CHINESE POSTPUNK ANTHOLOGY
We keep a gathering of records, loosely sewn from scattered remnants, not yet pressed into a shape.
Otaku Density Test: Female Bassist Edition
Girl Phone Talk is a podcast by Zoo-chan of Lonely Cookies and Quamquan of Peach Illusion. In the seventh episode, they welcome Xiao Lang, bassist of the Wuhan indie rock band Silly Function, for a talk titled “Otaku Level Check” or “Otaku Density Test,” covering the band, anime, daily life, and more.
I asked Zoo-chan if there was a text version, and she was kind enough to share an AI-generated transcript. Much appreciated.
Girl Phone Talk Vol. 7 “Otaku Density Test: Female Bassist Edition”
Happy New Year, everyone! For the first Girl Phone Talk of 2026, our guest is one of our cool friends — Lu Lingjie, bassist of Silly Function, also known as XiaoLang, Lang Ye, and JJSpirit. Lu Lingjie is one of my closest friends. She’s not only a bassist but also an illustrator, and she continues to create in many ways — producing music for the band, animating MVs, making posters, and crafting handmade works. In this deeply engaging conversation about music, manga, and the coming-of-age story of an otaku girl, we arrived at one conclusion: being surrounded by the things you love is what it means to have your dreams come true. May the new year bring you encounters with people, things, and moments that make your heart race!
Zoo-chan: Hey everyone, welcome back to Girl Phone Talk!! Okay so today’s special guest is literally one of our coolest friends — Xiao Lang, aka Lang Ye, bassist of Silly Function. Say hi!!
Xiao Lang: Hey everyone. I’m Lu Lingjie, bassist of Silly Function. Also known as Goushi Lao Lang LLJ Spirit. Yeah, all of that is technically my name.
Zoo-chan: Ngl, almost nobody calls you by your actual name anymore, right? Unless it’s like, school or work or something.
Xiao Lang: Pretty much.
Zoo-chan: So are you more of a “Xiao Lang” person these days, or a “Lang Ye”?
Xiao Lang: Lang Ye, mostly.
Quanquan: Yeah, that tracks. The other day Rindo was talking about you by your full name and I genuinely had no idea who she meant for like a full second.
Zoo-chan: She kept fumbling it too, the whole time.
Xiao Lang: She could never decide if it was Lu Lingjie or Lu Jieling — honestly, I’m used to it. People have been getting it wrong forever.
Zoo-chan: Maybe your destiny is literally lacking in water? My actual name is the same way.
Xiao Lang: Didn’t we talk about this the other day.
Zoo-chan: We did! That’s why there are so many water-radical characters in our names.
Xiao Lang: I was thinking about what to call myself on this podcast, and honestly any name is fine, but — okay so this is Girls’ Phone Chat, right? Last time Shibei (formerly of yourboyfriendssucks; a man who cross-dresses as a hobby, appeared in episode 4) was on, everyone was calling him “half a girl.” And I’m not scared of that exactly, but I do think about it — like, as a woman, my gender identity is also female, so —
Zoo-chan: Okay wait, we are like thirty seconds in and we’re already going this deep??
Xiao Lang: No, it’s just — you cued my name twice already, and some people call me Lang Ye, some call me Xiao Lang, and I’m totally fine with either, but I’d hate for some stranger to think I’m the kind of person who rejects her female identity and insists on being called Lang Ye.
Zoo-chan: Ahhh, you’re getting your disclaimer in early. Smart. Okay, we’re keeping this part in. So just to clarify for everyone: in this show, Lu Lingjie, Lang Ye, and Xiao Lang are all the same person — today’s guest. She has a lot of names. Moving on!
Quanquan: So what should we actually call you right now?
Xiao Lang: Anything. I genuinely don’t mind.
Zoo-chan: Okay! So, Xiao Lang — do you know what we titled this episode? We didn’t tell you.
Xiao Lang: I have no idea.
Zoo-chan: Reveal time!! Today’s episode is called: “Otaku Density Test: Female Bassist Edition”!!
Xiao Lang: …That sounds terrifying. I haven’t even been keeping up with new releases lately.
Zoo-chan: Today’s theme is: otaku girls!!!
_Music: “Koi? de Ai? de Boukun desu!” — Wake Up, Girls! (a song by the fictional unit from the 2014 TV anime Wake Up, Girls!)
Quanquan: For me, my whole image of Xiao Lang is basically just Silly Function — we met pretty late, actually.
Xiao Lang: True. Though, before we officially met, I already knew who you were.
Quanquan: Was it the first time we — wait, why are you laughing.
Zoo-chan: Okay heads up — this episode is going to have a lot of random giggling for no reason, and that is completely normal, this is just how we are in real life too.
Quanquan: Was it when we [Peach Illusion] first played in Wuhan?
Zoo-chan: Was it Jianghu Music Festival?
Xiao Lang: No, the event before that.
Quanquan: Oh right, it was when we went to Wuhan for “Shengyuan.”
Zoo-chan: Peach Illusion played Shengyuan too?
Quanquan: That was ages ago, back when we were still —
Zoo-chan: Like one or two years before Jianghu?
Xiao Lang: Probably 2018, or 2017-ish.
Quanquan: 2018? Or 19? Either way, super long ago. Happy Wheel (an alt-rock band from Beijing) was there, and I think Absolute Purity (an post-punk band from Shanghai) was on the bill too.
Xiao Lang: Yeah, exactly.
Zoo-chan: I don’t remember any of this, honestly.
Quanquan: That was one of my first or second gigs outside Shanghai.
Zoo-chan: Were you still in Shenzhen at that point, Lu Lingjie?
Xiao Lang: Yeah.
Zoo-chan: You hadn’t graduated yet?
Xiao Lang: Not yet.
Zoo-chan: Was Silly Function already a thing then?
Xiao Lang: I think so? But either way I wasn’t in it yet. I joined in 2019.
Zoo-chan: Right, right — okay let me recap. I left Wuhan in 2018, and about six months before that, Silly Function formed. The drummer and bassist of Lonely Cookies at the time — Zhao Cheng and Qi Chao — were among Silly Function’s founding members. That’s the rough picture. Wait — so when did I actually meet Lu Lingjie? It feels like forever.
