UK indie bands play to modest crowds in their home country, but play to tens of thousands in China.
Swim Deep’s first gig in China, in 2014, was bizarre: we had arrived in Hong Kong to discover that the venue was an Italian restaurant with all the tables and chairs pushed to the side. But on the mainland, we’ve mostly encountered ultra-modern spaces like those Dyer and Day enthuse about. And like them, we find our audience numbers in China often far surpass what we’d expect to find at home. In September 2019, our biggest UK festival show took place at 110 Above in Leicestershire, in front of a crowd of 500. A few months later, we played to 10,000 people at sunset on the main stage at Strawberry music festival in Guangzhou; we were the only UK act on the bill.