mainland due to border closure. Facing this pressure, in April 2020, Qiii Snacks released YBS’s second EP, 第二集 (Volume 2) — digital only, a kind of prescription written for isolation’s particular despair. The band endured.

In 2023, YBS emerged for a final effort: a nine-city farewell tour. At each city, they invited local guest bands. The final show was in Guangzhou. There, Romeo, the long departed original bassist, returned to the stage for one last time. At that show, they formally announced their dissolution.

Siugat ended the evening by recalling something Xiaozhao — the founder of Full Label — used to say: “What we’re trying to do is make music that warms people’s hearts.” That is what they did. That is what they were always doing.

Their recorded output, in total, is modest: a debut album conceived as a joke, two EPs, a handful of live recordings. The music has outlasted all of that by quite some distance. “The Capital of Poland Is Shanghai” has become the unofficial anthem of an entire generation of southern Chinese indie listeners. The band never changed. The world finally caught up with them.

What YBS and the Qiii Snacks circle built wasn’t really a career in any conventional sense. It was more like a way of doing things — and it turned out to matter to a lot of people. No grand slogans, no clear blueprint. Just liking things and trusting each other, one step at a time. And precisely because there was no instrumental purpose behind it — no “what are we trying to achieve,” just the doing itself — it has endured in a way that transcends time.

Branches and New Growth

Siugat’s Qiii Snacks has never stop. It continues releasing new work, sometimes mythologised among younger listeners, but maintaining its own inscrutable pace. The label opened a physical shop Portal in Guangzhou, selling records and merchandise, occasionally hosting small events. Several cats live there year-round.

The former members have taken different paths. Space and Siugat formed 想想 Xinxiang, sometimes jokingly called “YBS 2.0,” with other Full Label members participating (Siugat later left). Bassist Androw brought to life 乔迁日 Jo’s Moving Day, a proper shoegaze band that, following YBS’s lead, has also since dissolved. Its members quickly formed a new band with a name that sounds like a joke: I’m Fine, Thank You! And You? (IFTYAY). The music has shifted slightly, but the quality remains intact. Drummer Xiaoming, back in Jiangsu, formed multiple bands; his current act, 液藍 Blue Liquid, signed to 兵马司 Maybe Mars Records and will release a new album in 2026.

Simultaneously, new labels began sprouting around Guangzhou’s old core. In 2023, 萤石唱片 Fluorite Records was founded by members from Cheesemind, Jo’s Moving Day. Beginning with Pocari Sweet’s triumphant return to form, continuing through releases from established acts like Love Letter Lost, and encompassing event organization, Fluorite Records has demonstrated remarkable stability and reliability.

In Shenzhen, a new label called 小动物唱片 Small Animals Records is growing. It has found its own position within China’s broader indie and emo scene. They operate under the motto “DIY attack world,” starting with zines and mixtapes, becoming known for cute illustrations and merchandise. Their approach mirrors Qiii Snacks’ exactly; the two maintain close personal ties.

Small Animals Records traces its origins to 2018, when it began as a student music collective in Changsha before relocating to Shenzhen. Again, this circle had been exposed to the Sarah Records documentary by Jovi. Again, they wanted to do something fun. Again, they did.

From Full Label to Qiii Snacks, from Qiii Snacks to Fluorite Records and Small Animal Records, the thread remains unbroken. It merely changes form, continuing to spread southward. Understanding these labels and the history behind them gives you perhaps seventy or eighty percent of what you need to know about the indie rock scene along China’s southern coast. “Music should be rooted in life” — this circle of people spent more than a decade proving this could be something other than just a slogan. A network of labels united by friendship and DIY principles continues to branch and leaf everywhere. In short, Sarah Records is to blame for everything that happened here.

yourboyfriendsucks! recordings are available on all major streaming platforms. The Qiii Snacks Records catalogue can be found at qiiisnacksrecords.bandcamp.com