Quanquan: Same, you two feel like you’ve known each other a really long time.
Zoo-chan: I genuinely cannot remember. It’s like we were born already knowing each other.
Xiao Lang: That’s a bit much.
Zoo-chan: I’m serious, I can’t place it!
Xiao Lang: My memory puts it around mid-to-late 2016.
Zoo-chan: That’s probably when I was —
Xiao Lang: 2016 or 2017. I was taking lessons from SanGe (bassist of Chinese Football) at the music school, and sometimes you’d come by —
Zoo-chan: Wait, you were learning bass from San Ge back then?
Xiao Lang: Yep.
Zoo-chan: San Ge — the bassist of Chinese Football [a Wuhan emo band, basically the founding fathers of Chinese emo].
Xiao Lang: Right. And Zoo-chan’s office happened to be near the school.
Zoo-chan: Yeah — back then we had an office just in front of VOX (one of Wuhan’s most iconic venues), with the rehearsal studio and music school in the back. But did we actually talk back then?
Xiao Lang: We did. “Hello, hi~”
Zoo-chan: I think at that point we just knew each other by sight. But the first person I got properly close to was definitely Lu Lingjie, and then Rindo after that. Rindo is a mutual friend who’s studying in Japan right now.
Quanquan: She’s done a lot of illustrations for Lonely Cookies too.
Zoo-chan: Yeah! For a while she was drawing a ton of posters for Yesheng Records the Wuhan indie label that Chinese Football and Lonely Cookies are on, plus some zines. And honestly — thinking about it, the Wuhan rock scene is so small.
Music: “Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni” — Children’s Chorus (insert song from the anime Ping Pong, a remix of a folk song with lyrics by Takashi Yanase)
Quanquan: Oh, a cat just appeared.
Zoo-chan: You can’t see it, but that’s one of Lu Lingjie’s two cats — that’s Laohu (Tiger). A little tabby. The other one is called Mengnán (Macho). They are both her giant babies.
Quanquan: Even the cats’ names are intimidating. Tiger, Macho, Wolf Big Sis — together they sound like a crime syndicate.
Xiao Lang: Very yang energy household.
Quanquan: Extremely yang energy.
Music: “NUM-AMI-DABUTZ” — Number Girl
Zoo-chan: Okay, let’s start from the beginning — how did you become a bassist? What made you go find San Ge and start learning?
Xiao Lang: I’ve loved music since I was little and always wanted to be in a band. But the moment I actually got serious was probably 2014 — I remember it clearly because there was a New Year’s Eve show at VOX that year and Hualun (a veteran post-rock band from Wuhan] was performing. I’d always just listened to music or watched shows, but seeing Hualun live that night — I was like, I need to be in a band. I’d already been into bass for a while, but when I said I wanted to learn, my mom was like, “Why not guitar? Guitar is —”
Zoo-chan: Cooler.
Xiao Lang: ”Guitarist gets to stand in the center of the universe.” That kind of thing.
Quanquan: Okay but the fact that your mom could even tell the difference between guitar and bass is honestly impressive.
Xiao Lang: She likes music, but probably not the same kind we listen to. Anyway, she pushed me toward guitar, so I did this folk guitar class — one of those super beginner, “here’s how to hold a pick” middle-school-level things. But I still wanted bass. Eventually I got to university and had more freedom, and I could finally actually learn. I was in Wuhan, the rock scene is concentrated around Lumo Road — if I wanted to learn and start a band, the obvious move was to go straight to the source. I found a music school there, they had San Ge teaching bass, and I’d basically grown up on Chinese Football anyway.
Zoo-chan: Raised in Chinese Football’s arms, essentially.
Xiao Lang: (genuinely) Yeah.
Zoo-chan: HERE’S the thing though. I noticed this when I talked to Rye (from Chestnut Bakery, episode 6) — people who get into music young usually want to play guitar, or sing, or be the one in front. Bass just doesn’t register. Even now, when bass is kind of having a moment, most people only realize “oh wait, we need a bassist” after they’ve already decided to form a band. But you had this weirdly prescient instinct from the start — you wanted bass. Did you just think it was cool?
Xiao Lang: I mean… yeah. I never really thought about it until you put it that way — like, why not guitar? Bass was just always the only thing I could see. Looking back, I was really into Nirvana in middle school. Had a book about them, still do. Lots of stuff in there. And when I was a kid I wasn’t just watching band anime — I read band biographies, watched band documentaries. Those tend to center guitarists and vocalists, but in those stories, the bassist is always the one who’s just… quietly holding everything together.
Quanquan: Yeah. That’s what’s cool about it.
Xiao Lang: One step back, not drawing attention — but the band doesn’t work without them. Maybe that image stuck with me. I honestly can’t say for sure, but looking back, that might be it.
Zoo-chan: So you’re a born bassist. You know what it’s like, right? When someone’s starting a band and deciding what to play — it’s like one of those baby fortune-telling ceremonies where they pick up an object and that’s supposedly their destiny. Pure instinct. Some people go drums, most people go guitar, and then there are people like Xiao Lang who just knew — bass. Did bass just feel cool to you?
Xiao Lang: What about you two?
Zoo-chan: Me? No. I didn’t even really understand what bass was. I went guitar because it’s the most visible. I loved Nirvana too, but unlike you — I wanted to be the Kurt Cobain type, guitar-and-vocals front person. We talked about this with Rye last time, and she made this point I’d never considered: being an only child might have something to do with it. If you play guitar, you can do solo stuff. You can entertain yourself. If you have siblings you can start a band together, so it’s less of a concern. But if you’re alone, learning guitar means you can at least play for yourself.
Xiao Lang: That makes sense.
Quanquan: My path was different from you two. I never really thought about forming a band or becoming a musician — I also loved Nirvana, but I never imagined I’d end up here. I just liked singing and writing songs. I’m more of a literary type honestly — in university I was the “strum an acoustic guitar at a café” person. Somehow I ended up in a band, and I only realized how good this is relatively recently. Like, this is actually amazing.
