Place references in Chinese music titles since 1912: changing patterns across regions and time

The paper examines how music, as a form of modern media, conveys rich social and cultural meanings that contribute to constructing place, identity, and national belonging. Prior work shows that place-based narratives in literature and film shape identity and evoke attachment, and music similarly reflects historical and social contexts, generating strong place images and emotions. Given China’s vast territory, long history, and rapid socio-economic transformation (1912–2019), the authors investigate the evolution of the sense of place in Chinese songs amid major societal shifts—from wartime to peacetime and from collectivism to a socialist market economy. The research question focuses on how the connotations, features, and regional emphases of ‘place’ in song titles changed across four historical periods, and how social backgrounds (patriotism, socialism, marketization, individualism) shaped these expressions. The study emphasizes that sense of place is both individually felt and socially constructed, and it uses place-referencing song titles to trace these changes over time and space in China.

The literature frames sense of place as symbolic meanings, attachment, and affection that are individually experienced yet socially constructed and often collectivized (Greider & Garkovich; Stokowski; Brown & Perkins; Lee; Halbwachs). Collective memory shapes personal memories and shared place meanings, producing collective senses of place under certain social contexts. Sense of place arises from social interactions, physical settings, and psychological processes (Stedman). Mobility can strengthen emotional bonds to places at larger scales and dynamically reshapes place attachment in modernity (Gustafson). Music geography scholarship divides into American traditions focusing on spatial patterns and diffusion and British traditions examining performance/consumption spaces and identity. In China and Asia, studies examine regional musical characteristics, spatial production, place attachment, identity, nostalgia, and collective memory (e.g., Qiao; Ma & Deng; Liu & Cai; Lin; Yano; Kong). Lyrics encode creators’ experiences and public interpretations, mapping place images and soundscapes (Wood & Gritzner; Long & Collins). Music serves both aesthetic and political functions, acting as propaganda, mobilizing social change, and reflecting ideology (Street; Roberts; Fung; Keller). Music narrates social history and helps constitute place identity and belonging (Hudson; Connell & Gibson). The paper positions sense of place as historically contingent, shaped by social conflicts and power relations (Harvey; Pred; Zukin), evolving from dominant, collectivist configurations to more diverse, individualized expressions under modernization, marketization, and globalization.

Data sources: The study uses Chinese-language songs whose titles contain place names (and selected additional songs expressing sense of place) from 1912–2019. For 1912–1979, data were drawn from books such as The History of Modern Music (Wang, 2009) and 90 Years of Songs (Lei & Wang, 2011). For 1980–2019, the authors queried major Chinese streaming platforms NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music for titles containing names of China’s 293 prefecture-level cities, 30 autonomous prefectures, seven regions, three leagues, and ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Macao’, and ‘Taiwan’. The corpus includes diverse genres (pop, folk, rock, R&B, hip-hop) and various Chinese dialects (e.g., Cantonese). The authors also noted songs expressing place that might be blocked online due to copyright/censorship. Periodization follows major socio-historical events: 1912–1949 (Republic of China, Anti-Japanese War, Civil War), 1950–1979 (early PRC socialism including Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, send-down), 1980–2009 (reform and opening, physical audio era, market-led industry), 2010–2019 (internet era, independent/online music boom). Data collection closed on March 29, 2019, yielding 3758 song titles: 64 (1.70%) in 1912–1949, 130 (3.46%) in 1950–1979, 566 (15.06%) in 1980–2009, and 2998 (79.78%) in 2010–2019. Spatial analysis: Using ArcGIS, the authors geocoded referenced places and applied kernel density estimation to identify clusters of place references. Darker areas in maps indicate denser concentrations. They summarized the largest clusters per period and interpreted socio-historical reasons and sense-of-place content. Text analysis: To surface salient place-related concepts per period, term frequency–inverse document frequency (tf*idf) weighting was applied to song titles; terms were ranked by tf*idf within each period. For reference corpora, 76 works from a modern Chinese corpus (Ministry of Education’s Language and Character Application Research Institute) across domains (economics, politics, sports, transportation, art, education, computers, military, environment, medicine) were used. The study also examines lyrics of representative songs to contextualize sense-of-place meanings. Analytical focus: The framework (Fig. 1) positions periods along axes of collective–individual and dominant–diverse, hypothesizing shifts from collective/dominant (wartime/socialism) to individual/diverse (market/individualism). The analysis links spatial patterns and keywords to social drivers (patriotism, socialism, market, individualism) and to experiences such as mobility, nostalgia, and placelessness.

