Rural students win praise after making concert debut

Free lessons help children from an isolated mountain town make a mark at a leading venue. Hu Meidong reports from Fuzhou with Hou Liqiang in Beijing.

With no dedicated music teacher at Jieban Primary School, its piano sat idle, gathering dust for years.

Meanwhile, even though there is a music teacher at Huanxi Primary School, which has more than 200 students, his role is simply to teach the children songs to sing.

Before 2020, almost none of the students at the mountain-encompassed schools in Fuzhou, capital of the eastern province of Fujian, had ever touched a musical instrument.

However, early last month, a combined orchestra performed eight traditional folk tunes with professional musicians at a concert venue.

This seemingly impossible achievement was made possible by a group of musicians, mostly music teachers, who visited Huanxi every Friday afternoon for three years and provided free music classes for the students.

The idea of founding an orchestra occurred to them in April 2019. Yang Xiumei, a local housewife and also one of the orchestra's founders, invited her flute teacher to visit her home area during spring.

After finding that the township has delightful natural scenery, the teacher invited some musician friends to a gathering in Huanxi, and they all fell in love with the place, according to Yang.

"While dining and having tea together, some of the musicians casually proposed setting up an orchestra for the children," she said.