LATEST SITE NEWS 本站信息
2020 Apr 9
Chinese text looks so much better in modern browsers 19 years after this site started,
so I finally converted all the Chinese characters on the site from .gif images to actual text in the HTML!
Updated website header image with current band members taken from their 30th anniversary concert in Beijing.
2014 Apr 23
I just realized that Hei Bao's sixth album is available on iTunes!
2013 Dec 2
Just got back from Beijing and look what I found at the Wangfujing Xinhua Bookstore: Hei Bao's sixth album! It's amazing that there has hardly been any mention of it on the internet.
There is still some hope I may update this website someday when I have time.
2011 Nov 12
Wow, hard to believe it's been over a decade since I started this site. Sorry for the inactivity over the past few years. Around the time of
my last update to this site, I was planning to post music clips from each of Hei Bao's albums. However, something called YouTube came out and
those of you interested enough to see and hear Hei Bao can pretty much find everything there.
Another reason for the lack of updates is there honestly hasn't been any decent Hei Bao news in the last six years. If you have any news about Hei Bao,
please e-mail me at the address at the bottom of this page.
Finally, the main reason for updating this site is my previous host appears to have shut down a few months ago. Thus I'm taking this opportunity to make a few very minor edits
(mainly fixing broken links) for the migration over to my new host.
2005 Jun 2
I found a very cool report in English about Hei Bao that was originally broadcast by
China Radio International in November of 2004. You can still listen to
streaming audio of the broadcast here and
read a written transcript of program here.
From some of the Chinese to English translations in the report, it looks like the host of the program
may have used this site for some of his research :-)
For those of you wondering, I still do plan on having short audio clips of several of Hei Bao's best songs
available on this site. This feature has been part of the plan for this site from day one, but I just haven't had
time to get around to implementing it :-( Note that I do not support piracy in any way, and I will not host complete versions of any
of their songs. The clips are mainly for visitors from around the world interested in Hei Bao, but are not able to
easily purchase their albums, and want a taste of what the band sounds like.
2005 Apr 7
I have made some substantial updates to several pages of this site following the big news last month that Qin Yong has left
Hei Bao. I'm glad to see that from all reports, Qin Yong's departure was amicable, and he is still on good terms with
his former bandmates.
In the past, Hei Bao would release a re-recording of one of their older songs whenever a
new lead singer joined the band. It will be interesting if they follow tradition this time with new lead vocalist Zhang Kepeng.
2005 Feb 1
I have finally got my hands on Hei Bao V! I purchased it online at YesAsia.com
and was impressed with their service. I recently received some e-mails from fans who are in the same boat as me wanting
to buy Hei Bao’s material outside China, and I had no problem recommending YesAsia.com to them.
I am glad to report that Hei Bao V includes some real rockers, and the tracks sound very polished and tight. To be honest,
the first single from the album, "Cuo Jue", got me a bit worried as it sounded like a theme song from one of those
Japanese TV serial dramas. I was afraid Hei Bao was heading towards a more middle-of-the-road pop/soft rock sound! Anyways, Qin Yong
has never sounded better, and Li Tong once again lets it rip with his outstanding signature guitar work. It is also great
to finally hear Hui Peng's contribution on keyboards, especially with the amazing intro on the first track. Wang Wenjie
and Zhao Mingyi once again back the band up with a solid bass and rhythm section.
2005 Jan 2
2004 was a great year for Hei Bao news with the release of Hei Bao V last summer. Unfortunately, I haven't
had much time to update this site. I've made a few updates to every page on the site today,
and hopefully will have more new info about the band later on, so keep checking back!
I still haven't been able to purchase Hei Bao V yet. My wife just returned from a trip to Malaysia and Singapore,
and she couldn't find any record stores there that were selling the new album. I have some friends travelling to China
soon that I hope may be able to buy the album for me.
2004 Mar 25
I've just returned from a short trip Beijing. It was amazing to see the huge amount of change since my last
trip to China in 1997! I was hoping to be able to buy Hei Bao's fifth album while I was there but it looks like
its release has been further delayed.
Certainly one of the main factors contributing to the delay of Hei Bao's next album is the rampant piracy in
China. Sadly, I saw several versions of pirated Hei Bao "double albums" usually featuring around 30 songs lifted
off HB's four previous albums.
I did see that Hei Bao's third album has officially been repackaged and given an interesting English title, "Have Nothing Is Nothing But ..."
I've found it quite amusing and flattering that visitors to this Hei Bao fan site have mistakenly thought it is
the "official" Hei Bao website. So to avoid any further confusion, I have updated the top of this page to
clearly state that this website is indeed a fan website.
