China has a new popular musician, Zhou Yunpeng.  I first found him and listened to his music on
China Digital Times   His music is tender and sweet, his translated lyrics are compelling social commentary. 

Don’t be a child of Karamay, you would burn your skin and make a mother’s heart ache

Don’t be a child of Shalan town, you wouldn’t fall asleep under the inky black water

Don’t be a child of Chengdu parents, a drug addicted mother doesn’t go home for seven days and nights

Don’t be a child of Henan parents, AIDS in the blood laughs out loud

Don’t be a child of Shanxi parents, your father would become a basket of coal and you would never see him again

Don’t be a child of Chinese, when they starve they would eat you

They’re worse than the old goat in the wilderness, whose eyes might become aggressive to protect their little ones

Don’t be a child of Chinese, the parents are all too weak

To prove their hearts are as hard as iron and stone, when death is imminent, they save their leaders first.


The underlined phrases link to news articles about these tragedies, some in English, some in Chinese.  It's news that will keep you awake at night, but the fact that this musician is protesting these events is good news.  Dissent is vital to every nation and a wonderful sign of openness in China. 

Shortly after I discovered Zhou Yunpeng on CDT, I was pleased to hear a report about him on Public Radio International.

Journalist Mary Kay Magistad attended one of Zhou's performances in a Beijing bar.  She reports,  Before singing, Zhou swings back his long black hair and quips, "a prosperous society is a strong tiger; the voice of the tiger reflects the glory of the state."  Then he began a song sung to the tune of Frere Jacques, a tune also used for a Chinese nursery rhyme about tigers.  Mary Kay reports:

The song gets more daring as it goes along - and then his tigers attacks a sacred cow. He says the Olympics are like a tiger's back-side, don't dare touch it! Only he uses a stronger word for back-side. The crowd eats it up. . . . 
 
Zhou says he doesn't buy all this talk about the Olympics being a coming out party, a chance to show the world how far China has come.

"I think it probably doesn't matter if you want to show yourself to the world or not, because if people's lives are better and if people have freedom of expression and people have a free life, this would be the best show to the world. The honor of the state is reflected in ordinary people's lives."

And it's ordinary people's lives that Zhou sings about - the people who struggle, amidst China's modern glitz - people, he says, like himself.

In another song called, "Buying a House," Zhou complains, "Now I must work hard to pay it off. Even if the sky collapses or the earth sinks, I have to work. Even if the sea dries and the stones rot, I have to work.

My heart is with you on this, dear Zhou.  My own personal mortgage won't be paid off until I am 84 years old.  It's a crazy kind of freedom that comes with capitalism.