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‘Jianghu flow’: examining cultural resonance in The Rap of China

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CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2020.1757039

‘Jianghu flow’: examining cultural resonance in The Rap of

China
Yupei Zhaoa and Zhongxuan Linb
a
College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; bSchool of Journalism
and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The online reality show The Rap of China has become ingrained in Hip-hop; cultural resonance;
Chinese popular culture. However, since 18 January 2018, the hip- China; digital culture; youth
hop subculture in China has been censored by the State
Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
This study aims to analyse the cultural resonance of Chinese hip-
hop, and to identify how hip-hop reflects the changing contours of
ideology in Chinese digital youth culture. The study applies critical
discourse analysis to lyrics of rap songs performed on The Rap of
China by the show’s co-champions: PG-One and Gai; it conducts 52
semi-structured interviews with audience members to investigate
how they interpret these lyrics, and presents a comparative analysis
of PG-One’s and Gai’s raps on that basis. The findings suggest that
Chinese hip-hop culture has its roots in the hybridized ‘real’ which is
a globalized hybrid cultural product that modifies the Western
genre of hip-hop with distinct Chinese notions of conflicting
authenticity, centred around the representations of ‘jianghu flow’
with loyalty, struggle, and compromise.

Introduction
The Rap of China (Zhong guo you xi ha) is a popular but controversial Chinese reality music
show funded, produced, and broadcast by online streaming service iQiyi, which is the
largest online video platform in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Wallstreet News,
December 27, 2017). The first season of the show spent more than 200 million renminbi
(equivalent of 28 million USD) in production fees in 2017 and attracted 3 billion hits and
thus huge audiences (Flew, Ryan, and Su 2019), approaching the highest viewing num-
bers of any online-only video programmes thus far (Wan 2017; Liu and Zhang 2019). The
performance fees of the show’s famous rappers increased significantly, from RMB 100–500
to over RMB 100, 000 per episode (Sina News, 22 October, 2018). The success of the show
has been an unexpected landmark of Chinese youth subculture, with the popularization
of songs about how Chinese rap will ‘rewrite the era’ (看中国嘻哈如何改写时代) by
rappers like AKA.imp. Invited guest Hui Zi modified a common Chinese refrain about
China still seeking international respect as follows: ‘let the world see China possesses rap’
(让全世界都知道中国有嘻哈). Songs also commonly feature the recurring motifs of

CONTACT Zhongxuan Lin lzhongx55@sina.com

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

‘keeping it real’ and ‘peace and love’, phrases also used in spoken conversation from
contestants and the audience (Zhang and Tang 2019). Drawing on comments from
rappers themselves, some media commentators (e.g. NetEasy, 29 November 2018) have
referred to the stylistic mix found in The Rap of China in terms of ‘jianghu flow’ (江湖风).
The term jianghu translates to ‘walking along rivers and lakes’ and is derived from the
ancient Chinese literary work History as a Mirror, which dates from the Song Dynasty
(960–1279) (Lin 2015; Si 2016). Jianghu has been further described as ‘bottom society . . . is
untransparent and lacking of clearly established rules . . . including fictitious kinship net-
work as for organization style, and hierarchical and exclusive yiqi (义气, code of brother-
hood)’ (Li 2011, 39). Jianghu is a resonate and flexible cultural frame deeply rooted in
Chinese history and traditional culture, presenting themes like struggle, conflict, solidar-
ity, and loyalty.
This article analyses the cultural resonance of the reality music programmeThe Rap of
China and investigates how jianghu flow on this hip-hop show reflects social and ideolo-
gical meanings attached to hip-hop in Chinese-language contexts. In particular, it argues
that jianghu flow communicates a distinctly Chinese notion of authenticity that helps to
localize hip hop in a regional context. To explore these issues, we examine the lyrics of The
Rap of China ‘champions’ in conjunction with data from semi-structured interviews
conducted with members of the program’s audience, focusing on viewers’ responses to
these lyrics and their impressions of two particular co-champions, Gai and PG One.

Hip-hop subculture and (in) China

Hip-hop earned its place as a new lingua franca of global youth because it focused on
language as culture, science, practice, art, disguise, play and power. It is an impossible
ideology that unifies young people across racial and national boundaries while honoring
their diversity, complexity, intellect, and artistry (Morgan 2016, 145)

Hip-hop is a translocal subculture that originated in New York’s impoverished African-

