The rap cypher Photo:Sina Weibo

A volunteer checks a person's health code in Hohhot, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on February 21, 2022. Photo: IC

"Life is literally all around us. I think it is meaningful to speak up about what we see," young rapper Wang Ziyu told the Global Times, describing a project he recently took part in that saw rappers from more than 20 local universities in Chongqing Municipality perform a song supporting the city's efforts to fight against COVID-19.

More than 40 rappers from over 20 local institutions of higher learning such as Chongqing University, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and the Chongqing City Management College gathered in a university town in Chongqing to perform the 15-minute cypher.

Led by a short intro of news reports about the surging cases of COVID-19 in the city and three confirmed cases in Chongqing City Management College on March 12, the song segued into a rap showing support for local efforts to combat COVID-19.

Almost all the rappers showed gratitude toward medical workers' efforts to ensure their own safety after confirmed cases at one institution caused a whole town to be locked down.    

As Wang, a student at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, described, medical workers worked overnight to deliver nucleic acid tests to students, an action that deeply moved him and made him want to do something for them. 

"We can always face/ we can always take/ despite endless rain/ we don't care about pain/ under the devil changing different ways we will win/ thanks to those angels in white in the wind who saved us from the bad thing…" Wang rapped during his verse.

Other university rappers like Zhang Zhipeng, a music major at the Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, put a lot of love in his verse to describe the resilience and unity of the more than 20,000 teachers and students at his institution in the Yongchuan district, which was locked down in mid-March due to a surge in cases.

"The sense that we are all bound together inspired me to write my verse," noted Zhang. 

"I want to rap about the truth I saw to deliver its positive energy." 

Zhang also emphasized that many young rappers in China today want to show that the music genre is not just about rebellious and "dirty" content but more about social and cultural issues, so he defines the young rappers as "educated young musicians."

"There are around 90 rappers in the group who raised their hand to join the project," Wang noted.     

"Many Chinese rappers come from roots that are different from the West, so the things we focus on are different. Keep it real and keep your eyes on what is happening are the truths to follow in rap music. It makes you cooler than when you always talk about money or girls," Fenggie, a rapper in Shanghai, told the Global Times.  

Organized by the PaiStudio, a music studio dedicated to street culture, the Chongqing cypher was followed by a performance of the studio's Xi'an cypher against COVID-19 produced at the end of 2021. 

"As a socially responsible young person who is cool, I chose rap to speak up and encourage social change when things go wrong," noted Zhang.  

"Such a phenomenon is not limited to university students, but it defines the larger group of today's well-educated young people in China," said Zhang Yiwu, a cultural expert in Beijing.  

These rappers in Chongqing are not the only group across the country who have attempted to dispel the shadow cast by COVID-19. Following the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, a group of dancers from Zhejiang University of Finance & Economy performed a dance routine that brought together the two contrasting concepts of "pandemic" and "sunny" in one theme to encourage people to stay positive and optimistic during the pandemic. 

On stage, the university dancers played different characters such as patients and medical workers, while others dressed in black to symbolize the hazy pandemic. 

Different anti-pandemic stories such as how medical workers fought against the "haze" to save their patients touched and inspired many other young dancers. 

"I had also choreographed a dance routine with my friends that had us breakdance to show the strength of doctors. Though my dance was not that sophisticated, but as artists, we use what we do to show our attitude," Nookie, a breakdancer in Hangzhou, told the Global Times.