I first attended The Underground’s Winter Festival in January of this year. As someone who had lived for several years in Manchester, a city with a flourishing live music scene and a revered contribution to musical history, I have severely missed good gigs.

Witnessing 22 homegrown Hong Kong bands play inside the candy-cane-striped Fringe Club was deliciously cathartic. With genres ranging from bedroom pop, video game jazz to Cantonese post-punk, they were all truly festival quality acts, and an undeniable testament to Hong Kong’s thriving, one-of-a-kind, and diverse live music scene. The person responsible for bringing musicians like Whitt’s End, Mr Koo, and Norio together is none other than Chris herself.

I had the privilege to interview Chris earlier this year and write one of my favourite profiles ever for Macao News. Here is an edited excerpt:

Born in Hong Kong, she was raised by a British father and a Chinese mother who loved music. The Platters, Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley were the soundtracks to her childhood.

True to her word, she started performing live as a teenager, becoming one of the vocalists and a keyboard player for the Adaptors – to this day, criminally unacknowledged progenitors of the Hong Kong scene.

But it was the band that came after the Adaptors that saw Chris make the switch from a reserved teenager, in Perigoe’s shadow, to frontwoman in her own right. Hailed by the South China Morning Post in 1996 as “four women…with a fresh take on the industry and their place within it,” the Sisters of Sharon were a grungy all-girl outfit heavily inspired by the likes of Nirvana and the Pixies, writing both Cantonese and English songs.

Since then, Chris has been in almost a dozen local bands like Smoking Monkeys, Flowers of Babylon, Thinking Out Loud, Guitars & Panties (“to prove that sex sells”), CHRANG!, and The Ferals (her current outfit), gigging often at the Fringe Club and the Wanch, some of Hong Kong’s longstanding live music venues. She has also embarked on solo ventures and collaborations, and recently jointly released an electro-rock, industrial sounding single Risky Moves with India’s FuzzCulture.

While Chris’ career as a musician is impressive, arguably her most significant contribution to Hong Kong’s music scene is through the Underground, an independent music promotion agency that she founded more than 20 years ago.

If you want to find out more about Chris’ 90s all-girl rock band and her lifelong devotion to Hong Kong’s live music scene, please check out the piece I did here.

Finally, in honour of The Underground’s upcoming 22nd Anniversary Festival, I’ve once again reached out to Chris for a short and sweet Q&A, and I very much look forward to hearing the indie sounds of Hong Kong this weekend.

The Underground features indie rock, reggae, punk, alt electronica, blues, funk, metal and psychedelic madness across two nights – how do you manage to keep the lineup fresh every year?

Great question! We are all about mixing the familiar with the new. Throughout the year we have our new band showcases (Shazza Music Showcase) to spot rising talent, plus our team members and I check out bands at other shows and events. For anniversary festivals, we strive to bring in Underground alumni; for example, Helter Skelter – two members are flying in from Japan to perform specifically at this festival. They no longer live here but feel the love of our community and our audiences.

It’s also ample proof that when you support the scene and give bands encouragement, they keep creating and performing, and the standard of bands rises along with it. Finally, it’s great to showcase different genres as audiences’ ears would get tired listening to one genre for a few hours.

For the past 22 years, The Underground has reviewed bands at all our shows, and so for some bands it’s a great way to motivate them to create fresh material for their Underground page to show progress and creativity.

Which band is most likely to get the crowd moving?

My gosh! So many! It’s like asking me to choose between my children! Shall I just list out the festival bands for you? Hahaha!

Which band on the lineup, in your opinion, is seriously underrated?

Diamond 6 (rock) and Other Theories (hard rock, alt rock).

What’s a song that’s been stuck on repeat lately?

Alpha Tone’s 《黑白》It’s full of hooks and the first time I heard them play it, I was like “this is great!” It’s euphoric.

What can we expect from The Ferals gig?

Three new songs and a more “punk” rock rather than “hard” rock set.

If you could give one piece of stage advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid to put down your guitar; you might actually be ok without having a guitar to hide behind.

