Technically, the hardest part is matching the tempos, textures, and keys of a bunch of already heavily processed audio samples. These clips weren’t made to go together. Some are over-compressed TikTok audio grabs, others are chopped-up Vocaloid vocals. Stitching them together without making it sound like a total car crash takes way more effort than you’d expect.
But beyond that, the real challenge is cultural: Language and meme barriers.
A meme remix doesn’t really work if you don’t get the original meme.
It’s like trying to enjoy an inside joke you were never part of.
So when I’m stacking together “来财” remixes or looping “娜艺娜” like a chant, I know that for a lot of people—especially non-Chinese audiences—it just sounds like noise. Without knowing the background, the livestreams, the joke formats, or the tone shifts, none of the playfulness comes through.
Even some of my Chinese classmates only find it funny because they’ve seen these sounds on Douyin a hundred times already. The humor and appeal of this kind of music is totally embedded in context.
That makes this kind of remixing super localized. It’s hard to “translate” it without over-explaining the joke (and killing it in the process).
That difficulty is actually part of why I wanted to do this.
It reminded me of another bigger issue: China’s complicated relationship with electronic music.
In the 1990s, electronic music entered China in a weird way. Instead of coming from underground clubs or experimental art scenes, it kind of exploded via mass-produced, low-budget, offbeat dance tracks made from workers who lost their jobs. Factories pumped out CDs of cheesy techno loops and 8-bit melodies with no structure, no dynamics—just relentless repetition.
And people loved it.
Because it was new. And loud. And cheap.
Fast forward to today, and that legacy is still here.
Millions of people, especially from working-class or rural backgrounds who never had access to music education or aesthetic training, still resonate with that kind of “crude” electronic sound.
You hear it everywhere:
- The “DJ版本” (DJ versions) of pop songs
- Sped-up and slowed-down edits with glitchy reverb
- Gaudy mashups on Douyin that blast bass with no mix balance
It’s easy to dismiss it as “土味” (tǔ wèi – tacky or unsophisticated taste), but it’s also real. It reflects how sound and technology have developed in a specific socio-economic context.
To some, these tracks are a joke. To others, they’re a party. And to a small minority, they’re actual art? That tension is what I’m playing with.
By making my own “拼好歌” out of remixed memes, I’m not just joking around. I’m also trying to channel that feeling of something that’s both trash and precious, cringe and catchy, hyper-local but weirdly global at the same time.