Hip-hop is free, like rock n roll we can talk about our lives, what were thinking about, what we feel, said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. The Chinese education system doesnt encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. Theres not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.
While American rappers like Eminem and Q-Tip have been popular in China since the 1990s, home-grown rap didnt start gaining momentum until a decade later. The group Yin Tsang (its name means hidden), one of the pioneers of Chinese rap, is made up of global nomads: a Beijinger, a Chinese-Canadian and two Americans.
The big change was when rappers started writing verse in Chinese, so people could understand, said Zhong Cheng, 27, a member of the group who was raised in Canada but born in Beijing, where he returned in 1997. Before that, kids listened to hip-hop in English but maybe less than 1 percent could actually begin to understand.
Yin Tsangs first hit was In Beijing, from the bands 2003 debut album, Serve the People (Scream Records); the title is a twist on an old political slogan. It sets a melody played on a thousand-year-old Chinese fiddle called the Erhu against a hip-hop beat that brings Run D.M.C. to mind. The song, an insiders look at Beijings sights and sounds, took the underground music scene by storm, finding its way into karaoke parlors, the Internet and even the playlist of a radio station in Beijing.
Theres a lot of cats that can rap back home, said Jeremy Johnston, a member of the group and the son of a United States Air Force captain. But theres not a lot of cats that can rap in Chinese. Mr. Johnston, 33, moved to Beijing in the late 90s because, he said, it was the thing nobody else was doing.
Since In Beijing, the Chinese hip-hop scene has quickly grown. Hiphop.cn, a Web site listing events and links to songs, started with just a few hundred members in 2007; in 2008 it received millions of views, according to one of the sites directors.
Dozens of hip-hop clubs have opened up in cities across the country, and thousands of raps and music videos by Chinese M.C.s are spreading over the Internet. But making Chinese hip-hop is still a relatively profitless and often subversive activity. Some Chinese rappers address what they see as the countrys most glaring injustices. As Wong Li, a 24-year-old from Dongbei, says in one of his freestyle raps:
If you dont have a nice car or cash
You wont get no honeys
Dont you know China is only a heaven for rich old men
You know this world is full of corruption
Babies die from drinking milk.
He often performs in a downtown Beijing nightclub and uses Chinese proverbs in his lyrics to create social commentary. Mr. Wong, who became interested in hip-hop when he heard Public Enemy in the mid-90s, said rapping helps him deal with bitterness that comes with realizing he is one of the millions left out of Chinas economic boom.