American South Bronx neighbourhood in the early 1970s, with four main ‘roles’ correspond-
ing to distinct forms of creativity: the MC, breakdancer, graffiti artist, and disc-jockey
(Martinez 1997; Rose 1991; Beer 2014; Bradley and Dubois 2010). The original contexts for
hip-hop are reflected by the many non-English-language rappers outside the United States
who ‘code-switch’, alternating between verses in English and languages other than English,
and in some instances this is used to signal affiliation with or respect for the US lineages of
hip-hop (Kruse 2016). In practice, however, this leads to a discursive struggle for authenticity
‘between localized hip-hop scenes and global hip-pop norms and practices’ (Flew, Ryan,
and Su 2019, 97). Authenticity is a central ideology of global hip-hop, reflecting its genesis
and subsequent reproduction as music from the streets (Flew, Ryan, and Su 2019; Kruse
2016). However, the term ‘authenticity’ is highly contested. For instance, some claim that
authenticity is a strategic action against commercialization or fetishization (Johnson 2000;
McLeod 2012), while others have argued that ‘keeping it real’ can be understood as being
true to one’s own experiences or representing one’s own culture, and is designed to
‘express the difference and significance of youth’ (Marshall 2006, 202; see also Low, Tan,
and Celemencki 2013). Recently, Kruse (2016) depicted ‘keeping it real’ as a term evoking
the expression of individual creativity, revealing hip-hop as a multifarious, fluid entity in its
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 3

critical concerns of authenticity. The struggle for ‘authenticity’ swept through Western and
Eastern European countries, and then became germane to South Korean and Chinese hip-
hop (Bradley and Dubois 2010; Hare and Baker 2017; Fung 2008), particularly for Chinese
hip-hop, which was created in conditions far removed from the socio-economic context
where the genre originated (Fung 2008; Liu 2014).
The emergence of hip-hop in China is marked by three key events. The first was the
appearance of Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou (周杰伦), the representative creator of
Western-style Chinese pop since 2002. Chou not only successfully brought Western
musical forms such as hip-hop (and his own approach to jazz) to Chinese audiences,
but also successfully transformed himself from a ‘foreign’ singer into a Chinese artist when
he later evoked the national culture of the PRC (Fung 2008, 71–73). Fung (2008) investi-
gated Jay’s strategic cultural production through his representation as an icon and ‘cool’
image-maker, as well as through his marketing strategies to align with the political
agendas of the State Council in mainland China. For instance, Jay’s popular song Dong
Feng Po was performed in an R&B format and integrated with Chinese melodies featuring
traditional instrumentation with the Chinese pipa. While performing Dong Feng Po, Jay
dressed in Western hip-hop style, wearing a wide-sleeved shirt with loose pants mixed
with a Chinese robe bespangled with shiny golden dragons. The second event was the
emergence of music idol Wang Lihong, a Taiwanese artist born in the US who creatively
adapted rap/hip-hop and rock elements and incorporated them into Chinese-language
songs like Descendants of the Dragon, expressing Chinese patriotism and creating what he
calls a ‘Chinked-out’ music genre. Although drawing on a racist term (‘Chinked’), Cheng
(2019, 64–66) suggests that this term has been ‘reclaimed’ through Wang’s innovative
style of rock and rap. The third event was marked by the commentary of a journalist in the
Global Times newspaper (8 January 2018) criticizing the Internet reality music show The
Rap of China, saying it was culturally inappropriate to interpret the African-American hip-
hop culture, and that ‘it’s as ridiculous as seeing someone sing about his “gangster life” in
the big cities of China’. In the midst of such disputes, we offer further examination of
cultural resonance to understand the ideological and social contexts of Chinese hip-hop
culture.

Contextualizing The Rap of China

Media in the PRC is shaped by an elaborate legal and regulated network run by organiza-
tions such as the Central Publicity Department, the Cyberspace Administration of China,
the Ministry of Culture, and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and
Television (SAPPRFT). Through this network, the government seeks to promote ‘core
socialist values’ as politically correct (Keane 2013) and to consolidate a ‘positive energy’
(正能量) policy. In June 2017, SAPPRFT issued the ‘General Rules for Auditing Online
Audio-Visual Programs’, under which cultural products in China are evaluated by state
bodies – and in some contexts, censored – rather than by commercial or other criteria
(Sohu, 30 June 2017). Partly for this reason, even after the earliest Chinese hip-hop became
successful in Beijing and Shanghai around the late 1990s, it remained relatively margin-
alized (Zou 2019; Song 2017). Nevertheless, Chinese hip-hop has slowly proliferated into
marginalized diverse regional hip-hop genres across China (Table 1), commonly featuring
4 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

Table 1. Representative rap clubs in China.

