Long and winding road

To mark the 55th anniversary of the release of the band's debut album, a Chinese documentary titled Here Comes the Beatles, has been launched on three online streaming music services under Tencent Music Entertainment Group-QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo. With one episode being streamed online each week, the documentary, which has five episodes, has veteran Chinese singer-songwriters and music critics sharing their memories of the Beatles and discussing the bands enduring influence.

An exhibition, titled The Beatles, Tomorrow, is currently under way at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. Kicking off on March 24 and running until May 27, the exhibition displays posters, newspaper articles, album cover art, famous quotes, videos, audio clips and more than a hundred photos of the Beatles, from behind-the-scene shots to live shows, spanning from 1963 to 1972 and shot by photographers from Britain's The Mirror newspaper.

"The first time I read about the Beatles was in a youth magazine in the 1980s when I was a student at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing," recalls renowned music critic Zhang Youdai in Beijing at the exhibition's opening ceremony. "Their name was literally translated into Chinese as jia ke chong. The article said that the band influenced a whole generation of young people in the 1960s and I was curious about them and their music."