WP3 (edited)| Growing Flowers without Roots: American-Educated Chinese and Their Hip Hop

“Do you freestyle?” In 2017, talent show “The Rap of China” made headlines along with judge Kris Wu’s famous phrase, bringing hip hop into the public spotlight in China. At the same time, aside from making a foreign music genre popular in China, the era of cultural exchange is also seeing the flooding of Chinese students in the place where Hip Hop originated — the United States.

After reaching its peak in 2017, the hype around Chinese Hip Hop subsided, while another group of rappers has been on the upswing: American-educated Chinese (留学生, “liuxuesheng”).

“I want to grow flowers on a land where I don’t have roots.”

The clash of Eastern and Western culture has allowed liuxuesheng musicians to mesh a completely American music genre, Hip Hop, with their own Chinese voice. Liuxuesheng rapper PO8 said, “I want to grow flowers on a land where I don’t have roots.”

Liuxuesheng hip hop is the embodiment of liuxuesheng themselves, coming to a foreign country with the hope of borrowing knowledge, constantly reflecting on the home country, creating their own values on a land where they don’t have roots.

Their influence radiates back to China, the place where they came from. With their living experience in the States, they tend to look at China with a new perspective and provide an outside-in reflection. On a larger scale, in a world where the notion of “Chinese” was previously divided between “Chinese nationals” and “overseas Chinese,” liuxuesheng and their Hip Hop serve as a bridge that connects the two identities and reimagines a global and united “Chinese”.

Chapter I: The Healing Power

“Since when did liuxuesheng become an identity?” I’ve seen people being sarcastic on Weibo. The Chinese public denies liuxuesheng as a community because they think liuxuesheng is an unpatriotic name that singles the students out from Chinese nationals. But paradoxically, some of them also refuse to accept liuxuesheng into the Chinese society and call them “jia yang gui zi” (lit. “fake western ghosts”). But why does the name liuxuesheng necessarily have to be imposed with a negative, political tone and thus not to be recognized?

The clashing cultural experiences in China and the U.S. and differing public opinions bring liuxuesheng fractured identities, leaving them wondering: Who am I? Where do I actually belong?

In search of the answer to these questions, liuxuesheng rappers have found their own space in Hip Hop. A lot of their music is the tale and commentary on their overseas lives, which was never found in other Chinese music genres. For example, you can barely tell that a pop singer is a liuxuesheng just from their music. During an interview, a member of liuxuesheng rap group Straight Fire Gang (hereinafter abbreviated as SFG) said that a third of their listeners are liuxuesheng and it’s probably because they feel relatable to the group’s stories. Just read the name of a few liuxuesheng Hip Hop tracks: “爬墙少年 These Kids Climbing Walls” “慢慢升空 Lifting Off Slowly” “倒时差 Jet Lag” which all explicitly highlight a liuxuesheng experience. As a liuxuesheng myself, whenever I hear in their music even just a relatable word, such as the name of an American city, I feel a nod to me because such stories are so rare in Chinese music.

The rappers are making a statement to the public that liuxuesheng is an identity worth recognizing for their unique perspective. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 23 Chinese undergraduate students studying at a US research public university, Zhao (2019) demonstrated that American-educated Chinese have a heightened sense of national identity and patriotism contrary to conventional wisdom. Liuxuesheng Hip Hop shows great thoughtfulness into the artists’ transnational identity and what it means to be an overseas Chinese national. For example, the song “udA” presents the listeners with an in-depth discussion of how the rappers, as liuxuesheng, understand the world outside and inside the “wall”, concluding that although they might be dazzled or disappointed by either side, “you decide all.”

Instead of being westernized by American music, liuxuesheng rappers are actually using Hip Hop to highlight their own experience, explore their own problems, and heal their own wounds. Growing up in China, liuxuesheng have been shaped by Chinese values which are contradicted with new concepts encountered in the States. The Chinese domestic media have shown them all kinds of novel western things, while their overseas experience takes off the media filter and disillusions them. All these fractured identities and chaos have been taking up too much space in their heads, and they used Hip Hop to clear these thoughts and paint a whole self-portrait. Liuxuesheng Hip Hop essentially becomes a metaphor for liuxuesheng themselves, experiencing both sides of the wall, emerging with a distinct image.

