Banding together

Southern China's Jiulian Zhenren beats off competition from nine other music groups to win a major contest, Chen Nan reports.

After a five-hour bus journey and a four-hour flight, four young men made their first trip to Beijing from their hometown, Lianping county, Guangdong province. Instead of visiting tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, they walked into a live house venue located in downtown Beijing, where they were going to perform the next evening.

The band, named Jiulian Zhenren (after a mountain in their hometown), comprising guitarist and singer-songwriter Ouyang Haopeng, trumpet player-singer Mai Haipeng, drummer Wu Feng and bassist Ye Wanli, was among the 10 finalists of the 2018 Original Band Contest, which was held at Tango Club in Beijing on Nov 10.

Organized by Taiwan-headquartered Rock Records and Xiami, one of the leading music streaming platforms in China, the contest, which kicked off this April, attracted more than 500 Chinese bands to apply.

After a four-hour battle, in which horns sounded the musical attack, riffs were exchanged and percussive blasts were sent forth, they stood victorious. To the victor, as is often said, go the spoils, which, in this case, was the opportunity to record their own songs signed to the Rock Records label, including collaborations with veteran producers as well as promotion of the finished product - a prize worth 1 million yuan ($144,000).

"This is our second time performing together onstage. Five months ago, we performed about 20 minutes in a live house venue in Shenzhen," says Ouyang, 26. "It's an incredible experience for us."

Two of their songs they performed were in the Hakka dialect, one of which is titled Yeyou Shen, literally translated as "nocturnal wanderer", after a mythic character in Shanhaijing, or The Classic of Mountains and Seas, a collection of legends written more than 4,000 years ago.

In the Hakka dialect, yeyou shen refers to "those who fool around and do nothing", Ouyang says. He wrote the song based on a real event that happened about 10 years ago, when one of his schoolmates was stabbed by a hooligan wandering around outside the school.