Year Representative
Location Club (changpai) Representative rapper established songs
Dongbei Wurenzu Gem, young mai, Lianhua 2009 Chongpo (《冲破》)
Beijing Danzhen Beijing Sabre, siweite, hedan 2016 Yixiafanshang (《以下犯上》)
Longjinshuochang Sunxiao, Sunxu 2007 Gui (《归》)
Chengdu Shuochang Xiedi, ty, higher brother 2010 laozimingtianbushangban (《老子明
huiguan 天不上班》)
Chongqing GOSH Gai, bridge, L4WUDU 2012 Wuduyehua (《雾都夜话》)
Xi’an honghuahui Danke, Beibei, PG ONE 2011 Shengdanye (《圣诞夜》)
NOUS Paikete, CreamD, xinba 2010 ganbeijiuganbei (《干杯就干杯》)
Shanghai huosiren Falao,yanghesu, fukesi 2016 《活死人2018Cypher》
Changsha Sup music C-Block, KEY, xiaopang 2012 Guanjun(《冠军》)
Yunnan kaishanguai MCfei, cypher, 2009 Time
xiaoqinglong

rapping that mixes Cantonese, Hakka, Chongqing, Mandarin, and/or English references, in
keeping with local sensibilities.
In this political context, The Rap of China was promoted as an untraditional, unex-
pected, ‘edge-ball’ online programming phenomenon (Flew, Ryan, and Su 2019), in
a wider context where hip-hop is perceived as an underground subculture in China
(Song 2017; Zhang and Tang 2019). The edge-ball strategy refers to the approach adopted
by many variety shows in China (Ting and Hui 2018) to ‘test the limits of what is admissible
within what remains a tightly governed Chinese broadcast media framework’ (Flew, Ryan,
and Su 2019, 95). iQiyi, the funder and producer of The Rap of China, has played the key
role in emergent screen industries in successfully challenging the boundaries of tradi-
tional state-owned media in China (Dong and Pu 2019; Wan 2017), relying on a post-
broadcast model of media (Lotz, Lobato, and Thomas 2018), employing commercial ‘hit
potential’ (流量) celebrities (Liu and Zhang 2019), and producing a creative niche sub-
culture (Zhang and Tang 2019).
The Rap of China was won by two co-champions, PG One and Gai, whose songs have
been shared by fan communities numbering in the millions, coalescing on the popular
Chinese social media site Weibo (Zhang and Tang 2019). However, PG One’s music was
quickly banned by the authorities after his victory, who judged his lyrics to be ‘gossipy and
unhealthy’ and to have ‘poor-taste content’, fetishizing, womanizing, and recreational drugs
(People Daily, 5 January 2018). This censorship of PG One has prompted a careful examina-
tion of the entire hip-hop subculture in China and broader censorship of the genre by
SAPPRFT to curb ‘excessive entertainment’ and ‘vulgarity’ (China Daily, 19 January 2018).
Hip-hop in China ultimately fell afoul of regulations for ‘spreading content that was
obscene, violent, criminal or harmful to social morality’ (People Daily, 5 January 2018).
Consequently, SAPPRFT issued a directive to the media to withdraw promotion of artists
associated with hip-hop, as well as those with tattoos or signs of the ironic nihilism inherent
in ‘funeral customs and tradition’ (sang wenhua) (China Daily, 19 January 2018). In response,
the mood has shifted from celebrations of a burgeoning subcultural form to widespread
concern about the survival of hip-hop tout court (Zou 2019).
Furthermore, The Rap of China has drawn public attention and commentary regarding
its perceived inauthenticity as unreal Chinese hip-hop, especially because the program
uses a format similar to that first developed in South Korea, and has been strongly
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 5

oriented towards Taiwanese judges and hip-hop styles. In the former instance, the South
Korean government adopted a ‘cultural diplomacy’ strategy to reduce its vulnerability to
economic shocks (especially after the Asian financial crisis in 1997), and has successfully
exported Korean pop culture into neighbouring countries (see Hare and Baker 2017). In
this context, some online tabloid journalists (e.g. Lady Face and Sohu News) accused The
Rap of China of appropriating features of South Korea’s televised rap competition Show
Me the Money, including its format and aesthetic design, without permission (Lady Face,
9 August, 2018). The producer of the latter accused iQiyi of copyright infringement,
although thus far no lawsuit has ensued (Sina News, 26 July, 2017). The second critique
of The Rap of China is that the program is overly influenced by Taiwanese rap culture
(Flew, Ryan, and Su 2019). Three of the four judges on the show have been Taiwanese: the
Taiwanese-American pop star Will Pan, Taiwanese rapper MC Hotdog, and rock singer
Chang Chen-yue, who is indigenous Amis Taiwanese (the fourth judge was Chinese-
Canadian pop star Kris Wu). This influence contributed to NetEase (4 April 2017), one of
the most popular online newsmedia sites, to complain that ‘the judges selected by the
producer are qualified when considering the audience rating and potential popularity of
the show after broadcasting, but it is a pity three of the four judges are Taiwanese, even
though we all know Taiwan does not have enough funding to produce the show.’
However, such criticisms disregard how the long-term popularity of artists and celebrities
from Taiwan and Hong Kong has attributed to a wide acceptance and embrace of these
artists’ ‘hybridized’ styles in mainland China (Chew and Mo 2019; Yeh 2018). Taiwanese
rap’s hybridized development has been inspired by local strains of lia”m-kua,1 an art
carried by the Hoklo or Hokkien people who emigrated from Fujian and Guangdong
provinces in mainland China in the seventeenth century (Lin 2009; Schweig 2014).
Combined with the globalized sounds of American rap (Schweig 2014, 44), early
Taiwanese-American rappers like Luo Baiji, the Taiwanese group MC Hotdog, and
Taiwanese pop singer Yu Chengqin developed a distinctive Taiwanese rap culture that
was promoted in mainland China in the early 1990s (Shi 2019). These early developments
in Chinese-language hip hop provided creative momentum for ‘local’ hip hop styles to
emerge across the region (de Kloet 2010). More recently, some representative Taiwan
artists, such as Jay Chou and Wang Lihong, have come to be accepted in China as
archetypes of hybridized hip-hop forms (Fung 2008).
In the context of these disputes around authenticity, The Rap of China navigates the
two imperatives to ‘keep it real’ and to support the ‘positive energy’ policy (正能量)
(‘peace and love’). For the remainder of this article, we want to ask: what rhetorical
strategies underpin the recurring motif ‘keeping it real’ within The Rap of China? More
broadly, which ideologies are constructed in the lyrics, performances, and public pro-
nouncements of successful performers on the program?

