Jiang Shaoqing, co-founder of music rehearsal space 0093, is truly part of the underground – he lives beneath the city. Raemin Zhang digs him out.

I studied masonry back in school, but I’ve never done it for living – music’s always been my passion. I sold sound equipment for five years before I opened 0093. The name comes from its location. 00 has the same pronunciation as Lingling Lu and 93 is the street number.

There was no exact moment when I decided to open 0093. It’s happened gradually, properly opening some time last September. I’ve loved live music for so long and when I happened to meet Wang Tiantian, the co-founder, we decided to open a rehearsal space. We wanted it to be a serious place for young musicians, but without being a formal business. Managing the space is very difficult. The hardest thing is that we don’t have money.

I live in 0093 too. Living with noise all the time is difficult, but the basement is quite an ecological place to live because it’s naturally warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

I hate to see the mess the bands leave after their rehearsals. Once, a band left tons of rubbish in the room and I rushed out of the basement to tell them to come back and tidy it. It’s a public space. How are you supposed to make impressive music without a sense of civic responsibility?  

To me, rock’n’roll means being independent. And being independent means setting one’s spirit free.

Shanghai definitely lacks good bands. The biggest reason is they don’t have good songs to make people remember them. Beijing has much better bands and a better live music environment. Randomly pick a Beijing band, and you can guarantee that they’d rock the Shanghai scene. Take the best Shanghai rock band to Beijing, and nobody would be impressed.

The bands that come here are of varying abilities. Some are really professional, others just treat it like a karaoke bar.

My favorite Chinese band is Top Floor Circus. They’re great! They often come here to rehearse. But their rehearsals are always a little disappointing. Their performances are really lively but, even though I love them, their rehearsals don’t impress me so much.

There are two new live bands worth listening to at the moment. One is Five-Pointed Star and the other is Hanging Gardens.

My friends admire what I’m doing – they think it’s pretty cool. I guess that’s because not many people do what I do. To be honest, they don’t really know what’s involved. They don’t understand my job. And my family doesn’t even know what I do now. I tell them I’m doing fine and I have enough money to support my living.