Another small venue closes

Written by Split Works founder Archie Hamilton

TLDR: The Yuyintang Livehouse (Kaixuan edition) is closing. Alongside the Shelter, it was my spiritual home for music for more than a decade.

The last shows are this weekend. If you are in Shanghai, go and say goodbye for me.

The face of Shanghai live music 2007-2024

In early 2006, a few months after I’d arrived in Shanghai, I was hanging out on the SmartShanghai forums (RIP) where someone mentioned that there was a new live venue down on Longcao Lu. It was run by the ex-sound guy from the Ark jazz bar in Xintiandi (which had been Shanghai’s first permanent venue for live music). It was called Yuyintang (育音堂).

The OG Longcao Lu Yuyintang

Old mate Aric Queen (he of myriad different ventures during his short time in Shanghai with us), was organizing a night called 5 Dollar Shake (if memory serves) featuring original Shanghai bands Banana Monkey, Sonnet and another that I don’t remember. With a small crew, we got one of the OG Dazhong taxis down through Xujiahui towards Shanghai South Railway Station. We were dropped at the entrance of a series of warehouses – pretty dark, somewhat abandoned. Kind of thrilling.

At the third warehouse in, there was a throng of people milling around. Zhongnanhai 8’s were being smoked, bottles of five kuai Tsing Dao drunk. It was a mix of intrigued Chinese and younger expats.

There were plenty of examples of that early street-side culture over the years in Shanghai, culminating (for me at least) in the carnage of Yongfu Lu in around 2016. This moment at Longcao Lu was the first time I’d seen a crowd like that in China. There was an energy there that felt like things were really beginning.

The inside of this first YYT venue was a tiny cupboard of a room with a corner stage and a bucket of warm beers that must have cost us only a tiny bit more than retail at Family Mart (there was no 60RMB Kronenbourg 1664 on tap back in those days). The toilet was a trough in the next-door room where people squatted, smoked cigarettes and chatted. The bands were rowdy and lightly formed. This was truly the birthplace of rock and roll in Shanghai, following closely in the footsteps of the recently opened Yugong Yishan in Beijing.

At the helm were the irrepressible Zhang Haisheng (OG sound guy from Xintiandi) and Lao Lu, sunglasses at night, motorbike by day rock n’ roll legend. These two were to become a couple of my favorite Shanghainese friends over the years.

I went back to that YYT religiously during the summer of 2006 and all the way through to its closure after a Brain Failure show in 2007. Probably the neighbours in that small industrial zone didn’t appreciate the mess on Monday morning, or most of Shanghai’s early live music fans discovered the more conveniently located Logo Bar on Xingfu Lu. For whatever reason, by early 2007, the Longcao YYT was just a memory for the few.

Fortunately for us, Zhang Haisheng and Lao Lu were busy plotting. After a year out of the spotlight (during which time I set up Split Works, did our first few tours of China with Maximo Park, Sonic Youth, The Infadels and others plus promoted our first festival in Zhongshan Park with Faithless, Talib Kweli and Ozomatli – many of the local support bands on those shows and the festival coming from those early visits to YYT), they announced the opening of what was to become my second home for the next 10 years.

Jeff Lang, 2009

Handsome Furs, 2010

It's hard to understate how important sub-500 capacity livehouses are to any local live music scene. As I sit here in 2024, all we hear is news of these iconic and vital spaces closing all over the world. The Zoo here in my adopted home of Brisbane this month, Moles in Bath (one of 125 small venues in the UK that have closed in 2023) and now Yuyintang in Shanghai. Cost of living crises, changing consumer preferences, corporate consolidation and in the case of YYT, dreaded redevelopment have all made it almost impossible for these businesses to survive.

Back in 2007, it was exactly the opposite. Social media was in its infancy – you could actually build an audience organically on Facebook (which was actually still available in China) and when you invited people to an event, they actually RSVP’d. Corporate consolidation was just getting started and was yet to affect anything outside of the most developed markets and the upper tiers of the live music industry. It was still cool to know bands that wrote discordant, hard to understand music, Fans still wanted to hang out, drink cheap beer and smoke cigarettes until the early hours. Ticket prices were still affordable (and bands didn’t expect to be able to retire after every show). Websites and blogs like Pitchfork were focused on discovery and popular as shit rather than being a subsection of GQ Culture. Small was beautiful. There were people all over micro music scenes globally working for the love of music, and Zhang and Lu were two such people.

I first went to the new Kaixuan Yuyintang some time in late 2007. I used to cycle everywhere in Shanghai, particularly on a night out, and the first thing I had to work out was how to get across the double decker gaojia between Fahuazhan and Kaixuan Lu.

Shanghai's amazing elevated road network

This new YYT was a strange building, opposite the Kaixuan Lu metro stop and backing onto Tianshan Park. This gave it a unique position with no real neighbours that could be annoyed by bands playing till the wee hours. In those early days before they opened the performance space up there were 3 main rooms downstairs – the long thin bar area with a huge wooden cart wheel precariously hung over the bar, the main space that could accommodate about 200 people, and a small side room where you could sit and drink. The main room backed out into the park and for at least a decade, there were tables and chairs set out the back. Many, many spring, summer, autumn and even winter evenings were spent out the back there, smoking cones (when you could still do that in China) and drinking tallboys. Lifelong friendships were forged in that park.