Zoo-chan: So in Silly Function — what’s your role? Are you the one quietly holding the floor?
Xiao Lang: I… don’t really know, tbh.
Quanquan: You look like it from the outside.
Xiao Lang: Do I? I don’t know if I’m actually holding anything together. What does that mean — musically, or as a person?
Zoo-chan: As a person. I’m curious about that.
Xiao Lang: Talking about myself is kind of embarrassing, and also scary.
Zoo-chan: Normally this would be a question for your bandmates.
Xiao Lang: No, I can talk about myself, it’s just — a little cringe. As for whether I’m the bass of the band in a personality sense — probably not? Honestly, the current Silly Function lineup — me, Wang Yi, Li Fan, Yutong — we’re all pretty different. There’s definitely a clear leader, which is Wang Yi. Other roles just kind of sort themselves out naturally. And in terms of emotional stability, I think we’re actually a pretty level-headed group.
Quanquan: Really?? On stage you all look like a collection of people who are not okay. I’d even argue a little emotional chaos is kind of required for music like yours.
Xiao Lang: That depends on context. Interpersonally, we’re relatively stable. So in terms of a support role — oh, my cats are fighting. Can you hear that?
Zoo-chan: No.
Xiao Lang: Okay good. Anyway — I think everyone has to play a support role sometimes. Maybe because I’m a woman, when there’s conflict between members, it’s harder to direct it at me personally. So maybe I do function as a lubricant. Whether that counts as “holding the floor” I’m not sure. But I think every band needs someone like that.
Zoo-chan: And honestly it’s almost always the bassist. The interpersonal mediator — which tracks with what bass actually does musically, right? It bridges rhythm and melody, keeps time with the drums while also carrying melodic lines. So in my head, someone who is a born bassist — not someone who switched from guitar, but someone who just is a bassist from day one — they tend to have that same energy. There’s something consistent about their personalities.
Xiao Lang: Isn’t that kind of a stereotype though?
Zoo-chan: I don’t want to call it a stereotype — I just feel like the role and the instrument match.
Quanquan: Xiao Lang, did you start bass in 2018? Or 2016?
Xiao Lang: 2016 or 2017. Second half of 2016, I think.
Quanquan: Around that time it started becoming more common for bassists to step forward as the main presence — like it wasn’t unusual anymore for the bassist to be the center. Like Elephant Gym (a math rock band from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where the female bassist is also lead vocalist), or Right Together (a math rock band from Guangdong, also with a female bassist as lead vocalist). Right Together even has two bassists.
Xiao Lang: Right — I was just about to bring that up. What exactly are they, then? Two of the same — a double —
Zoo-chan: In Right Together’s case, I think Caho’s bass functions more like a rhythm guitar. She’s also the vocalist. So when she’s playing alone she reads as a bassist, but within the band her role is more vocalist-leaning. The actual bass foundation is probably the second bassist.
Xiao Lang: The one holding the floor.
Quanquan: Elephant Gym feels like bass is the core though.
Xiao Lang: Their guitarist is more bassist-coded, honestly.
Zoo-chan: In the traditional sense.
Xiao Lang: Personality-coded too.
Quanquan: I think you made the right call — style-wise too. Watching Silly Function live, obviously Wang Yi (frontman of Silly Function, who also starred in a Lonely Cookies MV) carries a lot, but Xiao Lang’s presence has become more and more essential to what the band is. I love your new EP, It’s Just a Feeling. There are a lot of your lyrics in there, and honestly they hit different as a woman, like you just get it.
Zoo-chan: So within Silly Function, you’re effectively dual main creatives at this point — you’re writing songs, bringing ideas, contributing visually too.
Xiao Lang: That’s true now, but it wasn’t always. The roles used to be clearer. When I first joined I was purely a bassist — I stayed in my lane, focused on my part. I had to re-transcribe what the previous bassist had left behind. It was only once we started writing together that I started finding my footing. And part of it was just calibrating to each other over time.
You two are probably the kind of people who come in as the center, driving ideas from the start. But I entered purely as a bassist — I was just thinking about how to play. Then Wang Yi started giving feedback, like, “Can you pull back here?” or “More here.” Through that back-and-forth I started understanding what he was going for, and slowly I got a clearer sense of my actual role — and once I had that, I could start figuring out how to contribute creatively. And the way we write keeps evolving — sometimes I’ll work something out and bring it to the group. Sometimes we’ll just start jamming from a spark of an idea. Sometimes Wang Yi hands me something half-formed. We kept trying things, kept what worked, and It’s Just a Feeling is what came out of that.
Zoo-chan: On It’s Just a Feeling — which track was the one where your idea was the starting point?
Xiao Lang: The one where the core idea came entirely from me is “Midnight Sowing” — the one I sing. That was the first time we made something that way. Just that one, though. The others — I wrote the vocal lines and lyrics.
Zoo-chan: Made of Glass and Killstar?
Xiao Lang: Made of Glass, Killstar, and Unfold — I wrote lyrics and vocals for all three.
Quanquan: Wait, Unfold too?? I love that song so much. It was my most-played track last year, no contest.
Zoo-chan: And the fact that it opens the album — so good, it just ignites.
Quanquan: Live too. Every time.
Zoo-chan: We landed on this before, but — when you hear Unfold,” it plays like a Gundam scene in your head. The protagonist has been spiraling, there’s some small drama, and then they get pulled back to the present — and right at that moment, the moment everything detonates, that’s when “展开” kicks in. A literal unfolding.
Xiao Lang: You posted something like that on Xiaohongshu China’s Instagram-ish platform.
Zoo-chan: This album — I’m obsessed. When we did that thing where we listened to each other’s demos, you played me early versions of “Killstar” and Made of Glass and I was already gone. I’d heard them live first too, and the lyrics just hit my soul. With music I love this much I just completely lose my vocabulary — I’m like “I love this, I have to tell you I love this” and that’s all I’ve got.
Quanquan: That was the reaction episode, right?
Xiao Lang: Yeah, that’s the one.
