Exhibition reviews rock music history(2)

Huang started the festival in 2004 in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. It was the first outdoor music festival on the Chinese mainland that both made a profit and attracted more than 200,000 audience members for the three-day event.

"From a music festival ticket to a staff card, I kept all the items as a mementoes that witnessed rock music's development in the country," says Huang, 49, who now works as a consultant for Modernsky Records, the largest indie label on the mainland, which publishes Second Hand Rose.

"Without much information, the old generation of Chinese rock musicians accomplished their own styles with their pure passion for rock 'n' roll," Huang adds. "They used rock music, a Western music genre, to tell Chinese stories, which deserves respect from the young generation."

As fellow curators, Huang invited Chang from Taiwan and Kwong from Hong Kong, two important figures who have witnessed and participated in the development of rock music in those regions.

Kwong, who launched the Hong Kong-based record label Wow Music in 2007, contributed the songwriting manuscript of Hong Kong rock band Beyond, and a pair of drumsticks used by legendary drummer, Donald James Ashley, who passed away on Oct 19, at the age of 58.

Chang, 46, who is better known as Chang43, founded Taiwan's indie music label, Taiwan Colors Music, in 1998. He also started the annual Taiwan rock music festival, the Hohaiyan Rock Festival, in 2000, which has become one of Taiwan's biggest celebrations of indie music and offered a platform to local indie bands to display their talents, including the bands Mayday and Sodagreen.

Of the items on display, Chang considers an entry permit for Cui to visit Taiwan in 2007 as the most important one. That year Chang had invited Cui to perform at the Hohaiyan festival.

"I have been watching the Chinese mainland's rock scene since the early 1990s and it had been a longtime wish to bring my idol, Cui Jian, to the festival," he says.

That wish was not fulfilled until 2007. "When I received his entry permit, I almost cried, so I want to share that with the audience of the exhibition," Chang says.

In the past few years, Chang has also toured the Hohaiyan festival to Hong Kong and invited rock musicians and bands from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan to share the stage.

"The rock music scene of the Chinese mainland in the 1990s and early 2000s really surprised me," Chang says. "But as more and more music festivals were held every year around the country, bands were busy touring but rarely come up with new work, which is a major problem for the current rock scene."