Chapter II: The Reflective Power

Current mainstream Chinese Hip Hop can be roughly divided into three categories: the American “money flexing” style, exemplified by Higher Brothers, the Chinese “jianghu” style, represented by GAI, and the Pop style (Pop clothed with Hip Hop), typified by… most Chinese rappers. But no one returned to the origin of Hip Hop — to explore one’s own identity, to discuss ordinary people’s life, and to express anger and confusion towards society. Liuxuesheng came along to fill the gap. Enabled by the cathartic and explicit nature of Hip Hop, liuxuesheng rappers used their lyrics to explore Chinese national problems and their national identity. With the rise of China on the world stage, the new generation of liuxuesheng is believed to have more cultural confidence when interacting with western counterparts and more likely to develop an egalitarian attitude towards western countries than do the predecessors (Tian 2010). Liuxuesheng Hip Hop has a lot to do with expressing Asian pride and tearing off the “sick man of Asia” label.

Beat up Asian when your service is already sh*t?

Why don’t you give steak to the rest, give us porridge b*tch?

If an Asian man got a gun would you be nervous?

If Migos can say “chink” what about vice versa?

In their song “To United Airlines”, SFG takes a strong stance on criticizing the 2017 United Express Flight 3411 incident where an Asian was injured while being dragged off a fully-boarded airplane, expressing their anger in the unfair treatment of Asians in the U.S.

With the nation victimized historically and developing at warp speed in modern times, the Chinese national identity is complicated and self-conflicting. The reflection on the Chinese national identity has thus become a significant theme of liuxuesheng Hip Hop. In SFG’s song “The Crowd” they called the Chinese public out for being mindless and going with the crowd, indulging themselves in the feast of internet trolling. In the song “Mom Please Beat Me One More Time”, PO8 reflected on the twisted dynamics of Chinese family education, accusing some parents of “sitting by the Mahjong table and waiting for their kids to give them a miracle.” I’m amazed by how a completely original American music genre is localized in China to address local issues beyond the genre’s cool looks. In the end, no matter how much style and flow we borrow from American Hip Hop, what bothers us is still our own problems.

Liuxuesheng rappers are trying to define Chinese Hip Hop, especially what Hip Hop means to Chinese nationals. The Hip Hop hype in China is introduced by China’s opening and development of technology after thirty years of “closed-doorism”, and is enjoyed mostly by urban youth in big cities (Liu 2010). This creates a huge class difference between Chinese rappers and audience, who are mostly clustered in the middle class, and those of American gangster rap, who usually originate from the lower class. In the introduction to their 2018 album “These Kids Climbing Walls”, SFG wrote that they’re trying to address the problems bothering their major audience who are rooted in the middle of the society, just like themselves. In this album, the rap group used fourteen tracks to comment on various “walls” faced by the typical Chinese middle-class youth, signaling liuxuesheng rappers’ leap from addressing the liuxuesheng life to resonating with the general Chinese youth. In defining what Hip Hop means to China, their music has also become the epitome of their generation, a historical record that reflects the life and psychological conflicts of the post-90s.

With the promotion of hit talent shows, Chinese Hip Hop has emerged from underground, but at the same time, capital intervention and local audience have pushed it towards the Pop side. With this trend, outward reflection into the black Hip Hop culture becomes more important than ever. This year, PO8 released an EP “The Tragic West”, composed of three songs, each with the perspective of a black archetype: the homeless, the famous musician, the power elite, narrating the American black lives with a dramatic tone.

“I don’t want our audience to be ignorant of how Hip Hop came into being and not knowing the social and cultural factors behind it,” PO8 said in an interview, “That would just be weird.” Localization is necessary, but we cannot celebrate a type of music without celebrating its history and the people who created it.

I’m glad to see that in the beginning stages of mainstream Chinese Hip Hop, the musicians are already starting to reflect on both sides of this cultural mesh. Liuxuesheng rappers are playing an indispensable role in this reflective process, offering their music as a bridge that reaches back to both their own hometown and the hometown of Hip Hop culture.

