Zheng Nan

Zheng Nan came up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, and his music seemed to speak directly to the unease of that time. He started performing with his band Xiami in the late 1970s, mostly at underground gatherings. His songs had a raw, emotional quality that wasn't common in state-approved music, and that got him labeled a counter-revolutionary early on.

In 1988 he released the album 'Jiao,' and the title track became something of an anthem. It's a ballad about a young woman's tragic fate, and its plain-spoken lyrics connected with people across China in a way that felt personal, not political. The song's success made him a star, but it also drew more official attention.

He kept writing and performing anyway, and his work from that period, songs like those on 'Jiushi Nian Dai' and 'Jiefang', became touchstones for a certain kind of quiet resistance. He wasn't really a protest singer in the grand style; he just wrote about ordinary lives with an honesty that felt subversive at the time.