Rock music venues work together to beat the blues

One participant is Zhou Ke, 34, who owns a live house club in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region. He launched the club, named Tibet Time, on June 18, 2020. It cost him over 10,000 yuan ($1,573) to travel from Lhasa to Hefei to attend the forum, where he met many veteran indie musicians and live house owners.

"I worked as an art teacher before I traveled to Lhasa in 2020. I met my partner Wei Daifu, who is a street artist in Lhasa, and we decided to open the club," says Zhou, adding that there are about seven to eight indie bands performing in his club, which couldn't support the club financially. The main income comes from drinks and food sold in the club.

"I met lots of people in the forum who are seniors of the business. I am glad to learn about their experiences of running live house venues and most importantly, I made friends with them and they gave me lots of great advice," says Zhou. "For many indie bands, Lhasa is far but I can tell you that there are many indie music lovers who are looking forward to enjoying live music."

According to Zhu, China has about 100 live house venues, not only in bigger cities but also in third- and fourth-tier cities.

One of the best known live house venues in China is School, tucked away in a narrow hutong of downtown Beijing. It has become a must-visit site for indie music lovers from around the country.

Co-founded by Beijing native Liu Fei, a former performance organizer, School opened on April 24, 2010, the last Saturday of the month. The stage was about 8 meters wide and the venue was packed with people.

The venue is known for offering fledgling Chinese indie bands opportunities. Some of the bands which launched their careers at School have become famous today, such as Penicillin, who started playing in front of fewer than 10 people and now they have a stable fan base with about 100,000 followers on their Sina Weibo account.

Since 2013, bands formed by students at universities have been able to perform at School every Thursday. In 2017 and 2018, School released two compilation albums with songs performed by those campus bands.