Many Chinese youths see in breakdancing a new medium to express emotions, such as love and anger. (Photo: China daily) Photo Gallery>>>

    Benson Lee says he wants to show the world breakdancing is actually all about the free expression of one's true feelings. There are no rules, and everyone is free to express how they feel in the way they like.

    Lee believes breakdancing is developing rapidly and will continue to grow in popularity among Chinese youth, because dance is a universal language.

    Breakdancing is known as jiewu, which literally translates to "street dance" in Chinese. Along with emceeing, graffiti creation and deejaying, b-boying is part of hip-hop culture, which has infiltrated China sporadically since the 1980s.

    Back then, it was regarded among Chinese as a vicious dance form representative of the vicious lives of Western youth, and those who breakdanced were scorned by mainstream society.

    Today, breakdancing is developing into a highly sophisticated and acrobatic dance form, following the growth of Korean pop culture's influence since the late 1990s. And some State-run dance schools even offer breakdancing as a part of their modern dance curriculum.

    Despite its growing popularity, hip-hop never became part of mainstream Chinese youth culture, because many parents and educators could not accept b-boys' negative image.

    "Wearing baggy pants and metal ornaments makes kids look like gang members," Ms Cui, a middle-aged mother, tells her son when discouraging him from breakdancing.

    Xiao spent five years trying to get his parents to understand him and did not gain their full support until he and his X-Power buddies won the Beijing M-Zone breakdancing contest last year.

    "To me, breakdancing is like a career, and you have to prove that you have the potential and you can do all of the tricks really well," Xiao says. He started learning breakdancing five years ago so that he could compete in The Battle of the Year and go toe-to-toe with the top b-boys of the world.

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