Unlike its sister SAR Hong Kong, where queer bars, drag queens, and Pride Month celebrations are loud and proud, Macau’s own queer community is, in Sun’s own words, “slow-burning” – very low profile but passionate. “I hope the film festival can be a way to affirm your own identity,” says Sun.

Read on to find out the meaning behind this year’s theme, the reasons behind selecting controversial Cyclone (2026) as the opening film, and whether Sun thinks local attitudes towards the queer community have changed since starting MIQFF.

The 4th Macao International Queer Film Festival runs from 5 to 27 June.

Please tell us about this year’s theme “QUEERTOPIA!/?”

On the event poster, there’s a distant, golden building that looks like a castle. In the middle there is a non-gendered figure and a unicorn. Queertopia!/? is an invitation to the audience to consider where we are now, as Macau. What are we pursuing? Is it something very distant, an ideal far away from us? Some countries have already legalised same-sex marriage, or progressed much further on gender issues, so how do we position ourselves? Should we chase something far away or should we focus on our current situation here and now, which is our most immediate and basic living condition – simply not being oppressed?

This is why Queertopia!/? has an exclamation mark and a question mark, which is deliberately ambiguous. MIQFF is not here to provide an answer to what queertopia is – we leave that up to the audience.

Why did you choose Cyclone (HK) as the opening film?

Since our third edition, we’ve aimed to choose an Asian or Chinese-language film from across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China to be our opening film. As a self-funded festival, our budget is quite small and resources are limited, so being able to invite guests from Asia or Chinese-speaking regions simply means the budget is easier to control.

Cyclone is a bit controversial because the director Philip Yung is a heterosexual man. A straight man telling a queer story has raised some eyebrows, but the director knows he has this kind of limitation. He actually did a lot of research and found a transgender screenwriter to work on this project with him. So I feel that if you really want to know more about transgender issues in our region – because films about transgender people are quite rare here – you should check out the film.

MIQFF is also hosting a queer book club and promoting a zine launch. What can you tell us about these events?

In terms of the queer book club, we really wanted to have a space for everyone to get together – not necessarily just for reading, but to exchange ideas. So this time we chose the reading club format to invite people to bring books, exchange reading lists, and share their favourite indie publications. We haven’t done anything like this before, so I particularly wanted to try it this time.

As for the zine, MIQFF is acting as a channel to promote the pre-order and launch of the 853G zine created by Jerry Choi and Wilson So. Jerry is my friend and co-worker who loves photography. He’s been wanting to publish this zine for a long time, and has been doing interviews to encapsulate queer life in Macau.

MIQFF remains a self-funded festival. Has sourcing funding become easier as the years have passed, or is it still a challenge?

Finding funding has always been very difficult. We haven’t got much funding this year, actually. Lush1 has continued to support us. Consulates and institutions have been our regular partners, while smaller entities like private companies, restaurants, or wine companies have also chipped in. So it’s a collection of small supports that add up.

Of course, we treasure any form of funding, whether big or small. As the curator, I have the responsibility to find more sources of funding, but it’s still a work in progress. We’ll keep working hard to find and secure larger sources of funding.

Do you think local attitudes towards the queer community have changed since you started MIQFF in 2023?

When I started MIQFF in 2023, I genuinely just wanted to create a space for everyone. Of course, I had many optimistic ideas. But the purest motivation was to create a safe space for everyone to celebrate.

I’ve always believed in the magical powers of film. I also really believe that telling diverse stories through film can change – well, maybe not completely change – people’s existing perceptions. At the very least, they’ll know that there are many different facets in the world, and so many different stories co-existing with each other. As for whether local people’s views have changed – I can’t be sure. However, I’ve noticed there are sometimes still discriminatory comments when people post about queer topics on Threads.

I hope the film festival can be a way to affirm your own identity. Everyone can take part in Pride Month to meet different people, watch films, discuss and learn about each other’s lives, and realise that there’s a community of people like you in Macau.