Quanquan: I remember Wang Yi answering those four questions about the album 好在没失去什么，好在没失去爱的能力, and he answered “nobody cares, and I don’t care either.” That line just lived in my head. That was a heavy year for me personally, and I kept coming back to it in daily life. So when “展开” came out I understood it completely. That song genuinely unfolds.
Music: “我的新世界从不因他人而展开” — Silly Function
Zoo-chan: Silly Function’s songs are full of those phrases. On the surface they’re so ordinary — just words you’d say in normal conversation — but placed in that context, with the emotional tension maxed out, and then the music hits, and suddenly they land like a punchline. That’s the kind of lyric I live for. The kind that shows up before you have time to process it. Like being drunk and finding meaning in random things around you — a piece of graffiti, a line in a magazine — and suddenly it feels like it’s saying something just to you. That’s what I want from lyrics.
Zoo-chan: You’re too good at this…
Quanquan: Like a message from god, kind of.
Zoo-chan: Yeah, like a divine oracle just appearing in front of you.
Xiao Lang: Hearing that — okay, I’m a little curious about something. In both of those songs, some people might say those lines feel like slogans, like a broken record. But for me — “I’m about to shatter, my whole body is made of glass” — and the one from Unfold, “ Who cares if anyone cares, I don’t care anyway.” Those lines have lived in my head for a long time. And the opening line of Unfold —”My new world never unfolds because of others” — for the past month, maybe the past six months, that’s been on loop in my head constantly.
Zoo-chan: I completely relate to that. Me too. I’ve dreamed about this stuff. Or I’ll spend forever turning something over in my head and eventually it just — compresses into one sentence. And then you want to put it in a chorus and repeat it forever. Something that looks totally ordinary, but when you say it with full feeling, over and over — it becomes something else. Like a spell.
Xiao Lang: The power of words is real.
Zoo-chan: Speaking of — there’s so much fiction built around that exact idea. Dune (Frank Herbert’s SF novel and its film adaptations) has this whole thing where language literally has power, like a superpower, where speaking certain words directly affects the person hearing them. And then the same idea shows up in manga too. I’ve been re-watching Loveless (Yun Kouga’s manga LOVELESS, combat through words, iconic cat-eared boys, a BL/fantasy classic serialized from 2001) lately — in that series, the fighting style is literally language. Naming someone has meaning. The words you say are weapons. You find gaps in language and strike through them. It’s so interesting. Language has always been my most natural medium — for some people it’s music, for others it’s drawing, but for me it’s words. And settings like that, and lyrics that work like incantations — I’m obsessed with them.
Xiao Lang: I looked up Loveless just now because I had zero memory of it.
Zoo-chan: You’ve seen it! You’re a certified BL otaku, there is no way you haven’t seen it!
Quanquan: I haven’t seen it.
Zoo-chan: You barely watch any BL, Quanquan.
Xiao Lang: I genuinely can’t place it.
Zoo-chan: I remember it so clearly! I used to buy Manyou magazine, and Loveless was on the cover like multiple times — huge coverage. The aesthetic was so stylish. So many people cosplayed it. And the reason cat-eared shota boys became a staple across anime? That’s Loveless.
Xiao Lang: Oh — the ears. Now I remember. That one.
Zoo-chan: Yes!! That’s the one!!
Music: Made of Glass — Silly Function
Quanquan: Going back to the songs — beyond the magic of repetition, I think Xiao Lang’s lyrics are very visual, like you’re storyboarding an animation. Do you picture imagery when you write?
Xiao Lang: Not consciously. I just… go by feel.
Quanquan: By feel.
Xiao Lang: By feel. About Made of Glass — I don’t know if I mentioned this during the song exchange with Lonely Cookies — but originally the lyric was “I am made of steel.” The whole song was written with that in mind, but it was so hard to sing. Like, “I am made of steel” — that sounds like a military march. When I changed it to “glass,” everything clicked. When I wrote “steel,” I meant to say I’m strong, I’m tough. But when you feel the need to say that, it’s usually because you’re at your most fragile. You’re made of glass, telling yourself you’re steel. Once I changed it, it just felt more right.
Zoo-chan: Sonically too, “steel” is just not a lyric-friendly word. I don’t even know how you’d deliver it.
Xiao Lang: Military march vibes.
Quanquan: Wait — okay I almost laughed but now I actually have goosebumps. “Steel” makes me think of something I watched as a kid —
Zoo-chan: How the Steel Was Tempered? (The Soviet socialist realist novel, later adapted into a Chinese TV drama)
Quanquan: Yes! There’s this weirdly comedic quality to it.
Zoo-chan: And “steel” as an image just isn’t romantic. “Glass” is — something fragile opens up your imagination. “Steel” makes you think of a foundry. The Great Leap Forward.
Quanquan: Right. I was half-dozing watching a film this afternoon — Manchester by the Sea. Same energy as what you’re describing. Looks like steel from the outside, but everyone has a fragile point, could crack at any moment. And the magic of music — and anime too — is that it can reach something deep inside you in just a few minutes and hold it up in front of you. When someone else is singing the exact thing you’ve never been able to say about yourself, that moment is overwhelming.
Xiao Lang: Yeah. Though I think there are two modes. The steel/glass metaphor, and Manchester by the Sea — those represent two different approaches. When you’re talking about an apple: some people just say “apple.” Others say “it’s round, it’s red, it has a stem, there are seeds inside, the seeds are poisonous, you have to peel it.” Even the surface description can move you if it’s specific enough. Then there are people who go straight to the core — and that hits just as hard. The slogan-type lines tend to be the second mode. But the beautiful ones — like a film image that looks like it’s describing the surface but is actually expressing the essence — those have their own power too.
Music: “Kamisama no Iu Toori” — Yakushimaru Etsuko, Ishiwatari Junji, Sunahara Yoshinori (opening theme of the TV anime Arakawa Under the Bridge)
Zoo-chan: Your major — was it the same as Rindo’s? Oil painting?
Quanquan: Sculpture?
Xiao Lang: Which was it? It was the same as Rindo’s. I was in oil painting for the first two years, then switched to sculpture in year three. I transferred.
Zoo-chan: Why the switch? Did you prefer sculpture? Though your work gives more of a painting impression.
