I HAVE NOTHING

I Have Nothing: translation

(Yiwu suoyou)

Rock song

Composed by Cui Jian, the song had its debut on 9 May 1986, when it was performed at a state-organized concert in the People’s Workers’ Stadium, commemorating the Year of World Peace. The ‘Concert of 100 Singers’ (Baiming gexing yanchanghui) was broadcast on television nationwide and the song ‘immediately reached a massive audience. In the uniform of a PLA soldier, Cui’s appearance was provoking, while his lyrics appealed to many young Chinese, who found their own feelings thus expressed. They can either be understood as a pure love song, depicting a penniless singer who tries to persuade his lover to go with him, or as a political statement, directed against the PRC’s reform policy.

The song was widely discussed and even printed with a comment in the People’s Daily (16 July 1988), when Cui and ADO released it that year. Framed in a musical structure of tension and release, the song combines Western rock with Chinese instrumentation, featuring the suona (Chinese oboe) and a distorted electric guitar as solo instruments. It turned into a student hymn in summer of 1989.

Since then it has been covered by many other singers, appeared on wedding parties and found its way into karaoke bars and literary anthologies.

Baranovitch, Nimrod (2003). China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 31–6.

Jones, Andrew (1992). Like a Knife. Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. Ithaca: Cornell University.

Steen, Andreas (1996). Der Lang Marsch des Rock ‘n’ Roll. Pop- und Rockmusik in der Volksrepublik China. Hamburg: Lit-Verlag.