While the Internet makes Western pop music ever more available to Chinese through online downloading, foreigners are increasingly warming to the unique charm of China's diverse folk music.
Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, last month hosted an international folk song and art festival.
At the festival, which ran from November 22 to 26, Lavinia Craciunescu, an amateur singer from Romania, won much applause for singing the Chinese folk song "Ocean, My Homeland" in putonghua.
People in Romania are familiar with Chinese folk songs and like the tempo of the music, though few understand the Chinese language, said Craciunescu.
China has a rich culture of folk music. The country's vast territory is home to 56 ethnic groups. Most of the country's ethnic groups live in western China. For many of the ethnic groups, singing is a way of life.
Jia Yuanpei, of the Dong people, from Dongjiang County in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, said: "We Dong people believe singing is the best way to express ourselves at functions such as greeting guests, meeting friends, finding lovers and celebrating good news."
Ding Yuanhui, a student of Chinese literature at Guangxi Normal College in Nanning, said: "We can imagine comfort and pleasure in life through traditional folk songs, and new folk songs cater to modern people's demand for expressing their state of mind."
Wang Kun, a well-known Chinese folk singer, said folk songs were part of a nation's soul.
"Chinese folk songs contain the nation's long-standing and great culture that we can never do away with," said Wang, who stressed that keeping pace with the times was the best way to protect a nation's folk music.
In the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, home to the Zhuang people, the country's second most numerous ethnic group after the Han, the unique Zhuang music and dance are compulsory courses in many primary schools.
Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which has residents of different ethnic backgrounds, last year enacted a local regulation designed to protect folk culture, including the protection of folk songs.
Modern means are also used to protect folk songs. A group of specialists, organized by the China Folk Artists Association and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, produced a database of Zhuang folk songs.
(China Daily December 10, 2002)
