The CD Jazz Cafe is a low-ceilinged nightclub in east Beijing which at weekends throbs to the music of some unusual rock and rhythm and blues groups. One band, known as the Rhythm Dogs, boasts a bandanna-wearing guitarist in dark glasses who in daylight is the representative of a western financial institution. But the many of the fans who pack into the CD Cafe on Friday or Saturday evenings come hoping to see China's best known, if now ageing rocker, Cui Jian. He was there last Saturday and sang for two hours some of his most popular numbers with the Liu Yuan Quartet jazz band.
Not being a favourite with the communist authorities, Cui Jian is not always free to perform in Beijing. I have seen him come into the CD Cafe late at night, a modest, approachable guy, not at all like his ego-driven western counterparts, and just have a drink and leave.
Sometimes officials will stop him performing without notice. A year ago when he was preparing to sing in the Sunflower Club in nearby Ritan Park a plainclothes man from the Public Security Bureau told him that if he did, the manager of the club would be taken away.
I wrote a story then saying that the rock celebrity had become the latest performing artist to fall foul of a new assault by the Communist Party leadership on unorthodox music, drama, literature and dance, especially that which it saw as decadent and western-inspired.
Cui was a special target of this campaign, as he articulated the frustrations of young people with his combination of western rock, Chinese instruments and politically-sensitive lyrics.
He has been a bit of a thorn in the side of the authorities since his first hit, Nothing to My Name, became the theme song of the student pro-democracy movement which was crushed in 1989.
The star was banned to the fringes of the music scene and only allowed to perform - always to ecstatic crowds - far away from Beijing or else in small night clubs. He is never invited to appear on television and has not had an album produced since 1994.
His official standing was made clear when 18,000 young people crowded into the Capital Gymnasium in Beijing in 1996 for a celebration of the growth of pop music since it was prohibited "capitalist poison" during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. They were fed a diet of sugary songs about love and friendship from approved bands. Cui Jian, widely regarded as the father of Chinese rock music, was not allowed to take part.
Other Chinese singers famous in the West have found it a problem getting permission to perform. Dadawa, the balladeer with the unique falsetto voice and affinity for Tibetan culture whose album Sister Drum has sold 200,000 copies world-wide, was prevented by officials from singing with the Chieftains in Shanghai a year ago, not because of ideology but apparently because of bureaucratic pique at her independent spirit. (She has just done another recording in Dublin with the Irish folk group.)
Cui Jian's weekend gig at the CD Cafe, where he sang his new theme number, The Egg under the Red Flag, which is regarded as critical of the government, comes at a time when the cultural atmosphere in Beijing is becoming a bit more relaxed. Fringe rock groups like Tang Dynasty and Cobra now play regularly in the Keep-in-Touch Cafe, owned by Wang Yong, a rock idol whose 1989 repertoire included the cryptic refrain: "I'll be watching you." Significantly, Cui Jian was last week the subject of the first laudatory profile in Beijing's English-language newspaper, China Daily, which only publishes material approved by the government. The full-page article, which appeared on Wednesday, referred to "Nothing to my Name" as the "anthem for a generation", which came close to a sympathetic reference to the student movement of 1989, which is still a taboo subject in China. The article concluded: "And this is what the 36-year-old rock musician wants to say to his audience: `Everyone try your best not to tell lies from now on (and) it is my greatest pleasure to create more and more space of freedom through my music and pass it on to others'." Many will see this as a coded message to the government - no more lies, and more freedom.
Similar stuff has yet to appear in the official Chinese language press, but the article still constitutes a small blossoming for those who want to believe that there is a Beijing spring in the offing.
Certainly the wintry rhetoric of the communist media against "immoral literature and dance" has eased considerably compared to a year ago, when the People's Daily was accusing authors and performing artists of failing to respect the fundamental morality of the masses.
Several conservative outbursts in similar tone followed the congress of the China Federation of Literary and Arts Circles, during which President Jiang Zemin called on artists to observe the party line. Mr Jiang was then promoting a new "spiritual civilisation", a euphemism for greater state control. But little is heard about "spiritual civilisation" nowadays as the leftists in the party go into decline and voices are heard to say that literature and the arts must not be subordinate to politics.
Cui Jian's first new album in four years, called Power of the Powerless, is coming out soon and his distinctive voice will likely be one of them.