In the spin and swing of a vinyl revival

However, last year, as the company celebrated the 110th anniversary of its founding, it launched a project to revive vinyl production. The company has imported a production line from Germany that marks the start of the company's vinyl production, and it has set up a vinyl records factory in Shanghai that has a complete production line.

"We are optimistic about the physical records market in China though it will take some time to recapture the glory years of the 1990s," Hou says. "The completion of the factory shows that China's vinyl record production, which originated in Shanghai in the 1920s, is ready to take off again in the same city."

According to Nielsen Music's sales report for 2018, 16.8 million vinyl records were sold in North America over the year, 15 percent more than the year before.

A vinyl revival in China started in 2005 and then in 2012, says Zheng Yu, a record shop owner in Beijing. The boom is the result of a commercial rediscovery and appreciation of vinyl records among collectors and record stores, he says.

"Life is improving all the time in China and some listeners have realized that the format gives off a better sound. It's not only old fans who grew up buying and listening to vinyl but younger listeners, too. They've grown up with the internet but see vinyls as a kind of tangible entertainment and as arresting works of art."

Unlike Wang, Zheng, 37, runs his record store, Fusion Music, outside the Eastern Fourth Ring Road. Despite the location, far from downtown, Fusion Music says it has a firm fan base with more than 80,000 vinyls in the two-story store.

Zheng, also a Beijing native, says his passion for record shops was kindled when he was a child. He graduated from the Communication University of China, majoring in English, in 2003, and opened his record store in the same year. He also runs a shop on the e-commerce platform Taobao and sells more than 1,000 albums a month, he says.