In Wuhan the beat goes on

"I had never been away from home before, and when I walked out of the train station I was totally lost. It was four o'clock in the morning and very dark."

Before going to the school he watched the daily flag-raising ceremony in Tian'anmen Square, he says.

Looking back, Zhu says attending the school changed his life, because he met many like-minded people, and it was during that training that he resolved to make music his lifelong vocation. It was there, too, that he me two students from Wuhan, Wu Wei and Han Lifeng, with whom he would form SMZB in 1996.

SMZB, generally considered Wuhan's first punk band, had its first break in 1997 with a show to commemorate Kurt Cobain, frontman of the American band Nirvana, who had died aged 27 in 1994.

"The city inspires SMZB's music, and because the leading vocalist and songwriter Wu Wei is from Wuhan he sings for the city," Zhu says.

Wuhan is the subject of a song named after the city, in which Wu sings: "I live here with my dream. I live here with my hope. I want to make changes to the city because it's to her I belong."

In 2006 Zhu left the band and devoted himself to running Vox. That year, with the help of an American friend who had been a university teacher in Wuhan, Zhu spent a month in New York, visiting local live house venues.

After SMZB, many punk bands appeared in Wuhan, which gained a reputation as a mecca for punk. In the 1990s, Zhu says, indie bands playing various musical genres started to emerge in the city, and a compilation titled Travel In Desert, featuring 12 songs from five Wuhan indie rock bands, was released in 2003.

Since 2007 Vox has staged shows at universities in Wuhan, aimed at offering young indie bands a stage on which to show off their talents. Every year 10 shows are open to amateur young bands from local universities. Since the venue is close to the likes of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and China University of Geosciences, the young bands also get the chance to perform with professional indie rock bands at the venue.

One of the young indie rock bands from Wuhan is Chinese Football, formed by three local young people nine years ago.

The band's founder and leading vocalist, Xu Bo, was born in 1986, the year in which the Chinese rock pioneer Cui Jian performed his best-known song, Nothing to My Name.

Xu, who grew up listening to rock music and reading Japanese comics, was an architect until he was 30, when he gave up to became a full-time musician, according an interview he did with the online media platform North Park published on Jan 15.

"Wuhan is very noisy and crowded," he was quoted as saying." I feel familiar and also like a stranger sometimes to the city. It inspires me to observe and think."