Money talks and Wang Feng sings

Global Business magazine doesn't often deal with music, but a recent article about pop rock musician Wang Feng has captivated public attention.

It's unsurprising many insights about Chinese culture and art come from financial media. An economic lens is often the best viewfinder for interpreting cultural phenomena in a country where everyone talks about development all the time.

The article, entitled Deliberate Blooming - a wordplay on Wang's hit song, Blooming Life - compares Wang's resilience in China's barren music market to other rockers' inability to adapt.

Wang, who trained as a viola player at the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, forsook his classical music career to form a rock band called No 43 Baojia Street in the 1990s. But stardom found him only after he disbanded the group and became a solo artist.

Virtually every Chinese has heard of Wang's Flying Higher, which aired on China Central Television on such important occasions as the launch of the Shenzhou VI manned spacecraft and the Beijing Olympic Games. The song was also used in a China Mobile TV commercial.

"When Wang found he was invited by many enterprises, banks and even large-scale international event organizers because of a certain encouraging and uplifting quality, he and his manager began to 'go around singing karaoke' with a CD of accompaniment music," the article's author, Ji Yi, writes.

Wang's former manager, Jiang Nanyang, was quoted as saying that 90 percent of Wang's income came from "singing karaoke".