He Yong, Voice of China's 'Magic Rock Three', Dies at 57

He Yong (何勇), the Beijing singer whose single album defined the sound — and the anger — of China's 1990s rock generation, died in the capital on September 1, aged 57. The Paper confirmed his death on September 4, and within hours the story was one of the most-read items on the Chinese internet, drawing tributes from fans, fellow musicians and state outlets alike.

He Yong was one third of the "Magic Rock Three" (魔岩三杰), the trio — with Dou Wei and Zhang Chu — assembled by Taiwan's Magic Stone label at the peak of Beijing's rock boom. Born in 1969, he learned music from his father, the folk instrumentalist He Yusheng, and was performing in Beijing's rock clubs as a teenager. In 1994 he released "Garbage Dump" (《垃圾场》), an album whose title track looked at a city tearing itself apart and asked, at full volume, what was being built in its place.

That December the three played the Hung Hom Coliseum in Hong Kong, the first time mainland rock musicians had taken a stage of that size, and the night became the founding myth of the scene. He Yong remembered it as the moment the music took everything he had. "Afterwards I was basically wrecked," he said in an interview quoted by Chinese media this week. "Exhausted, spiritually collapsed. I got too deep into it — and those songs were vicious. You couldn't sing them without spending your whole vitality."

His best-known song, "Bell and Drum Towers" (《钟鼓楼》), named for the towers that once kept time for old Beijing, is a folk-rock portrait of the hutong city as the demolition crews moved in, scored with the sanxian lute his father played. Alongside "Pretty Girl" (《姑娘漂亮》), it remains a fixture of Chinese playlists three decades on. It was, in the end, nearly all there was: He Yong released only one studio album, and years of illness kept him from public life for most of the years that followed. The reports this week gave no cause of death.

The outpouring has been less about news than about biography — an entire generation using his death to place itself. His sharpest line has been recirculated all week: "Our lives may not be perfect, but that is what art exists for — we can create something perfect, like writing a perfect song. And inside that perfection there is craft, and culture, things that fit the times, things that fit the way this society breathes."

On Zhihu, a question inviting readers to share their memories of his music shot onto the platform's trending board within hours, with answers arriving from listeners who were not yet born when "Garbage Dump" came out. A post announcing his death by The Paper was reposted more than 2,000 times in its first hours.

He learned music from his father; he leaves the scene he helped found with one album, one legendary concert and a handful of songs that Chinese rock has spent thirty years trying to grow out of.