- Overall shift: Across 1912–2019, sense of place in songs evolved from collective, dominant, patriotic and socialist narratives toward more individual, diverse, and personal expressions shaped by market forces and independent production. Place–people relationships became more detailed and abundant, with a move from iconic national symbols to everyday, localized nodes (e.g., subway stations) and imaginative/virtual associations. - 1912–1949 (n=64; 1.70%): Kernel density clusters in the Yellow River Basin and Yangtze River Delta. Wartime turmoil produced patriotic, collective senses of place. Representative songs: Yellow River Cantata, On the Taihang Mountain, Defending the Lugou Bridge, Ballad of the Great Wall, Nanniwan, Yan’an. Keywords (tf*idf): ‘Yellow River’, ‘defend’, ‘Shanghai’, ‘Yangtze’, ‘Yan’an’, ‘Great Wall’, ‘Lugou Bridge’, etc. Rivers and revolutionary places symbolized the nation, evoking rootedness, attachment to homeland, and mobilization against invasion. - 1950–1979 (n=130; 3.46%): Clusters around Beijing, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hunan, Jiangxi. Socialist construction and political campaigns shaped a dominative, collectivist sense of place focused on revolutionary sites and model cities. Representative songs: There is a Golden Sun in Beijing, Daqing/Dazhai-themed songs, Back to Yan’an, Jinggangshan. Send-down policy generated homesickness songs (e.g., Nanjing, my hometown). Keywords: ‘Beijing’, ‘Dazhai’, ‘Jinggangshan’, ‘Daqing’, ‘Yan’an’, ‘home’, ‘frontier’, ‘Chairman Mao’. Hukou restrictions limited mobility; music blended aesthetic enjoyment with ideological instruction, praising revolutionary and model places. - 1980–2009 (n=566; 15.06%): Clusters in Beijing, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Lhasa. Marketization and the influence of Hong Kong/Taiwan industries (1980s Hong Kong golden age) shaped production; Beijing remained a cultural center. Tibet-related natural places and sacred landscapes (e.g., Qinghai–Tibet Plateau) featured. Keywords: ‘Beijing’, ‘Taipei’, ‘Hong Kong’, ‘Shanghai’, ‘Lhasa’, ‘Macao’, ‘Xinjiang’, ‘Huangshan’, ‘Lijiang’. Themes include nostalgia, disruption of place bonds due to urban change (e.g., Wedding Card Street), and diversification of place identities. The music industry’s market power became a key driver of place representations. - 2010–2019 (n=2998; 79.78%): Dense clusters in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Urban Agglomeration, Yangtze River Delta, as well as Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Chongqing (including dialect rap scenes). High mobility, internet platforms, and independent music led to individualized, fragmented, and plural senses of place. Keywords: ‘Beijing’, ‘Chongqing’, ‘Nanjing’, ‘Xi’an’, ‘Hangzhou’, ‘Jinan’, ‘Guangzhou’, ‘Lanzhou’, ‘Chengdu’, ‘Shanghai’, ‘Dali’, ‘Dunhuang’; also non-place/transport terms like ‘subway’, ‘Line 10’, ‘High Speed Rail’. Artists increasingly referenced micro-nodes (subway stations, specific streets) and everyday routines, expressing nostalgia, homesickness, placelessness, and imaginative/mediated connections. Despite homogenization, personal practices and contacts imbue even standardized ‘non-places’ with meaning for individuals. - Conceptual synthesis: The periodized drivers transition from patriotism (1912–1949) to socialism (1950–1979) to market-led industry (1980–2009) to individualism/diversity (2010–2019). The mainstream sense of place shifts along collective→individual and dominant→diverse axes, paralleling broader socio-economic and cultural transformations.

Findings show a historical transformation of sense of place in Chinese songs from collective orientations (wartime patriotism and socialist construction) toward individualized, diversified expressions in the internet era. Collective memory and political ideology shaped dominant senses of place before 1979, embedding national and revolutionary sites into shared identities. With reform and opening, market-led music industries and globalization diversified place meanings, introducing nostalgia, loss, and reconfiguration of bonds amid urban change and mobility. After 2010, independent music and online platforms enabled more subjective, place-specific storytelling, including everyday urban nodes and ‘non-places’ (e.g., subway lines), reflecting both placelessness and personal re-attachment through routine practices. The study situates these changes within theories that emphasize social construction, power relations, mobility, and virtual/imagined geographies, arguing that experiences, media, and increased mobility produce multiple, layered senses of place across scales. Thus, music both registers and shapes evolving man–land relationships, revealing the interplay of socio-political contexts with personal emotions and identities.

Music offers a valuable lens on people–place relations and the social construction of sense of place. By mapping 3758 Chinese song titles referencing places from 1912–2019, the study demonstrates that mainstream senses of place have shifted with socio-historical contexts: from collective, dominant patriotic/socialist narratives to market-influenced diversity and, ultimately, individualized, plural expressions in the internet era. The proposed framework highlights transitions along collective–individual and dominant–diverse dimensions and underscores regional variations tied to political centers, market hubs, cultural regions, and everyday urban nodes. Historically informed analysis reveals that sense of place is not merely personal affect but is continually reshaped by social trends, conflicts, and structures. The framework can be applied to improve place identity and satisfaction, even for standardized or ‘non-’places, by recognizing how practices and contacts imbue them with meaning. Future research could examine specific musical styles, track changing city/province images through a social-construction lens, and extend/validate cross-nationally with broader datasets beyond titles.

- Data limited primarily to song titles containing place names; songs expressing place in lyrics but not in titles may be underrepresented. - Potential omissions due to copyright restrictions and governmental censorship of online platforms. - Genre coverage broad but not analyzed by style-specific subcultures in depth; future work should focus on particular genres/scenes. - China-specific socio-political context; findings warrant cross-national verification and comparative studies. - Periodization and tf*idf keywording draw on available corpora and platforms; biases in platform catalogues and metadata may influence results.