Jianghu flow: loyalty, struggle, and compromise

This research draws from semi-structured interviews to investigate how hip-hop lyrics
reflect the changing contours of ideology in The Rap of China. First, the lyrics from all 143
pieces performed during the 12-episode inaugural season of The Rap of China (June to
September 2017) were collated, coded thematically and analysed relationally across the
corpus using critical discourse analysis. Online comments posted by rappers and audience
6 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

members on the largest Chinese social media site, Weibo, were also analysed via
a hashtag search for ‘The Rap of China’, and these comments underpinned the design
of the interview questions. Lastly, 52 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted
to examine why audience members followed The Rap of China, how they interpreted it,
and how they perceived it in relation to Chinese hip-hop culture. The semi-structured
research questions focused on issues around authenticity and the dual expectations of
‘keeping it real’ and of maintaining alignment with mainstream Chinese cultural and
political values. Participants were recruited from online fan communities via a private
invitation to participate in the research project.
Our findings demonstrate that Chinese rappers, in particular the two champions of The
Rap of China, navigate the complexity of ‘keeping it real’ by adopting or rejecting globally
and locally cultural resonant codes through embodied attitudes towards their brothers or
comrades (xiongdi 兄弟) and enemies in jianghu. The lyrics and most interviewees
identified three distinct features of the jianghu rap flow that associated it with local
notions of authenticity: loyalty, struggle, and compromise.
Gai’s unique jianghu ‘Chinese-Trap (C-Trap)’ style has sparked the interest of his
Chinese audience and enhanced the popularity of Chinese hip-hop in general (Baidu
blog, 11 September 2017; NetEase, 29 November 2019). C-Trap was initially inspired from
Trap artists and producers like Gucci Mane and T.I. of Atlanta, Georgia (United States), and
typically explores somewhat ‘taboo’ topics, including crime and sexuality, as well as social
issues, such as hardships linked to Chinese migration. Gai and his rap club GOSH was the
representative jianghu C-Trap established in 2012 before the show (Sohu News,
19 December 2018). The multiple connotations of jianghu resonate with many of Gai’s
songs, including ‘One Hundred and Eight’ (一百零八), in which he expresses his struggle
to be loyal to his brotherhood, for love and self-empowerment (‘never forget the people
who raise you up, educate you or help you’ 不忘挖井人).
This section investigates another representative jianghu flow song ‘Kong Cheng Ji’ (空城
计) performed by Gai in the final episode of the show. The following discussion reveals how
Gai expressed his life difficulties and attitudes in jianghu through the Chinese poetry of his
lyrics in ‘Kong cheng ji’, performed in the Chongqing dialect. Importantly, the role of Chinese
literature in jianghu flow provides a unique window to help understand the traditional
culture ‘jianghu China’, as compared to the well-known national images such as ‘Imperial
China’ or ‘Confucian China’ (Li 2011). ‘Kong cheng ji’ literally means presenting a bold front
to conceal unpreparedness, and is an allusion to a famed episode in one of the ‘Four Classic
Novels’ of Chinese literature, Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo 2000).
This work frequently refers to the strategic process of turning ‘no’ into ‘yes’, or ‘not
completely’ into ‘completely’, through negotiation (虚虚实实, 兵无常势), a feat famously
performed by Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮), the prime minister of the Kingdom of Shu (蜀), in
a dispute with Sima Yi (司马懿) in 231 CE. The strategy employed by Zhuge creates powerful
momentum and forces his opponent to adjust his attitude. In the chorus of ‘Kong Cheng Ji’,
Gai first asserts that he has lived in dangerous jianghu (江湖), but that he has been able to
hold out against 10,000 opponents (一夫当关, 万夫莫开), a reference to ‘Shu’s Difficult Trail’
(蜀道难) by Li Bai, the most romantic poet of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.). Gai compares
his own intelligence to Zhuge’s, and claims he is ‘free from anxiety’ (羽扇纶巾), a quotation
from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the final chorus, Gai highlights how he became
a ‘hero when [he] was born in jianghu’ (英雄豪杰), and uses natural phenomena – a white
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 7