Xiao Lang: I don’t know your programs but where I studied, the department divisions were… loose. Every department had people doing everything. Same as with bass — what I originally wanted was sculpture, but my family pushed me toward oil painting. Said I’d learn more, better career path if I wanted to do art professionally.
Zoo-chan: But oil painting and sculpture are both pure fine arts — neither is particularly employable, right?
Xiao Lang: Neither is useful, yeah. By second year I was kind of done, partly because of the environment — I felt like this wasn’t what I wanted to learn, so I tried transferring. But when I actually got to sculpture, that was also different from what I’d imagined. That’s when I realized: I’d been hanging a picture of a rice cake in front of myself the whole time. I didn’t know concretely what I wanted to do. Nothing felt right, I just kept trying things.
Zoo-chan: Had you been formally learning art since you were young?
Xiao Lang: No, I just liked drawing. I only started seriously studying art in my second year of high school.
Zoo-chan: Cramming for art school entrance, doing intensive courses.
Xiao Lang: Yeah. My family didn’t allow it at first.
Zoo-chan: Same! I loved drawing since forever, but when the question came up about art school entrance, my parents said no — too expensive. Unless your grades are completely unsalvageable, most parents won’t push for art school.
Quanquan: It was a whole different era. A lot of families were like that.
Zoo-chan: Maybe Xiao Lang’s family was more supportive, or maybe she was just stubborn enough. Some kids are just like that — very firm in what they want. I gave up pretty easily. Never did the intensive courses. A friend of mine who’d been drawing since childhood did go to art school, but ended up in landscape design — more practical, better job options. Do you regret it? (directed at herself) Honestly? Yeah, a little. I wanted to draw. Lately I can’t explain why, but this feeling has come back really strongly — I still want to draw.
Xiao Lang: You can draw. You don’t need art school for that. That’s genuinely true. But what I wanted to say — I used the same approach you did. My high school wasn’t an arts high school. One day I told my mom I didn’t want to go to school anymore. My grades weren’t great but not terrible, and there were only seven art-track students in the whole school, so I was in a regular class doing science. I stopped showing up and eventually scored in the 30s on one of my science exams. Mom said, “Then switch to humanities.” I said, “Even for humanities, I think I need to study art to pass university entrance.” And that’s how I got to learn.
Zoo-chan: Art school still requires written entrance exams though, right?
Xiao Lang: Yeah, written exams too.
Zoo-chan: And it’s not like you have to take science subjects for it?
Xiao Lang: Science is an option too. In our generation it was fine either way, though I hear it’s a bit different now. In our time, the main factor was just which track you could pick up faster. Humanities was clearly faster, so everyone chose humanities.
Zoo-chan: Okay, random — there’s a profession I have an unreasonable amount of respect for. Can you guess what it is?
Xiao Lang: …Law?
Zoo-chan: No, no, no — architecture. I’m absolutely obsessed with architecture as a concept.
Quanquan: Weirdly I could see that.
Zoo-chan: It’s the combination of art and engineering — that’s what gets me.
Quanquan: What about civil engineering?
Zoo-chan: I have friends in civil engineering and based on their internships and work… it looks rough. Site supervisor energy.
Quanquan: I studied civil engineering, you know.
Zoo-chan: But architecture — it’s so romantic and rational at the same time. Deeply artistic.
Music: “Duvet” — Bôa (opening theme of Serial Experiments Lain)
Zoo-chan: The two reasons I’ve always felt like Xiao Lang and I are on the same wavelength — first, we both love anime and manga. Though she’s definitely got more knowledge than me.
Xiao Lang: I’m not so sure about that.
Zoo-chan: Second — personality. I don’t think of Xiao Lang as a typically feminine type. She’s got a pretty boyish side.
Xiao Lang: What kind of stereotype is that.
Zoo-chan: Maybe it’s just me projecting? I was probably like that in adolescence too, so I tend to click with people who are similar.
Quanquan: She’s MADE OF GLASS, not steel!!
Zoo-chan: Lmao — okay, actually I’m probably made of iron.
Xiao Lang: (deadpan) Hilarious.
Zoo-chan: In my teens I didn’t have friendships like this — girls I could actually talk to. No besties, no frenemies, no girl cliques.
Xiao Lang: Wait, what’s a frenemy?
Zoo-chan: Best case, a “bestie.” Worst case, a “frenemy” — someone who acts close but is lowkey trying to undermine you the whole time. Very Tiny Times (popular 2010s Chinese film series about female friendship, romance, and upper-class aesthetics. Anyway — coming back to the point, Xiao Lang reminds me of the kind of friends I had in middle school.
Xiao Lang: So we’re basically middle school friends.
Zoo-chan: Yeah, that type. The people around me back then were mostly the slightly fringe kids in class.
Xiao Lang: Fringe?
Zoo-chan: I was fringe too.
Xiao Lang: Coolest fringe kids in the school.
Zoo-chan: Exactly, that’s exactly right.
Quanquan: Okay — I’ve never called myself a “female otaku” or even really thought of myself as one. So can we actually define it? Like, is it just “likes to stay home”? Or does it specifically mean into anime and manga, especially Japanese stuff? Or is it just that people who are into 2D / Japanese media get categorized there by default? What about someone who’s obsessed with Disney or Marvel, collects every figure in every series — would they be an otaku?
Xiao Lang: That topic — after you.
Zoo-chan: Okay this gets complicated. If we trace it from the beginning — it comes from the Japanese word “otaku-zoku,” which evolved over time. In Chinese the connotation drifts toward “doesn’t like going outside,” but in Japanese it’s specifically tied to otaku-zoku culture. And I personally feel like Marvel or Disney doesn’t quite fit under that umbrella.
Xiao Lang: I’d include them, honestly. There are train otaku (trainspotters with intense enthusiasm for railways). Everyone loves trains.
Zoo-chan: Disney otaku counts, I suppose.
Xiao Lang: Yeah — Disney otaku is totally valid. Anything works.
Quanquan: Before we started recording you two were saying you go to doujin events, 2D exhibitions, merch shops — that kind of thing.
Zoo-chan: I don’t go to that many events, honestly.