Chapter III: The Uniting Power

Historically, national and linguistic differences have created a deep divide between Chinese nationals and overseas Chinese. During the Cultural Revolution, overseas Chinese used to be seen with suspicion because of their allegedly bourgeois background and overseas connections (Chang 1980), and the sense of “othering” is still left in contemporary Chinese ideology. In such a monolingual country like China, people tend to use language, instead of culture, as an identifier for ethnicity — If you speak Chinese, you are Chinese; if you don’t, you are a foreigner.

The cultural difference is exemplified by music tastes. While typical Chinese pop music, such as ballad, is popular among young people in China, they’re nowhere to be found in the American music market, even among young Chinese Americans. Unlike Korea, whose pop music is characterized by English mixing in lyrics to appeal to a global audience (Jin & Ryoo 2012), the Chinese music industry highly relies on its domestic market. Chinese pop music is dominantly in the Chinese language and draws on specific cultural references, and a large amount of them are exclusively on Chinese music platforms.

However, liuxuesheng Hip Hop has shed a different light on the current scene. Usually written in both English and Chinese, the music provides access for both Chinese and overseas Chinese (although their audience is still dominantly Chinese nationals because Chinese-English bilingualism is more common in China than in America). Liuxuesheng’s experience is also in between these two groups and is relatable to both. Just like it’s hard to lump liuxuesheng into either Chinese nationals or overseas Chinese, their music is also uncategorizable into a certain country’s market, particularly because most liuxuesheng rappers are independent musicians not signed with any record label. This vagueness highlights their role as a bridge, not belonging to either side, but reaching both.

Although the Chinese lyrics might still be a barrier, music isn’t. Liuxuesheng are using their stories and Hip Hop to tell all the Chinese over the world that they’re not that different after all, they share a similar culture, background, and that there’s a lot to communicate.

To explain the origins of nationalism, Anderson (1983) defined a nation as an “imagined community” which was formed through the distribution of print media, bringing geographically dispersed people together by a common, abstract idea of a nation. As the digital age replaces print media, liuxuesheng Hip Hop is essentially reimagining the idea of “Chinese” through music, mending the historical divide, and bringing together a united community of global Chinese.

Beyond the music: “You decide all.”

Explaining the meaning of their song “udA”, SFG and PO8 said that the word is “Vpn” when it’s turned upside down, and “udA” is also the initials of the song’s bridge “You decide all.” SFG and PO8 didn’t make their argument too obvious and instead sewed it in the figurative lyrics, but the meaning got through: Music isn’t preachy, nor should any artist. They have told us so many stories about their lives and have expressed so much of their anger, confusion, and gratitude through their Hip Hop. And now it’s for you to decide all.

The moment you click on that VPN button, the moment you board that international airline, the moment you set foot on that foreign land, you’re about to encounter new ideologies, question your previous beliefs, and discover a new self. Experience everything that are about to come, but don’t simply accept or refuse. PO8 said, “I want to grow flowers on a land where I don’t have roots.” The second part of that quote is “instead of being held hostage by any form of ‘correctness’.”

References

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Chang, C. 1980. Overseas Chinese in China’s Policy. The China Quarterly, 82, 281–303. doi:10.1017/S0305741000012376

Jin, Dal Yong; Ryoo, Woongjae. December 13, 2012. “Critical Interpretation of Hybrid K-Pop: The Global-Local Paradigm of English Mixing in Lyrics”. Popular Music and Society. 37 (2): 113–131. doi:10.1080/03007766.2012.731721. ISSN 0300–7766.

Liu, X. 2010. “Across the Borders: Hip Hop’s Influence on Chinese Youth Culture.” Southeast review of Asian studies 32: 146–. Print.

Tian, F. 2010. “The History and Current Status of Chinese International Students in the U.S.” Tongzhou gongjin. (in Chinese).

Zhao, K. 2019. Made in contemporary China: exploring the national identity of Chinese international undergraduate students in the US, Studies in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2019.1615046

Interview with Straight Fire Gang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao8X99LULBA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnOidJ6lXuI

Interview with PO8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSpJY2v7OBM&t=374s