China’s rock legends will gather in Shenyang on the 16th of this month for a three-day concert commemorating the 20th anniversary of rock music’s arrival on the national stage. To properly observe such a landmark, the country’s media outlets have been featuring retrospectives on the history of domestic rock, dusting off stories they ran two years ago during the “Where are they now?” commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the debut of the Magic Stone Trio – Dou Wei, He Yong, and Zhang Chu – or interviewing more recent quasi-mainstream artists. Other commentators are marking the occasion by running pieces asking “Is Chinese rock dead?” or “Who will save Chinese rock?”, more than a few of them using Dou Wei’s recent torching of a reporter’s car as a central metaphor. Typical mainstream rock journalism, in other words…[full text]