In the 1990s the company sold about 10 million records, such as pop, folk, and classical music by Chinese singers and orchestras, Hou says. In the early 2000s the number dropped to no more than 10,000 copies, and the huge change in the way music was consumed led to many Chinese record companies closing down in the first 10 years of the millennium.

However, it now appears that some of those changes were not necessarily permanent. In the late 1990s China Record Group Co Ltd closed down its last vinyl production line because of the decline of the market of physical records. Several weeks ago, as the company celebrated the 110th year of its founding, it announced plans to revive vinyl production.

Fan Guobin, president of China Record Group Co Ltd, says the company has imported a production line from Germany that marks the start of the company's vinyl production, and the company has set up a vinyl records factory in Shanghai that has a complete production line.

"The completion of the factory shows that China's vinyl record production, which originated in Shanghai in the 1920s, is ready to take off again in the same city," Hou says.