2004 Feb 22
I have just noticed that the official Hei Bao website
at Kirin Kid Productions has finally been updated with new content this past week. The site has new images
of the band (check out Li Tong's new haircut!), news about Hei Bao's recent
concert in Singapore, and current band member bios.
Indicated at the bottom of this page that this site shows up fine with Mozilla's Firefox.
Firefox is a free, open-source web browser for Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. I've been using Firefox quite a bit lately
and highly recommend it.
2003 Dec 28
News of Hei Bao's upcoming 5th album is a great way to end off this year! Visit the new
Band News section for the latest news on the new album
that will hopefully come out in early 2004. This new section will have translations of any further Chinese
news articles about Hei Bao I find in the future at various mainland Chinese music fansites.
Also don't be shy to e-mail me if you see any new reports about Hei Bao!
I've spent some of my Christmas holidays doing the biggest update to this site in a long time.
Besides creating the Band News section, every
single page of the website has been updated with new content. Read the "Latest updates to this page" at the top
of every section to find out what's new!
Added Unicode (UTF-8) character encoding to the title of this webpage in hopes that this website may get picked up
by Chinese language search engines :-)
I also spent quite a bit of time creating new image files for all the Chinese characters that appear
on this site. With the help of Photoshop, I've anti-aliased (got rid of the
"jaggies") on all the Chinese characters to give them a smoother appearance.
Here's anti-aliased:  vs. not anti-aliased: 
2003 Oct 7
Updated the Links page.
Added a text link to the Intro page in the menu section of all the other pages of this site.
Updated the About This Site section with a secondary purpose
for this site.
2003 Sep 20
I've finally got some vacation time to update this site after my last vacation a year and a half ago when I did
the last update! Thanks to all who have visited this site, and a special thanks to those of you who
e-mailed me and checked back faithfully for site updates.
I am happy to say that since the last update, this site has been at the top of the list whenever you do a
search for "Hei Bao" on all of the major Internet search engines.
The major update to this site today is that I have moved this "Latest Site News" section to the main
Intro page. This was done for several reasons:
1) I have actually found some up-to-date "Latest News"
about Hei Bao! All the articles are in Chinese, so I will be posting English translations in the
soon-to-be-revamped News page. 2) I figured the
intro page should have some more content besides just a nice picture. 3) I realized that I didn't have a text link to the
intro page on the other pages!
2002 Feb 27
Added Chinese text to section headers and album names.
Completed the Hei Bao band history timeline in the
Band Biography section
using multiple references from the Internet and album inserts.
One of the original pages for this site called "Latest News" was intended to display the most up-to-date
news about Hei Bao that I could find. However, since new reports about Hei Bao are few and far between, I figured
that page was not very practical. I decided to rearrange some of this site's sections and replaced the
"Latest News" and "About This Site" pages with the hopefully more useful
Site News and
Links pages. The "About This Site" and "Special
Thanks" section are now at the bottom of the Site News page, and news about Hei Bao will go on the
Band Biography page.
2002 Feb 25
I originally used Internet Explorer 5 when
creating this site. I finally had the time to take a look at this site with the
Netscape 6 and
Opera 6 browsers. As I feared, almost all the tables
in the site didn't display consistently, so I reviewed the HTML code for the whole site to make sure all pages
show up properly in all of the above three browsers.
2002 Feb 2
All pages in this site are updated with XHTML 1.0 conforming code.
The site is also updated to use cascading style sheets.
2002 Jan 9
The first update to this site is made after a long hiatus. Several new pictures, links, and biography notes were
added. The Band Members, Other Appearances, and Special Thanks section were also added.
2001 Dec 2
This site is finally listed on Google when doing a
search for "Hei Bao".
2001 Sep 14
This site officially goes live. I adopted the useful
eXTReMe Tracker
to monitor visits.
2001 Sep 8
This site gets a permanent URL at 3d Retreat.
2001 Sep 3
Work on this site begins.
ABOUT THIS SITE 關於本站
The primarily purpose of this site is to provide information in English
about Hei Bao, a rock band from mainland China.
The secondary purpose of this site is to be an educational resource for English-speakers studying Mandarin.
In my experience, learning through songs is one of the best ways to study a new language!
SPECIAL THANKS 特別感謝
To Jon - For graciously hosting this site!
To Ivans - For his friendship and all the support in introducing me to the wild WWW
and inspiring me to use "good" HTML ;-)
To Aaron - For his support and being the initial host for this site at 3d Retreat
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