It's not just all pop, you know

In 1994 Ou, then 23, performed as a bassist at the Chinese Rock Power concert at the Hong Kong Arena. Bringing together He Yong, Dou Wei, the former lead vocalist of Black Panther, Zhang Chu and Tang Dynasty, the concert was the first showcase for musicians from the mainland to perform in Hong Kong. It stunned Hong Kong audiences and created the momentum for a wave of rock music to wash across the country.

"Looking back, those legendary musicians and their works are still inspiring for the young bands," Ou says. "They shaped the golden era of China's rock music. The band members are different people and enjoy different music styles. They come together and contribute to the band as one person. That's the most interesting part of being in a band."

Then with the birth of Modern Sky, one of the country's biggest indie labels, which former rock singer-songwriter Shen Lihui founded in 1997 in Beijing as a way to distribute both his own and his friends' music, more and more indie bands emerged in the country while developing their own unique styles. The punk-rock band New Pants, the pop-rock band Queen Sea Big Shark and the heavy rock band Miserable Faith were among the most-watched bands then.

The company is now home to more than 100 indie bands and has expanded into the United States and Britain by signing Western bands. It also promotes one of the country's most popular outdoor musical events, the Strawberry Music Festival, which was launched in Beijing by the company in 2009 and has since expanded into dozens of Chinese cities.

"The first reason to form a band was to attract more girls," says the singer-songwriter Gao Xiaosong, who formed his own band in 1990 while he was studying radar engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "But the most important thing was that when I learned to play guitar I wanted to explore more beautiful sounds of the instruments, so I was eager to find people who shared my interests and who wanted to play music together with me."

Gao is credited with creating a music genre during the 1990s called "campus folk music", which won a large fan base in China then with poetic lyrics about youth, romance and friendship, accompanied by guitar.

One of the major contributors to indie music' development in the country is the emerging live house venues and small bars, which offer the indie rock bands stages to perform.