Quanquan: What about cosplay?
Xiao Lang: I’ve never — wait, I have.
Quanquan: You did it at a recent show too, right?
Zoo-chan: I’ve never cosplayed.
Quanquan: I really want to but I feel like an outsider to the culture — I just watch from a distance going “that looks fun.” So Xiao Lang — who did you cosplay?
Xiao Lang: Just once, for a show — Chainsaw Man (serialized from 2018, animated 2022). I cosplayed Himeno senpai. Our tour’s last date was Halloween, so we decided to all dress up. At first everyone was going to do their own thing, but Wang Yi wanted a unified look — which I agreed with — so we landed on Chainsaw Man. The characters work for a public safety agency, so everyone wearing suits would give us cohesion. That’s how it happened.
Quanquan: That’s so cool. Now I want to watch it.
Xiao Lang: It’s basically a suit show at its core. Back in the day I always thought cosplay sounded fun but never actually did it — I was a “closet otaku.” I watched anime but had nobody to talk about it with, so I just quietly consumed it alone.
Quanquan: How?
Xiao Lang: I did have some 2D friends, but…
Zoo-chan: You ended up in the art track, but it sounds like the art school intensive prep crowd didn’t overlap much with the anime crowd. Though I always assume art students are full of that — in my experience the art room was basically an otaku hub, and that’s where I got introduced to rock music too.
Xiao Lang: Oh, my class might have had a fair number. But in my school overall — there were only seven art-track students, and they were mostly rich social types.
Zoo-chan: No way.
Xiao Lang: Yeah. Maybe because the art track was small at my school.
Zoo-chan: I think of 2D fans as being everywhere in art programs. My memory is that the art room was basically full of them.
Xiao Lang: I think it’s because my middle school was super strict. And even though everyone watched anime, the stuff my classmates were into — I’m probably a little younger than Zoo-chan, so what you were watching in high school, I was watching in middle school, like Black Butler (anime series started 2008, new installment in 2025. At that point “2D” to most people meant the big mainstream shonen stuff (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece — the holy trinity of that era), but I’d already moved on from that. It’s like everyone’s bumping Grammy hits and you’re the one in the corner listening to indie bands. Nobody in my class was watching the same things I was.
Quanquan: So what were you actually into back then?
Xiao Lang: There was so much… I can’t cleanly remember what I was into when. But looking back — I was really into BL anime.
Zoo-chan: You jumped straight into BL??
Xiao Lang: There was just so much of it. I don’t remember exactly when it started, but I’d download everything in MP4 as it updated, since I lived in the dorms.
Zoo-chan: Same!! MP4 life!!
Xiao Lang: Then watch it alone in secret when I got back to the room.
Music: “Kataomoi” — Chara (from the 1991 album “sweet”)
Xiao Lang: I can’t clearly remember what I loved most back then. I watched anime most heavily during primary school through high school. Less time in university, but I kept going.
Quanquan: Were you influenced by music anime? I’m more of a normie on this, so I’ll use normie reference points — things like K-On! manga serialized from 2007, animated 2009, about a high school music club, hugely popular in China’s.
Xiao Lang: Yeah! K-On! is great. Haven’t been keeping up with new stuff much though.
Zoo-chan: For new ones, there’s Bocchi the Rock! (based on a manga, anime aired 2022, follows a socially anxious guitarist — absolute cultural moment in China too). That blew up.
Xiao Lang: Watched it, but personally not my thing.
Zoo-chan: Bocchi is a bit more grounded than K-On! — if you’ve been in a band, the small details and live house vibe have this faint ring of truth. K-On! is pure fiction. A comedy.
Quanquan: Bocchi has an educational function too, though.
Zoo-chan: Right — like spreading live house culture to people who don’t know it.
Xiao Lang: I don’t know the behind-the-scenes stuff, but Bocchi had a character based on a real musician, right? I heard it was Asian Kung-Fu Generation.
Zoo-chan: Yeah — Masafumi Goto. They just used his name though.
Xiao Lang: Fine either way. But — speaking as a musician — the show’s depictions do feel somewhat real. The thing is, that character, if it were real? She’d be causing problems everywhere, with zero minimum professional ethics, just going wherever and doing whatever. I have opinions about this —
Zoo-chan: Be careful or the Bocchi stans will come for you, I’m just saying.
Xiao Lang: I genuinely do not care!!
Zoo-chan: Bocchi has kind of become a phenomenon where normal logic doesn’t apply. I’m always on Xiaohongshu and I see these posts — someone whose friend only watches girl band anime and can’t stop talking about it, asking how to intervene. All of them written by male otaku. It’s a lot.
As a work, I like it. The story, the backgrounds, really cute. But there are also people deep into Ave Mujica (a fictional band from the BanG Dream! anime franchise) — and I can’t do that. And that show Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty (2025 band anime) — I cannot accept that one. That’s egregious otaku-pandering.
Bocchi isn’t that bad. K-On! is a bit of a thing, but as something to watch casually, fine — it’s instant ramen. For Bocchi_specifically, the character at least isn’t aggressively pandering, in my opinion. I don’t mean in terms of character design — I mean overall personality. There are some stereotyped otaku-targeted dialogue moments, but _Bocchi is within my tolerance. And the music is genuinely great.
Quanquan: Interesting. Okay — did you two watch NANA (manga by Ai Yazawa, adapted into anime) as kids?
Zoo-chan & Xiao Lang: Yes!! NANA!!
(All three talking over each other about NANA)
Zoo-chan: NANA is good. I probably didn’t finish it and I barely remember the back half. I remember the main characters and the beginning fine. There was a live-action film at the time too — I saw that.
Xiao Lang: Was that the —
Zoo-chan: Mika Nakashima one.
Xiao Lang: I loved that too.
Quanquan: The live-action — Ryuhei Matsuda was so cool in it.
Xiao Lang: Okay, taste.
Quanquan: Sorry, that’s very girls-talk of me. Anyway, I’m actually watching NANA right now.
