You know what they say: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or, in this case, another man’s music. 

Content creator and Chinese culture enthusiast “Foreigner Hat” recently went viral for explaining the little-known Dakou movement, in which damaged, discarded CDs from the U.S. created a giant counterculture movement. 

Trash bins full of banned music presented a unique opportunity

Beginning in the mid-’60s, China’s Communist Party heavily restricted or outright banned Western music (even instruments like pianos were frequently destroyed or condemned), which was viewed as a symbol of capitalist decadence and bourgeois values. 

However, by the 1990s, Western music trickled in through a unique underground phenomenon known as dakou. Essentially, American record companies damaged their excess CDs by cutting or drilling holes (dakou) in them, then sold them as trash scrap to Chinese third-party markets. 

“A lot of these ended up in Guangdong [province], where people quickly realized something,” shared........

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