cloud, a green hill, a curl of smoke – as metaphors for his open-mindedness towards jianghu.
This is also seen in the phrases ‘I walked all over the world, magnanimity and unconven-
tionality . . . ’ (我潇洒坦荡行走在天地间) and ‘I ride horses and run on the ground, wherever
I go . . . till the end’ (策马奔腾何处走, 我来世还复休), images which draw from the Chinese
poetry Jiangjinjiu (《将进酒》) by Li Bai (Yuan 2016).
Among our interviewees, some of Gai’s fans honoured his ability to create a jianghu flow
with Chinese-vernacular and poetry lyrics. Fans adored him as ‘a deity with four lyrics’ (四句封
神), a reference to four famous lyrics from his song ‘Fan Ren Ge’ (凡人歌), as in the following
examples:

一往无前虎山行 (go straight ahead without fear)

拨开云雾见光明 (scatter the clouds and see the sunshine)
梦里花开牡丹亭 (blooming in Romeo and Juliet’s wonderland)
幻象成真歌舞升平 (fantasy becomes real in a peaceful world)

Interviewee 14 explained that ‘Fan Ren Ge’ employs rhythmical prose and poetry with
a beautiful musical tone, characterized by its parallelism and ornateness in having lines
with equal numbers of characters, the same structure, and symmetrical signifiers. This also
resembles a form called pian wen (骈文) that was originally popular in the Han Dynasty
(202 BC to 9 AD). For instance, ‘虎山行’ (xing), ‘见光明’ (ming), ‘牡丹亭’ (ting), and ‘歌舞平’
(ping) employ the same rime, ‘ing’, while signifying Gai’s chivalric life in jianghu.
In interviews, Gai’s fans explicitly commented on his distinct jianghu style: ‘Gai starts to
attract the public’s attention through rapping with jianghu poetry (江湖诗派) . . . it could
demonstrate his knights-errant (侠气), how intelligent he is!’ (interviewee 3). Similarly,
another fan noted that ‘most of Gai’s songs are full of jianghu imagery, the representative
ones including “One Hundred and Eight”, “Chongqing Spirit”, “Dry Weather” (天干物燥),
my friends and I so much appreciate his creative mixture of Chinese literature, poetry and
hip-pop form, this is a perfect example to interpret his own understanding of the logo and
spirit of the reality show (R!CH), which means “rising the Chinese Hip-hop”’ (interviewee
19). Furthermore, another interviewee (12) suggested that ‘Gai’s rapping with Chinese
literature is a real Chinese hip-pop, as we are proud of our history and traditional culture,
this is the creative way to let the world know China has its own hip-pop’. Several
interviewees (7, 23) agreed that this jianghu style supported Gai ‘move from the under-
ground (underworld) towards the ground (accepted by the public)’, implying that Gai’s
jianghu flow has successfully helped to promote such hip-hop genres from the under-
ground sub-culture in China towards being popular through The Rap of China.
Most of Gai’s songs are performed in the dialect of his hometown, Chongqing. They
combine rhyme and allusion and incorporate traditional Chinese instruments, including the
suona (唢呐), four-stringed pipa (琵琶), and gongs (锣) to demonstrate his jianghu flow. At the
same time, his jianghu flow is associated with what Chan (2001, 491) argued ‘as a discursive
world, jianghu has come to symbolize the race for excellence and power; it provides in turn the
symbolic context necessary for the material circulation of imaginary human desires conducive
to the search for excellence and power’. For instance, the song ‘One Hundred and Eight’ (一百
零八) exemplifies the use of jianghu flow instruments and is also replete with literary allusions
to another of the Four Classic Novels, Water Margin (水浒传), written by Shi naian (施耐庵)
(1296–1370) during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) (Sin 2017). Water Margin is the first Chinese
heroic epic tale that represents a peasant social movement, and reveals a revolutionary
8 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

tragedy in feudal society. Gai depicts his jianghu life full of love, loyalty, and struggle, combin-
ing ethno-traditional cultural uniqueness with lyrical ‘trap’ and its musical tropes:

劫富济贫聚义揭竿 (Robbing the rich to help the poor and gathering the righteous)
仁义礼智忠肝义胆 (Benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, loyalty, brightness, righteousness,
and bravery)
为国泰民安保一方百姓 (Safeguarding the security of the people)
不图金银财宝安良除暴 (Not to seek wealth and prosperity, but to eliminate violence)