Zoo-chan: I was deep into visual kei back then, so “Glamorous Sky” from the NANA movie — Mika Nakashima’s version in the film, originally written and performed by hyde of L’Arc-en-Ciel — that was my gateway. I used 2D as a stepping stone into visual kei. Before I started listening to Western rock in high school, I mostly listened to J-pop from anime. It was all kind of mixed up together.
Quanquan: I also watched Beck (a classic Japanese band manga, animated 2004. Really liked it.
Xiao Lang: Beck was good. Way more grounded than Bocchi. Though a bit convenient in the plot department —
Zoo-chan: If we’re talking realism, that Gibson with the bullet holes is not realistic. That guitar is a whole fictional artifact.
Xiao Lang: I’m talking about the narrative. Beck is less otaku-pandering than Bocchi and the story is genuinely better. But rewatching it as an adult — sorry, language — it’s just wish fulfillment, right? Like I want that too. My guitar back there doesn’t have bullet holes. I want to play a festival and have the rain stop just for me. I want to suddenly play incredibly well on command. Every time I watch that stuff I get a little annoyed.
Zoo-chan: Honestly. The thing that bothers me most about that type of music anime — and I think real musicians would agree — is how effortlessly they depict the path to the shiny moments. Like the brilliance just kind of arrives without much struggle. And so now you have a lot of people picking up instruments because of music anime and band shows. That’s a genuinely great thing — they want to learn, they want to play. But —
Xiao Lang: It’s science fiction.
Zoo-chan: Exactly — it’s science fiction. They think: I’ll start practicing and be playing in weeks. I’ll form a band, I’ll be shredding in a few months. But there’s an enormous amount of effort behind that. Like — I got into guitar through anime too, and even I wonder sometimes: when am I ever going to perform like that? I started at 15, played on and off through university. That’s like 3-5 years. Some people practice intensively every day with great efficiency — and even then, it takes time. Nothing like anime. What kills me is Yui Hirasawa buying a guitar like that, and then performing at the school festival the next week. That is not possible.
Xiao Lang: Genius. She’s just a genius, sure. Speaking of K-On! — there’s something a little bittersweet for me. You know the bassist in K-On!? She plays a burst-color bass. I am obsessed with sunburst — any sunburst, I will love it. My bass is sunburst. My first bass was also sunburst, also a Jazz Bass, same model. But a couple years ago — K-On! was losing steam, Bocchi had taken over — I sold it. When I put it up online, I searched to see what price others were listing similar ones for. Same color, I thought maybe I’d catch the 2D premium. I searched tags like “K-On! Akiyama Mio bass same model” — but because mine wasn’t left-handed, basically nothing came up. Then I searched what basses other people were selling in general, and it was all clearly “bought because of a band anime” models. Great business, honestly — it stimulates the economy and floods the second-hand market with affordable instruments. Good for everyone. But by that point, sunburst was out of fashion. Those basses were white, I think. Either way — sunburst barely shows up in the second-hand market anymore. Times change.
Quanquan: So that bass can’t fetch a high price anymore.
Zoo-chan: Anyway — getting into music because of anime is great. I just hope people don’t quit after three days. If you genuinely started because you love it, practice seriously, and whether you want to play songs solo or be in a band — at least reach some kind of goal.
Music: “MOON ON THE WATER” — BECK from the anime Beck
Quanquan: Actually — the first band anime I ever watched might not be any of these. I bet you’ve both seen it though.
Xiao Lang: What is it?
Zoo-chan: Surprise me.
Quanquan: Crazy for Song!! (Chinese original anime about a high school band, first broadcast 2001, formative for a whole generation of Chinese kids)
Xiao Lang: I knew it. Yes. Exactly.
Zoo-chan: That’s literally everyone’s band awakening show and I completely forgot about it. I was obsessed as a kid. There were Crazy for Song stickers, there was a manga. In primary school we’d all chip in to buy these youth newspaper bundles, and Crazy for Song was serialized in them. My classmates said they didn’t want those volumes, so I took them all. Let’s see — Ye Feng, Chu Tiange, and the heroine was… Mai something?
Quanquan: I can’t remember at all.
Zoo-chan: Some kind of Mai. Pretty cool though.
Xiao Lang: On that note — has anyone seen Detroit Metal City (serialized from 2005, later animated and live-action; known in China as “Heavy Metal Rock Double-Faced Man”?
Zoo-chan: Isn’t that the American — wait no, that’s a different film.
Xiao Lang: Really funny anime. Quanquan, I feel like you’d love it. Each episode is self-contained, super short, and it’s hilarious — genuinely hilarious.
Quanquan: I like that one actually! I forgot the title, but there’s a bald guy playing a recorder in it?
Quanquan: It’s so good.
Zoo-chan: It is. And it’s actually kind of realistic.
Quanquan: Lmao what.
Zoo-chan: I’m serious — if you’d only practiced for one day, you’d actually sound exactly like that.
Quanquan: Recorder vibes. I remember that part.
Xiao Lang: Oh — I just remembered something. There’s a bassist in it, right? And there’s that scene where he plucks a string and goes “this feels so good.” That cut was so well done. It reminds me of something a sound technician told me once — I’ve forgotten the details, but I remember thinking “this sounds like a manga.” He said: “When I was a kid —” He’s a bit older than us, grew up on Beyond (the Hong Kong rock band from the 1980s; Huang Jiaju essentially brought Cantonese rock to a mass audience, massively influential across mainland China). He wanted to be a bassist. He grew up in a smaller city, not many venues, almost no music shops — so he traveled to a bigger city to find one. He went in ready to buy a bass. He was probably in middle or high school at the time, a bit of a delinquent. The clerk handed him an acoustic guitar. He looked at it and said, “This isn’t the sound I want.” Clerk asked, “You want electric?” He said yes. Clerk brought out an electric guitar, plugged it into an amp. He couldn’t play at all. But when he strummed all the strings at once — he cried. “This is it. This is the sound.”
Zoo-chan: That feeling — when you plug a guitar into an amp and step on a distortion pedal for the first time — it’s exactly like a manga panel. Your soul leaves your body. You feel like you’ve received a message from the universe. In anime it would be the Big Bang unfolding, every event in history flashing by at once.
Quanquan: Is that an anime you made?
