Popular music festival offers online classes

The Gateway to Music festival, one of Beijing's biggest children's arts festivals, kicks off on July 23, offering seven courses including the traditional Chinese musical instruments pipa, guqin and xiao as well as vocal performance. The courses will be available online through Aug 21.

Renowned artists, incluidng guqin player Li Fengyun, pipa player Zhang Hongyan and huqin player Song Fei, will give classes online.

Gateway to Music, first held in 1995, has become a popular summer program among Chinese youngsters interested in the arts. Since this February, the Forbidden City Concert Hall, organizer of the festival, has launched over 80 online concerts amid the coronavirus pandemic, attracting over five million viewers.

From July 12, the festival has attracted over 100 applicants from over 10 Chinese cities and abroad.