By combining allusions to Chinese traditional literature with trap music, Gai can articulate
‘jianghu flow’, with emotional performances, gritty visuals, and abstract lyrics, legitimizing
him as the ‘chivalrous’ grassroots leader of jianghu.
In contrast, some other rappers attempted to win The Rap of China by spreading more
violent imagery. This is exemplified by the case of ‘Po Fu Chen Zhou’ (破釜沉舟), a song
written and performed by another champion on the show, PG One. This song gained
much support both for its musicality and PG One’s determination to succeed. Po fu chen
zhou stems from the Chinese classic literary work Shi Ji (史记·项羽本纪) in the Qin Dynasty
(221–207 BC), and refers to a man who burns his bridges to fight until the end. In the
opening, PG One quotes a love story from another famous song, ‘Secret Sign’ (暗号),
performed by the aforementioned Taiwanese pop idol Jay Chou, which was later decoded
by the audience as referring to PG One’s affair with married Chinese celebrity Li Xiaolu. PG
One describes his own character in the song as ‘capricious’, ‘solitary and unsociable’, and
‘indifferent’, saying that he has ‘suffered from injustice in jianghu’. This ‘injustice’ refers to
his criticism by Internet ‘haters’ (黑子) for his perceived arrogance. In the second part of
the song, PG One says he ‘will not lower himself to and cater to those haters’; instead, he
will find a real brotherhood to support him in jianghu, as conveyed by the layering of PG
One’s own voice (murmuring ‘homie you feel me . . . homie you feel me’) over the refrain of
the second part. In the third part of the song, he demonstrates his increasing desire to
make money and ‘earn a big house’ while complaining ‘how dirty the world is’. He hates
himself for commodifying his music but must ignore his own hypocrisy as long as he is
involved in ‘commercial rap’ (商务嘻哈). In the final part of the song, the lyrics and beat
are combined repetitively with a quotation – ‘he/she will make money on his/her feet’ (站
着把钱挣了) – from a famous Chinese movie directed by well-known Chinese director
Jiang Wen (姜文), Let the Bullets Fly (《让子弹飞》) (2010). The combined logic of violence,
brotherhood, and the struggle for dignity are the main themes of this heroic dark comedy,
and PG One draws explicitly on an aspect of its storyline relating to jianghu bandit (绿林侠
匪), Zhang Mazi, and a bully, Huang Silang. PG One compares himself to Zhang Mazi,
implying that he is a hero who is ‘robbing the rich to help the poor’ (劫富济贫) and ‘to
pursue fairness and justice’, by referencing three important plots in the film:

[dialogue between Zhang Mazi and Huang Silang]

Zhang: Do you know which one is more important to me? The money or you?
Huang: Me.
Zhang: Neither you nor money, the most important for me is to have a world without you.
[Zhang enters a city, he aims not only to replace the local bully Huang, but also to establish
a free and just society]
Zhang: I come to the city only for three things: justice, justice, and fucking justice!
[Zhang has become a country mayor]
Tang: Do you prefer to stand tall or make money?
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 9

Zhang: I will stand . . . and make money!

Tang: Who exactly are you?
Zhang: This is ‘pockmarked’ Zhang.

In the final lyrics of the song, PG One yells ‘This is “pockmarked” PG One’, referencing
Zhang Mazi’s notion of ‘pockmarked’ (biren 鄙人), or ‘to humble oneself so as to demon-
strate how moderately one has lived’. This has more extensive roots in Chinese literature –
‘I am not smart but so ambitious and so determined to contribute to the world’ (鄙人不慧,
将有志于世) from A Person Who Repays Good with Evil (明·马中锡<中山狼传>) in the
Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) (Yin 2013). PG One evoked the injustices he had suffered in his
jianghu, drawing from film scenes that greatly add to the vividness of this song, sublimat-
ing his ‘Po Fu Chen Zhou’ (破釜沉舟) to demonstrate that henceforth he will only make
money in a dignified way.
Therefore, Gai and PG One navigate jianghu differently. Gai employs jianghu as a realm
of knights-errant (侠) which has the further connotation of martial artists who once lived
in outlaw societies, suggesting that he has evolved by struggling for his loved brother-
hood. Comparatively, PG One references the suffering of injustices and shares his con-
flicted struggle of material gain in jianghu as well as the determination not to let himself
be debased by enemies in jianghu. Thus, it becomes evident that Jianghu can function as
‘an imaginative metaphor of the alternative . . . and resistant . . . alternative public sphere
[that] serves as the main platform of network movements . . . or a new type of collective
action’ (Lin 2015, 3). In the following we continue to discuss jianghu flow as a localized
hip-hop cultural template (e.g. language and conflicting authenticity) that strongly con-
veys the themes of loyalty, struggle and compromise.