If you want to find out more about Jay Sun, feel free to check out the profile I did on him last year for Macao News.

I venture past the parking barrier and head forward, walking past two quiet restaurants and several dark shopfronts, before my ears eventually start to pick up on the promising sound of bass and chatter. With bated breath, I turn the corner.

Clusters of young people in streetwear linger in a spacious courtyard, chatting, drinking, and smoking on the balmy April weekend of Gum’s first anniversary. Energetic bass pulsates behind the walls to the left, where stylish youths with bleached hair sit on a packed sofa by the entrance. Others lounge on benches encircling fluorescent-lit trees, some cross-legged or squatting on the pavement with smoke curling from their lips. Tonight, maximalists and minimalists convene in harmony beneath the moonlight.

Tattoos, beanies, bleached hair, fluorescent hair, facial piercings, gothic makeup, oversized tees and skimpy skirts can all be spotted here. This culmination of Japanese, American, British, German 90s and 2000s alt fashion – as I would later discover – is emblematic of yàbï (亚逼), a Chinese contemporary subculture born from underground club scenes. Once a derogatory term for "posers" who mix alt fashion without true subcultural knowledge, it has now been reclaimed with proud defiance. There is also a significant gathering of skaters, BMX boys and modded e-scooter enthusiasts, who occasionally “rev” their scooters.

At this time of night, Gum is the only venue awake on this street. A cheery yellow tutoring centre slumbers peacefully beside the dark mouth of the club. Announced merely days before on Gum’s social media, three eclectic nights of parties have been planned for the club’s first birthday. Hong Kong techno legend Mr. Ho headlined the prior night on a rainy Friday. Tonight, Gum’s very own founder C Man takes the headline slot for a bass-driven bash while Sunday promises to be more psychedelic.

Several excitable shouts catch my attention. A handful of young men gather around a man with a black beanie and a baggy red shirt, forming a makeshift runway. The man in the red shirt straddles a BMX bike in a moment of concentration, before surging forward. Both man and bike leap into the air, with the bike pirouetting lithely beneath him – and land to an impressed uproar.

Intrigued, I head inside. Posters and stickers from indie music collectives plaster the walls, while a fridge full of bottled beer glows by the entrance in the front room. I get my paper wristband, grab a cheap bottle of Asahi, and enter the strobing darkness with my heart drumming in anticipation.

At 50 square metres, Gum is very small for a club. Inside, the room is deliberately hazy, dark and sliced by red lasers. I spot C Man, the 27-year-old founder of Gum, on the decks with a bandana around his face. A mashup of Cantonese rapper YoungBunnyH’s (步步高先生) Rich, powerful, and, influential (有钱有权有势) blares out of the speakers, while a crowd eclipsed by the haze dances and shouts with loose joy to his maneuvers. There is no stage, so he is level with us. With a strict no flash policy, it is almost impossible to get a photo. Several men in their early 20s, all with bleached, shaggy hair, dance with their arms around each other, grins mirrored across their gleaming faces.

Chan Yat Man, known colloquially and artistically as C Man, is a Gen Z Hong Konger and one of the youngest club owners in China. He got his first taste of underground culture at the Tin Shui Wai trap parties hosted by WILD$TYLE, an independent Hong Kong hip-hop label, and through spending time at skate parks in the northwestern district, watching skate videos embellished by the world-renowned sounds of UK bass. While working as a video producer in Shanghai, he frequently partied at the city’s famed All Club, an iconic institution of underground music, and jointly started the electronic music collective Hubi Kids (胡逼孩子) with his friends. Interestingly, C Man arrived in Guangzhou in 2023 to pursue a postgraduate degree in journalism – but writing has been on the back burner since Gum began chewing away in his mind. Now at its one-year anniversary, Gum not only marks Guangzhou on the map as a destination for underground culture, but also serves as a hopeful beacon in the midst of a faltering underground landscape across China.

