Chinese folk-rock (新民谣, 'New Folk') refers to the 2010s mainland singer-songwriter movement. Format ranges from solo acoustic guitar to four- or five-piece band with drums, bass, and harmonica. What binds it is voice-forward simple recording and diaristic lyric-writing about urban exhaustion, homesickness, and the fine grain of romantic memory. Tempos sit at 60-100 BPM. The touchstones are Bob Dylan / Neil Young Anglo-American folk on one side, and post-Teresa Teng Chinese ballad on the other. The three centres are Chengdu (Zhao Lei), Beijing (Song Dongye, Ma Di), and Hebei (Wan Xiaoli). The scene grew out of the 'Douban folk' community of the early 2010s.

The origins are in the late 2000s when Song Dongye (born Beijing 1987) and Ma Di started posting home recordings on Douban's music community. Mainland Chinese urban twentysomethings of that period were consuming Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and Taiwan's 1980s campus folk (Luo Ta-yu) in parallel. The catalytic moment was 2013, when Song Dongye's 'Miss Dong' was covered on Hunan TV's Super Boy singing competition and the original blew up nationally. His debut album Bei of Anhe Bridge popularised the 'New Folk' label. In 2014 Ma Di's 'South of Nanshan' followed the same trajectory. In 2016 Zhao Lei's 'Chengdu,' broadcast on Singer 2017, went from indie song to national street sing-along overnight.

In Song Dongye's 'Miss Dong,' the opening acoustic guitar arpeggio uses three chords and stays there — the Dylan 'Blowin' in the Wind' DNA is direct. The lyric 'Miss Dong, not everyone gets to succeed' places romance and resignation on the same line, a signature of his writing. Zhao Lei's 'Chengdu' chorus 'Walk with me down the streets of Chengdu' evoked the specific bars on Yulin Road so vividly that mainland tourism to Chengdu spiked after release. Ma Di's 'South of Nanshan' is a long-form song about the distance between Nanjing and Beijing — an anthem of mainland twentysomething migration. Wan Xiaoli's 'Spinning Top' pushes further into Tom Waits territory, with a gravelled voice over deliberately abraded acoustic guitar.

Zhao Lei's 'Chengdu' (2016) will have you booking a flight to Chengdu the next day. Song Dongye's 'Miss Dong' (2013) is the trigger point of the movement. Ma Di's 'South of Nanshan' (2014) is longer but captures mainland-migration mood. Wan Xiaoli's 'Spinning Top' (2006) shows the elder-statesman experimental strand. Late night, dim room, follow the acoustic guitar note by note.

After 'Chengdu' hit, tourism to the bar Xiao Jiu Guan on Yulin Road spiked so sharply that the Chengdu city government renovated the street signs to formalise 'Yulin Road' as a musical landmark. Zhao Lei was appointed a Chengdu tourism ambassador. Song Dongye was detained in June 2018 on drug-related charges and received a three-year performance ban; he returned to occasional appearances around 2021 but has avoided large concerts. The Big Band (2019, 2020), iQiyi's rock-band competition show, mainstreamed folk-rock acts like Bird in Cage and Miserable Faith's folk-rock incarnation, marking the arrival of the Chinese folk-rock revival.