Jianghu flow or socialist flow?

In the context of these cultural connotations of jianghu flow around authenticity, the
following continues to argue how the rappers from The Rap of China navigate the dual
imperatives to ‘keep it real’ and to support the ‘positive energy’ policy (正能量). Political
awareness and commercial opportunities provided by Chinese mainstream media like
China Central Television (CCTV) and Hunan Television, allow some of the stars from The
Rap of China (e.g. Gai and PG One) to combine both approaches to navigate the dual
demands. Gai’s mentors, Zhang Zhenyue and M.C. Hotdog, persistently supported Gai on
the show, saying: ‘Gai’s hip-hop practices enigmatically combine an ambitious and intri-
guing “trap life” with Chinese serious traditional literature, full of jianghu flow and striking
imagery that resonate to a local distinct style: C-Trap’ (M.C. Hotdog, The Rap of China.
Episode 12). Nevertheless, a third of participants viewed Gai as a sophisticated ‘egoist’
embodying a hybridized ‘real’ when he has subsequently been promoted on mainstream
media in China. The first case refers to many interviewees who perceived irony in Gai’s
rapping the national anthem. In particular, they were dissatisfied with how Gai repeatedly
rapped the lyrics of ‘Motherland Live Long!’ on a stage of the CCTV program named
I wanna perform in China’s New Year Gala, which made him more palatable to the main-
stream media. Numerous Chinese media sources like Tencent News (20 August 2018) and
Sina News (21 January 2018) satirized him as ‘socialist Gai’ rather than jianghu Gai; the
former suggests Gai has changed to adopt the official demands, re-positioning rap to
10 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

align with the ‘positive energy’ policy (正能量). Combined with the second case, one of
our interviewees, a tabloid journalist who attended Gai’s performances for three months,
thought that Gai was arrogant rather than chivalric. However, she also said that when Gai
was interviewed after the show and became a success promoted by mainstream media in
China, he refused to admit to inhabiting the ‘trap’ life, about which he had previously
boasted. When asked whether he was still a ‘gangsta’ (his lyrics had once referenced
criminal underworld entities, such as the famous Triads, 匪帮), he parried with the
rhetorical question: ‘How is it possible to be a gangsta in China? . . . Don’t give that
crown to me, I am not [a gangsta]’. This interviewee concluded that Gai ‘is thoughtful
but very extreme, a refined and canny egoist!’. Within the framework of Chinese culture, ‘a
refined and canny egoist’ was first coined by Professor Qian Liqun in 2015 to criticize what
he believed to be self-interested individualism among Chinese students. Qian’s influential
critique includes ‘a refined and canny egoist is the shame result of being educated as
pragmatism, materialism and nihilism . . . It is a shame result of our flawed primary and
secondary education and university education, a failed education that resulted in a lack of
belief in core socialist value . . . ’ (Qian 2015). This term has subsequently circulated widely
and used to refer to those who pretend to be sophisticated and loyal to authority, but also
implies an ideological conflict with ‘core socialist values’ (Qian and Wang 2015).
In this context, we can understand why Gai’s promise to ‘only fight for my underground
brotherhood’ was interpreted by our interviewees as an attempt to simply gain audience
support:

Gai is absolutely a fake rapper. He initially disregarded those mainstream idols who he
thought were nerd-macho (on The Rap of China) . . . however, what does he look like (on
CCTV) right now?! This betrays what he rapped when he said “I could give up my life, how
dare you induce me with money！(我命都可以不要, 你跟我谈钱?)” (Interviewee 44)

Gai admits he is only working for money, which he showcases on his social media account
name “Gai爷只认钱” (“Gai only for money”). He aims to target the market, which means he
has to be mainstream to approach the largest audience . . . so you see, Gai has already
dropped off the authenticity of hip-hop and moved towards the mainstream. (Interviewee 20)

Some interviewees saw Gai as intoxicated by his new status after he was promoted by
mainstream official media to a privileged superstar following his success on The Rap of
China. Some listeners viewed Gai’s performance (including his lyrics and the attitude of
being real) on CCTV as changed and inauthentic, seeking to frame ‘authenticity’ in relation
to showing allegiance to – or betraying – the underground brotherhood. This compro-
mise indicates that Gai, perceived to be like many other Chinese mainstream celebrities
(Daily News, 14 June 2019), was avoiding censorship from the moral education authorities
by catering to what some commentators have described as ‘authoritarian mainstream
culture’ (主旋律文化), thereby playing it politically safe and maximizing his commercial
viability (Zou 2019).
Co-winner PG One continued to shape an image more palatable to the authorities even
though he adopted a more grief-stricken and vengeful stance in his jianghu flow.
However, jianghu as a metaphor of cultural framework could not help PG One avoid
state censorship. PG One’s success on the show attracted widespread online discussion
surrounding his songs launched prior to the reality show, and also exposed his relation-
ship with another married celebrity, Xiaolu Li. Another of his songs, ‘Christmas Eve’, was
 CONTINUUM: JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES 11

