Songs from the farmlands struggle to survive

Of the many hua'er singers in Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture, He Qingxiang is one of the few who can hold on to his dream.

"I love music and I love hua'er. It is a noble folk culture and I will try my best to inherit and develop the art," says 45-year-old He.

Hua'er is a kind of folk song that originated from Gansu and Qinghai provinces, and its subject matter is love affairs between young people. Normally the songs are heard in the countryside.

Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture in Gansu province was named the "hometown of hua'er" by the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society in 2003.

"Since my childhood, I often heard adults singing hua'er in the mountains," says He. "At first I was curious about the songs because they are different from those heard on the radio."

But in the 1970s, school students were prohibited from singing hua'er, because the lyrics of love affairs were regarded as improper for teenagers.

Enthusiastic about the folk songs, he went to study music in Northwest University for Nationalities in 1990. After graduating from the conservatory of music there, he worked as a music teacher in a local normal school.

But his family was strongly against it when he decided to treat singing hua'er as a career. "In the eyes of elders, singing hua'er is not a decent job. The local community has a kind of discrimination against this art."

Once, a local mosque was filmed in one of his music videos, and he got an earful of criticism from the local community.

"'How can you put a sacred mosque together with hua'er?' they asked me."

"Singing hua'er in our age, especially for female singers, is really embarrassing from the traditional point of view. It seems as if we have nothing to do but sing love songs all day."

Today there is a shortage of hua'er singers. Liu Tiejun, a researcher with the Gansu Ethnic Affairs Commission, says the traditional art is endangered.

"In the past, people did not have so many leisure activities," says Liu.

He says that nowadays, people have more choices of entertainment, and the traditional art is losing its base.

Traditional farm life is disappearing and young people are leaving their hometowns for opportunities in cities.

Even in the hometown of hua'er, the inheritance of the traditional art is shaky. "There are less than five professional singers in Linxia," He says.

"Singers do not have permanent venues to sing hua'er, or a stable income to support their families."

Despite these pressures, He still puts all of his efforts into the folk art. He is a professional hua'er singer in the Linxia Ethnic Song and Dance Troupe.

He opened his first music restaurant in 1998 in Linxia to provide for his family. After investing 200,000 yuan ($31,800) back then, he now makes more than 1 million yuan a year from the restaurant. Diners can have typical ethnic Dongxiang food such as mutton and wine while they enjoy hua'er.

He says hua'er has a limited audience because of the lack of promotion and the traditional singing method.

He says there are too many dialects in the lyrics, and after his performances some people will say that the songs are really nice, but just hard to understand. "That is why a typical singer will normally tell audiences the lyrics first before singing."

He believes that the local dialect should be kept - otherwise, it is not hua'er anymore - but he's changing with the times to help save the art form.

He has launched his own VCD albums, and brings new elements to the folk art.

He changes some typical wordings to Putonghua and introduces new instruments. Originally the songs were accompanied by erhu, but now he uses drums and guitars instead.

"If hua'er wants more influence, it should be easily understood and accepted by the public."

He is now investing 120 million yuan to build a hua'er park in the north of Linxia. The park will occupy about 17,000 square meters with a stage, a training center, a restaurant and a museum of hua'er. Visitors will be able to enjoy food while singers perform on the stage.

The park will open by the year's end, he says. He is looking for 20 hua'er singers to form an art troupe, which may go on a national tour and earn more income, and attract more students in the future.

"We can keep the original tunes and make some changes to the lyrics, and put them into the music lessons for students at school," he says.

Wan Jianzhong, director of the Institute of Folklore and Cultural Anthropology at Beijing Normal University, says that hua'er needs rescuing as well as promotion.

"Some senior singers should be better taken care of and their performances should be recorded as a culture heritage," he says. "Local government and research institutes should put more efforts into collecting and categorizing scores of hua'er."