As Chinese cyberspace has been growing fast in terms of both size and diversity, a new youth subculture started to catch people’s attention on the Chinese Internet. Since the mid 2007, the label feizhuliu (FZL) began to appear in hyperlinks everywhere, clicking which would lead you to various kinds of websites, forums, and online personal spaces filled with texts and images that were seemingly from some youth alternative scenes. The word “feizhuliu” can be literally translated as “non-mainstream”, and when it comes to culture, it commonly stands for “alternative”. In this sense, it is natural to think that this cyberspace “feizhuliu” were simply some alternative subcultures, such as Punk and Goth, which had prevailed again taking advantage of going online.
However, it did not seem to be the case. Firstly, although certain alternative subculture contents, such as pictures of Punk looking youths, dark, obscure images and words, etc could be found in the FZL2 websites, FZL was not a subculture that centered around certain types of music or dressing styles: the music they listened to could be of any genres and as popular as any Pop songs, and the youngsters in the FZL pictures dressed and posed only in order to be fashionable or cute most of the times, rather than to cling to certain alternative styles. Secondly, computer and internet technologies not only built up new media platforms and virtual social spaces for the FZL participants to express themselves and interact with each other, but also were intrinsic parts of it: a FZL participant was one who upload “FZL portraits” of oneself, which were computer-modified digital pictures, to the Internet, and one who wrote in “FZL language”, a computer-generated language, to communicate with others in the cyberspace. As is to say, FZL was not just a subculture on the Internet, but a cyber subculture in which the Internet played a pivotal role. Although FZL was not a subculture based on a spectacular kind of music or dressing style, it was just as non-normative and marginal as other subcultures. Since its emergence, adverse voices from the “cyber public” Chinese Internet users never ceased. The major representations of FZL subculture, such as the “FZL portraits” and “FZL writings” received mockeries, criticisms, and even harsh abuses on almost very websites and forums. The common Chinese netizens generally considered FZL a passive and destructive subculture that would harm the development of the youth participants and finally lead to the degradation of the Chinese civilization. An anti-FZL movement had even been waged aiming at guiding the FZL youth onto the “right track”.
Those words remind of one sentence from Edison Chan, "Hip-hop is the life. How I wear my clothes is way more than the question itself.It is about hip-hop, even how I make love with girl is hip-hop".
See nowadays, fakers and liars have become celebrities and earn a lot from their musics. The underground comes onto stages. Hip-hop is much more easily accepted by people than FZL. So FZL should treated and accepted as a culture? but it is water itself, hapless, formless. We SURVIVE that period. I am not showcasing trophies, but these of my rebellious years as a juvenile are exciting, like playing the run-and-find game with my parents.
Familiar with it？Listen to it.
看完记得把名字写在烟上，抽进肺里