In the middle of the venue, there was a staircase up to the variety of back stage rooms, the toilets (once they brought them in from the outside) and of course the office up in the attic. A number of hangs were had up in those band rooms until the sun came up. I remember memorably an incredibly stoned interview I did with Annie Clark / St. Vincent after a JUE show in 2010. (you can see that here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sElE_BfQ67s - 9.17 mins in）

St. Vincent at the JUE Festival, 2010

And So I Watch You From Afar, 2012

credit: 栾东

There were some crazy shows back then – a space that shouldn’t really have accommodated more than 250 people safely would pack in up to 600 people in its heyday. There was a Re-Tros show I remember clearly that I had to watch from the park, looking through the window at the back of the stage, and our Handsome Furs show in 2011 where it felt like the air was being squeezed out of the room, but in a good way. Bringing the bands down those stairs and through the middle of the venue to get the stage was always a trip when it was that busy. Standing up at the side of the stage watching people go crazy during Deafheaven or Japandroids, taking Unknown Mortal Orchestra to see Heems on a Tuesday night, doing some magic fungi and losing the drummer Riley (who was wearing a hat with antlers) overnight. Last we saw of him, he was running into Tianshan Park at high speed.

Japandroids, 2013

Dan Deacon, 2014

Dan Deacon tour poster

Eventually (around 2012 I suppose), the owners took the sensible option and redesigned the inside of the venue. The OG bar area became an entrance with the two interior rooms joined together to make a comfortable space for 300 people and a bit of a squeeze for 400. At this point, Yuyintang had become a pretty famous name around the city of Shanghai.

As a promoter, we put a decent number of shows into Yuyintang Kaixuan over the years (full list at the bottom). Some of the best shows that I’ve ever been involved in anywhere were in this venue, and arguably the years 2009- 2015 in Shanghai were some of the best for music anywhere in the world, with venues like YYT, the Shelter, Mao Livehouse, Arkham, JZ all contributing at the community end. It is hard overestimate how important these venues were as the bedrock of the fizzing nightlife scene that had Shanghai as the best place in the world to party in 2012. The hard work and generous nature of Zhang and Lu (who were almost always there at the venue) was of course integral to this. Keeping prices low and truly supporting emerging talent meant that bigger venues, festivals and eventually the raft of talent reality shows in China could flourish off the back of this hard work.

Mac Demarco, 2013

Metz, 2016

As always tends to be the case, the shelf life of a scene like this was always going to be finite. The city got more expensive (exponentially), developers moved in plus neighbours had enough of the rowdy and late night street parties (Yongfu and Xingfu Lus were victims of both). The bad behaviour of the few ruined it for the rest of us. When the taco van, myriad dealers and the performing monkey became a fixture outside the Shelter every weekend night, it was obvious our days there were numbered. The fact that Zhang and Lu remained close to the venue and their prescient choice of the Kaixuan Lu location meant that YYT lasted longer than most. But with rising prices (60RMB Kronenbourg anyone?), a slight lack of curation in the later years (local bands of varying quality would hold the venue months in advance so we could no longer get dates for our international bookings that would tend confirm later), an expansion to YYT Park, Specters and latterly XX plus the changes in policy from the powers that be, Yuyintang Kaixuan is set to become another post script in a world that shaped me and many, many others.

Spaces like these are inestimably important to young people, to gather, to share, to laugh, to cry. As we go increasingly online and our cost of living goes inexorably up, we see less and less of them. Is it any wonder that as a race, our trajectory seems to be towards division and anger rather than reconciliation and love. Support your local venues, love the people that work so hard to keep them open for you. Choose peace.

A big shout to Morgan and Fanmu, Super Sophia and all the others that helped Lu and Zhang to make Yuyintang what it was to me and everyone else over that 19-year span.

SPLIT WORKS SHOWS AT

YUYINTANG, KAIXUAN LU, Shanghai

2009

Jeff Lang

Handsome Furs

Hollerado

Immaculate Machine

2010

Chiro of Young Believers

St.Vincent (JUE)

Trippple Nippples (JUE)

Julie Doiron (JUE)

The Inspector Cluzo

Jets Overhead

Handsome Furs

The King Khan & BBQ Show

The Field

2011

Trippple Nippples (SW 5 anniversary)

The Besnard Lakes  (JUE)

The Black Atlantic (JUE)

Laura Jansen

2012

UK NOW! -  Jamie Woon, And So I Watch You From Afar,Fence Collective, Gallops

Lucy Rose

*Rabbit's Foot - Caves of Steel, 嘎调乐队Teh Gar, Third Cortez, The Inspector Cluzo, Milow, Terror Danjah

2013

Amanda Mair (JUE)

Mac DeMarco

Japandroids

Shabazz Palaces

The Dodos

Liu Dongming  (GUINNESS)

Ajinai (GUINNESS)

2014

Paul Collins' Beat (JUE)

Alpine Decline (JUE)

The Fuzz (JUE)

Young Dreams＋MONSTER CAT (JUE)

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

DEAFHEAVEN

Cracker

Jim Kroft

Dan Deacon

2015

Primitive Calculators (JUE)

Awesome Tapes from Africa (JUE)

2016

METZ

Blackbird Blackbird+Chad Valley

Sunflower Bean

2017

Cloud Nothings

Benjamin Francis Leftwich

Japanese Breakfast

2018

CHAD VALLEY

Protomartyr

SUUNS.