I Am No Different

Ritual Day gained fame in 2001 on the first Chinese death metal album Resurrection of Gods, which featured various artists. The album was released underground and limited to 1,000 copies, but was heavily promoted in China's extreme music circles. In 2003, Ritual Day released their debut album Sky Lake, establishing them as the first and presently the best black metal band in China. Nong Yong is the band's lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and main composer.

Ritual Day's vocalist Nong Yong in his instrument store. Yuan Ye

Nong Yong owns a store selling guitars, drums and other related products. When I arrived, Nong Yong was watching football on TV with two other guys.
Nong Yong got up to greet me, tall and athletic, wearing casual clothes, his long black hair in a ponytail. We went into his office, a two square meter cubicle. The first thing I noticed was a statue of the Wealth God, a traditional Chinese god that blesses and protects businessmen, in a red niche. He told me that he believes gods exist in people's hearts.
Nong Yong comes from Fujian, a coastal southeastern province. He is nearing 30; the other three band members are around 23. He said his childhood growing up in the countryside was happy but difficult. Life was hard in his small and poor village. Nong worked hard at his lessons and helped his parents with farm work. The country life brought him close to nature.
Nong went to high school in the city and, bowing to the influence of Taiwanese pop songs, started playing acoustic guitar. After graduating, he worked as a biscuit salesman and as cook. In the early 1990s, heavy metal became popular in China and bands like Tang Dynasty and Overload inspired him to play rock and change his life. Although many friends thought Beijing too distant, Nong thought of it as the political, economic, and most especially as the cultural center of China. He arrived in Beijing in 1997 with a Yamaha electric guitar he had no idea how to play.
During his first two years in Beijing, Nong Yong lived in an outlying county, paying 200 RMB a month for a farmhouse with a yard. He lived alone and continued learning guitar and writing songs. Having no income, he spent his savings very carefully, every day eating steamed bread, pancakes, Chinese cabbage -- the cheapest and most common vegetable in north China -- and meat just once a week.
Here he organized a small band and held rehearsals in his farmhouse. He wasn't clear about what music he was going to make, as he was still searching for a musical identity. In 1998, his brother sent him two death metal CDs from abroad. The music's darkness was the channel he had been looking for to express pain and joy.
Ritual Day's first album sold more than 5,000 copies with little commercial promotion, an impressive feat for a band making extreme music in China. Despite their death metal associations, there is no violence in Ritual Day lyrics. The music concentrates on the themes of real life and love of nature. To Nong Yong the three most important virtues are honesty, bravery and diligence. His fans rave at his performances, but he sees himself as a common man. Off stage, he eats three meals a day and goes to bed early. His ambitions center around working hard and industriously in order to buy a house and a car, and support his parents. Nong Yong is very busy every day at his instrument store, but still plays music, and plans to establish his own music label. Nong Yong hopes to be a stepping-stone for China's extreme musicians.