criticized by interviewee (No. 38) ‘for actually humiliating women openly and encourag-
[ing] teenagers to take drugs in the song’. He was eventually sanctioned by the
Communist Youth League and then by the SAPPRFT, which said that his lyrics are ‘gossipy
and unhealthy’ and opposed to ‘core social values’ (Sohu, 5 January 2018). His subsequent
online confessional response encapsulated the contradictions of authenticity, including
the dual imperatives to ‘keep it real’ and to support the ‘positive energy’ policy (正能量)
for Chinese rappers, and was followed by a large number of mainstream media (Beijing
Morning Post, 6 January 2018):

I was deeply influenced by black music in the early days of my exposure to hip-hop culture.
This caused me to misunderstand mainstream values and I sincerely apologize for that. As
I mature, I am more aware that I should have a stronger sense of social responsibility,
advocate correct values, and get involved in more social service activities. All my work
portfolios have been deleted and reworked; thanks to all for supervision. The hip-hop spirit
should and will always be about ‘peace and love.’.
–PG One

Therefore, both Gai and PG One are claimed to navigate the ‘authenticity’ by the struggles
of ‘keep it real’ and ‘political correct’, and consequently, jianghu flow has been washed by
socialist flow when on account of political awareness and commercial opportunities that
inducing them for more palatable to the authority. Both their purported ‘authenticity’ is
claimed as a narrative strategy – one of making claims to ‘be real’ as part of their self-
presentation. In the following, it would discuss the cultural connotations and political
value around authenticity through jianghu flow in China.

Conclusion
Our research found jianghu flow to be a glocalized cultural product that modifies the
originally African American genre of hip-hop with distinctly Chinese notions of authenti-
city, and that reconciles the seemingly idiosyncratic juxtaposition of ‘keeping it real’ and
‘peace and love’ (here referring to ‘core socialist values’ and ‘positive energy’ policy) in
Chinese rap culture. Jianghu flow is centred around representations of three distinct
features (loyalty, struggle, and compromise), and these allow Chinese hip-hop to be
aligned with the signs and rhetorics of nationalism in mainland China. In other words,
this research reveals how bottom-up popular sub-culture coalesces with an atmosphere
of censure created (sometimes indirectly) by the mainland Chinese government. In this
context, the rising popularity of stars from The Rap of China does not necessarily challenge
the cultural ethos of authoritarianism and nationalism, even if individual rappers make
claims to be keeping it ‘real’.
Comparing jianghu as an interpretative framework of a ‘cultural imagery for excellence
and power’ (Chan 2001, 490), this research reveals that jianghu rappers invoke a cultural
code of righteousness and fraternity with Chinese literary references, while negotiating
officially sanctioned sentiments in order to be politically palatable. Rappers like Gai strate-
gically employ jianghu discourse to align with ordinary people, identifying himself as
a knight-errant who has been widely accepted by the mainstream media and his fans.
Therefore, once Gai and others have achieved popularity, they switch from an ‘audience-
pleasing’ mentality to an ‘authority-pleasing’ mentality (Daily News, 14 June 2019). Our
12 Y. ZHAO AND Z. LIN

research points towards serious difficulties that Chinese rappers like Gai may face in fulfiling
the genre-based demand to be ‘authentic’ and ‘real’, while also maintaining a palatable and
nationalistic image for both listening audiences and the Chinese government itself.

Note
1. According to Schweig (2014), lia”m-kua (song reading) has been well credited as one of
Taiwan’s most representative shuochang (speaking-singing) arts, sharing numerous simila-
rities with rap in ‘storytelling ethos, a fundamentally improvisatory nature, and the use of
speech-song vocal techniques’ for socio-cultural commentary and critique (Schweig 2014,
37). In addition, Schweig (2014) argued that Hoklo-language rap is not isomorphic with
lia”m-kua, which has already been localized as ‘a logical extension of longstanding narrative
practices’ in Taiwan’s tradition (58).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Yupei Zhao (PhD University of Leicester) is an ‘Hundred Talent Program Young Professor’ and
doctorial tutor in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University (PRC). Her
research interests widely include political communication, intracultural communication and popular
media. Her research has appeared in International Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of
Communication, Social Science Quarterly, Sage Open, Social media + Society, Media International
Australia etc. Email: 519254310@qq.com
Zhongxuan Lin (Ph.D.) is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan
University, Guangzhou, China. His research interests include game studies, cultural studies and
communication studies. His work has appeared in Asian Journal of Women’s Studies; Media
International Australia; Chinese Journal of Communication; International Journal of Communication;
Media, Culture & Society; Information, Communication & Society; and New Media & Society among
others. Email: lzhongx55@sina.com

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