Today I was invited to take part in my school’s daily broadcast.  Everyday after lunch and before afternoon classes there is a ten minute broadcast over the school’s speakers at a very high volume.  The girls running the English show asked to interview me.  It all went over very well and was a piece of cake.  They asked me silly questions like: “Is American school life like High School Musical?” and “What do you think of China?”

Between questions they played music, really bad pop music.  Today it was Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.  Slow boring pop music for the masses.  I discovered out that the headmaster has decreed that rock and roll may not be played over the school’s speakers.  Too disruptive and crude I was told.  Even the Beatles are off limits.  At the Beijing high school I studied at back in 2004 my fellow American students and I found out that social dancing at the school was outlawed.  Today China is looking a lot like the movie Footloose.  Though it could also be argued that the students here aren’t even interested in listening to rock and roll (Led Zepplin was not at all appreciated by my students when I played it for them a couple months ago).  It is truly disheartening that there are teenagers in the world who would prefer bad pop music to the Man-bashing rhythms of rock.

Related to this post the blog The China Beat just posted a two part story on Chinese rock and roll.  Part One  Part Two