In the spin and swing of a vinyl revival

Wang, in his mid-40s, was introduced to music by his parents, who played vinyl records at home. One of his favorite singer-songwriters is the Chinese rock musician Cui Jian, and like many music lovers of his generation, Wang enjoyed going to record shops. Sound quality and nostalgia are what draws him to vinyls, he says.

For many people it has long appeared that traditional physical records such as vinyl and cassettes were on the edge of extinction in the face of online streaming brought by the internet revolution.

Between 2002 and 2005 in particular, the fall in sales of CDs and other types of musical recordings in China was precipitous, mostly as the result of piracy and online streaming, and the customer base for record shops evaporated as people stopped buying physical records.

And it is not just small independent record stores that have struggled to stay afloat.

In the 1990s China Record Group Co Ltd, the biggest and oldest record company in the country, sold about 10 million records, such as pop, folk, and classical music by Chinese singers and orchestras, says Hou Jun, the company's vice-president. In the early 2000s the number dropped to no more than 10,000 copies, and the huge change in the way music was consumed led to many Chinese record companies folding.

In the late 1990s China Record Group Co Ltd closed down its last vinyl production line because of the decline of the market for physical records.