Life As An American Punk Band in China

"No lyrics that criticize the ruling party," says The Captain, who does bass and vocals for Shore Leave. "No lyrics about ghosts/supernatural stuff." One anti-capitalist rule insists artists refrain from romanticizing the luxury life -- so no songs about tigers on leashes and Crystal-filled hot tubs, please.

The vague nature of these laws lets the government censor whatever they like for basically any reason, and a scary number of those reasons come down to bigotry. "You used to be able to sing pro-LGBT songs," says The Captain, "but that's changed," which keeps Shore Leave from performing this album opener:

This is the case despite the fact that China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and removed it from the official list of mental disorders in 2001, but maybe it's not too surprising. After all, the country still has forced electroshock conversion therapy.

Many bands dodge fallout by changing their most controversial lyrics before they submit them for review. Take Shore Leave's not-at-all-political ode to Parks And Recreation's alien cult leader, Zorp. "The promoter told us the 'revolution' lyrics in 'Armagedon-A-Go-Go' might be problematic," says The Captain. "So we wrote 'Revolution / They gonna burn city hall' as 'Evolution / They're gone, Arsenio Hall.'" Hey, nobody said the new tunes had to make any sense.

Other fun examples include phrases like "the square of hopelessness." That's not a description of soul-crushingly dull cubicle life, but a thinly veiled reference to Tiananmen Square, which is a mostly off-limits topic in the arts.

Sometimes the code isn't code at all. Musicians simply sing in English, as many Chinese officials do not speak or understand it. This plays to Shore Leave's advantage. Regardless of whatever was officially submitted beforehand, they sometimes simply sing their original lyrics onstage -- the odds are no one will be able to tell the difference.

The venue well may not be hiring these musicians for their creative abilities anyway. Lt. Bugs tells of the time she saw a promoter switch a band's singer and bassist right before a show. "The bassist was a pretty-looking white girl," she says, "and the singer was a darker-skinned Hispanic man. They wanted the pretty white girl up front." Shore Leave has even seen fliers for their own concerts using stock photo models instead of their actual faces. That's what happens when none of the band members are pretty enough for promoters.

By now, you might be wondering how watered-down lyrics and plastic supermodels equal punk. To put it simply, the very act of listening to anything that isn't traditional music is an act of defiance in China. The genre of punk and the identities of the singers often boil down to "This is not Chinese." If it's not Chinese, it's "Western." If it's Western, it's not traditional, and it's therefore subversive. Even the iconic punk style has received a makeover thanks to this amalgamation of all things Western. Fans will wear denim jeans and clothing with English phrases emblazoned across them as a roundabout way to show their love for the American lifestyle.

That's all very cute and 1980s, but this is 2018, so of course online advertising is a thing. For Chinese punk acts, ads are usually images, because JPEGs are a lot harder than text for censors to read and flag. And because illegal promoters can't advertise via normal channels, things get pretty creative. Shore Leave once got a whole audience together through Tantan, China's Tinder. "We spent a couple weeks before our ship landed talking to girls and guys online on the app," says The Captain. "Told them to meet us for a drink at the bar we were playing at." 50 lonely Chinese singles showed up at the bar that night and were converted to punk fans.

Despite all the measures to avoid government attention, illegal shows still feel the wrath of censors from time to time. Usually it's when a rival venue sees an opportunity to take out some of the competition. "That happened to an expat bar where they didn't file for an entertainment license for an open mic comedy show," says Lt. Bugs. "The place got raided. Some bartenders got fired for not having work visas. The bar got fined." This put the fear of the law into them, and the place never hosted a show again.

You'd think the government would clamp down on that sort of thing, but it's possible that Chinese censors aren't 100 percent consistent with their standards.

Rock is new to many Chinese audiences, and so are foreigners. It's not unusual for a punk band to perform for an audience that has literally never heard rock music before ... or seen a white person up close and personal. "There's almost a freak show element, in that some people just come to see foreigners, regardless of the music," says The Captain. When people approach band members after shows, they often don't talk about the music. "They just run through some conversational cues to practice their English."

Because of this novelty, punk bands often find themselves sandwiched between bigger acts, like those aforementioned traditional Chinese performers. This means any hip youngsters looking to stick it to the man are forced to share space with chess-playing grandpas who want to hear the bamboo flute music they grew up with. "The promoter," says The Captain, recalling one such show, "told us that the old men at the bar were complaining about the punk bands: 'The singers can't sing!' The age gap between the two audiences present was obvious."

But hiding in the sea of grumpy old men and wide-eyed punk rock virgins is a handful of rebellious youth who absolutely understand the point of the genre, even if they don't understand the lyrics. "This one girl," says Lt. Bugs, "who knew a little bit of English, kept buying us rounds of Tsingtao and baijiu shots and saying 'revolution revolution' over and over to us." She never quite figured out the group's actual name, so she called them the "revolution band." And really, there was no reason to correct her.

Shore Leave appeared in a documentary on this subject alongside Bill Stevenson (Black Flag, The Descendents) and Steve Terreberry. Watch it online for free. Listen to their music and buy their album to support them here. Fight the power with Carolyn on Twitter and Instagram.

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