Last year, when I attended the 8-year anniversary of Shenzhen’s Oil Club, its members told me about the devastating closures of legendary clubs across China, like Shanghai’s All Club and Chengdu’s TAG. The economic downturn, regulatory pressure (like regional 2 am curfews), and changing consumer habits have all contributed to these cultural casualties. Yet it was during this time of uncertainty that C Man chose to start his own underground club in Guangzhou.

“I saw the closures as an opportunity. When the economy was good those clubs thrived, so it would’ve been difficult to enter the scene with Gum. But now, older clubs might not adapt to this era. I believe if you capture the feeling of the times – for example, making the club smaller, and having cheaper pricing for drinks and tickets, and a different operational model compared to previous clubs in Guangzhou – then it can work.”

C Man is no stranger to throwing good parties with a twist – prior to Gum, he organised a weekly series of pop-up electronic music events around Guangzhou called “Jiuguidang” (走鬼档), a Cantonese slang term that refers to unlicensed street vendors or street food stalls commonly found in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and other Cantonese-speaking cities. Embodying the grassroots resilience and fluid adaptability of the jiuguidang, parties were hosted in non-traditional venues like record shops, with DJs referred to by the tongue-in-cheek label “stall owners”, giving them the unconventional chance to cook up sets lasting up to 2 hours or longer. Even though the events were small scale, they were often packed. It was soon clear to C Man that Guangzhou lacked good venues, and there was an insatiable appetite among the youth for music-centric, unpretentious, and no-frills clubbing. The then 26-year-old did some calculations, found them feasible, and that’s how Gum began.

“When we opened last year, we had barely finished fixing up the place. We literally finalised everything just five minutes before opening. The first DJs I could book were just locals I knew. The whole thing felt very ‘do now and talk later’,” C Man recalls with pleasure.

As a young club owner and DJ, C Man has an unconventional vision for how a club could operate. When searching for a venue, it was of utmost importance to him and his partners that the location would not disturb locals, that the venue wasn’t too big, and that it was a social space. “I basically didn’t spend money on any fancy renovations. I wanted it to be very raw. I cut out unnecessary costs, so that I passed the savings on to the consumers. I thought this through very clearly before opening.”

Unlike typical clubs, where owners curate the majority of events, C Man offers Gum as a space for young, passionate promoters to shine. These promoters form the backbone of the club’s diverse nights, while he only curates around one to two club nights per month. “I felt that running a club shouldn’t mean keeping all the choices – especially about music – in my own hands. The promoters I know are all young and have nowhere to go. My philosophy is to give the choice of music and ways to enjoy it back to the people who actually party themselves.” This “promoter-first model” happened very organically, as many of his professional relationships began through the shared love of nights out on liberating dancefloors across the country. When these promoters heard news of Gum, many reached out to him with bold ideas of how to offer something different to Guangzhou’s nightlife.

Gum is, after all, where the Greater Bay Area’s “first” F1 underground e-scooter championship took place in March. “It was just a silly themed club night, but people really showed up with their scooters. Some guy even drove his scooter onto the dancefloor,” C Man shares with amused disbelief, “There was so much smoke and it stank. It was chaos.”

I stay until 5 am despite arriving alone from Macau. C Man and one of his business partners, Calvin So, greet me with palpable warmth and hospitality that extends well beyond the night. Captivating people from all walks of life flow between the dancefloor, the courtyard, and the bathrooms (which are across the courtyard in an industrial building), collectively immersed in Gum’s intoxicating atmosphere of spontaneity. Among the crowd are university students, baristas, barbers, fashion designers, and business owners. There, I meet an Afghan university student who is also experiencing Gum for the first time. Drinks are bought and shared, and I am invited to dance in the communal darkness. I witness the antithesis of the claim that Gen Z are less interested in partying, and C Man says something that stays with me – “If it’s not fun, it’s usually because of the people.”

When I say goodbye to my new friends and tell them we’ll see each other soon, I know it will be an easy promise to keep. I emerge back into the city as the sounds of Gum are swallowed up in the liminal hours of the morning, only to discover that Guangzhou is still in bed.