Zoo-chan: Yes, it plays out in my head in real time.
Quanquan: Speaking of which — we’re working on a new album right now. Small promo: we’re releasing an EP in spring, and this time I’m playing electric guitar on it too. I’ve always leaned on our guitarist because they’re so good and I never wanted to get in the way. But this time I’m on two tracks — just strumming, with distortion and some overdrive and fuzz. The recording session was recently and I was so nervous. When I thought about it, the last time I played electric guitar on an album was five, six years ago. So I brought the guitar to the studio that day, plugged it into the amp, and we tried out all the sounds together. As we recorded, it got more and more emotional — and when that final strum came out, it was so simple, but I had exactly that moment you described — like that guy who cried. People who don’t usually compliment my playing said it was good. Maybe they felt the emotion I put into it.
Xiao Lang: Definitely. Since my first recording experience, whenever I listen back to takes — mine, or the guitarist’s — no matter how many tones you can build with effects, the sound from someone’s actual fingers is deeply tied to their body. It’s pure feeling, unfiltered. It’s not just a compliment or giving you emotional validation — it genuinely comes through on its own.
Quanquan: Okay — new songs dropping soon, stay tuned everyone.
Music: “SATSUGAI” — Kajihideki (the signature song of fictional band DMC from the anime film Detroit Metal City
Quanquan: We’re all getting older — Xiao Lang’s a bit younger than us. Maybe it’s less of a thing now, but did you ever worry about what people would think — an adult who still loves anime?
Xiao Lang: Not at all. I’m happy. The people around me are all like you guys. The kind of people who’d have a problem with it just… don’t really appear in my life. And in situations like this I can be openly otaku, but to people who don’t know me well, they have no idea.
Quanquan: So your family’s pretty chill about it too. Because when I was a kid, family members would sometimes say things about people who were really into 2D culture — like they probably don’t have a real job, or they haven’t grown up yet.
Xiao Lang: I haven’t grown up.
Quanquan: I think people are more accepting now. Everyone can have a part of themselves that stays childlike. Making music is like that too. We’re all ’90s kids, and it took us a while to realize that expressing your individuality is actually fine. In our adolescence, it didn’t really feel that way — society wasn’t exactly cheering you on to announce that you’re into subculture or 2D. But the generation born in the 2000s seems to be actively encouraged to express themselves — and as a result, what they’re afraid of is being ordinary, being unremarkable. I don’t know. Our last episode’s theme was “what are the in-between ’90s generation thinking?” — Zoo-chan’s phrasing. And the “in-between” thing — thinking about today’s conversation — it’s like one-child policy logic. Have a baby when told; don’t have one when told. Our generation was told to express individuality, but nobody taught us how to do it when we were kids. A lot of us were probably closet otaku, closet rock fans.
Xiao Lang: We brought up one part of that question earlier — that 2000s kids are more expressive. I’m not sure that’s universally true. How to put this… lately I’ve become aware of how privileged I am. The fact that I can sit here talking about my interests at all — that’s already rare. I’ve been doing some part-time work recently and I’ve been meeting people I’d never normally cross paths with — some much younger, some much older — and maybe they have only a tiny window for personal interests, or none at all. I might be going too broad, but I think it’s deeply tied to your social environment, your radius. What family you come from. I grew up working-class. I spent both middle and high school in dorms, and the personality and worldview I formed during those years came from a whole series of things I found for myself — literature, books, manga, film, music. I dug those up on my own. If I’d stayed home the whole time, I’d probably be different. Your environment, your family, your individual path — all strongly linked. And then the “in-between” quality you mentioned. I don’t know how you two feel, but I was born right before the millennium, and it feels both slow and fast at the same time. I still clearly remember using phone cards and dial-up internet. But when I talk to people born in 2000, they’ve never used a landline, never experienced dial-up. I think we ’90s kids landed right at the inflection point — where the speed of change went from gradual to exponential. The last ten years have felt unbelievable, but the twenty years before that were relatively steady. In Wuhan dialect: halfway cooked. 夹生.
Quanquan: Yeah — “halfway cooked” actually fits better than “in-between.”
Zoo-chan: Lately on Xiaohongshu I’ve had this feeling — maybe it’s just my filter bubble — but the content there now, the way people cluster around the things they love, that whole ecosystem, feels like the glory days of Baidu Tieba (Baidu’s discussion board service, the dominant hub for Chinese internet fan communities throughout the 2000s and 2010s) when I was a teenager.
Xiao Lang: I think there’s a real connection there.
Zoo-chan: Maybe this is an illusion, but — the things people love haven’t actually changed between twenty years ago and now. Whatever era you fell in love with a piece of work, in a space like that everyone can share opinions and talk about what they love. It feels like going back to when the internet was new, when everyone was discovering a new space. Something utopian — where you can make the things you love part of your life. Not exactly fighting reality, but generating another possibility. Maybe it’s naive optimism, but I love it.
And lately I keep being hit by this feeling that I genuinely love my life right now. Every day I finish work, bike home, and I notice it. I live alone, my room is full of things I love. I can play guitar, I can draw. I’m surrounded by everything I care about, and I’m an adult who can support myself. When I think about it — this is exactly the life my 15-year-old self dreamed of. I can say my dream has come true.
And I just feel this wave of “wow, I’m so happy.” Every day. Being surrounded by the things you love — I feel that so strongly lately. That’s what happiness actually is.
Music: “Tobira wo Akete” — ANZA (second opening theme of Cardcaptor Sakura)
Zoo-chan: Xiao Lang is our first guest of 2026!
Xiao Lang: The best one.
Zoo-chan: Silly Function has a new tour planned for 2026, right? We’re waiting on the announcement. And please come back on the show with Wang Yi sometime. That’s all for today — this has been Girl Phone Talk, I’m Zoo-chan.
Quanquan: I’m Quanquan.
Xiao Lang: And I’m Goushi Lao Lang LLJ Spirit.
Zoo-chan: Until next time. Bye-bye!
Music: “Stanley Should Be Happy” — Silly Function
(End)
Introduction: CC BY 4.0
Transcript & description: © original creators, translated with permission