Rural students win praise after making concert debut

Positive response

Without giving the idea much thought, she responded positively. "I just thought it would be good for children in this mountainous area to learn musical instruments. I didn't imagine they would reach such a level," she said with a smile.

As a native, Yang automatically became the contact point between the musicians and local schools, and a recruitment drive was quickly held at Huanxi Middle School.

Though the classroom was packed with students and their parents, only one girl and her brother had a slight familiarity with the erhu, a traditional two-stringed instrument played with a bow, and the hulusi, a gourd flute.

The other students had never touched an instrument before.

"Actually, the siblings didn't know much, either. You could hardly say they knew more than those who had never learned to play an instrument," Yang said.

Neither the students who signed up to join the orchestra nor their parents had any idea of what an orchestra was, and they didn't know how long the children would persist with the music classes, she added.

In total, there are no more than 300 students at the two schools, she said. After excluding those from higher grades who are busy with classes and those in lower grades who are too young to learn, there is a very limited number of candidates for the orchestra.

Moreover, members leave constantly: some go after graduating, while the children of migrant workers quit because they have to return to their hometowns. These factors have made it difficult for the orchestra to operate, Yang said.

Nie Zhiyong, the orchestra's conductor and one of its founders, said that though they would like to recruit members and decide what instruments are suitable for them based on physical attributes, such as hand size, it would be hard to get enough members if those standards were applied too rigorously.

"So, if some students have a strong passion and really want to join, we usually tell them that they are welcome," he said.

He noted a series of other factors that hamper the orchestra's operations. For example, not all the musicians are able to drive more than 30 kilometers to Huanxi — part of the journey is along winding mountain roads — every week, he said.

To date, 20 to 30 musicians have volunteered to teach, but only seven visited regularly in the past three years. Usually, they make 400 to 800 yuan ($58 to $116) per 90-minute class, but they only received a subsidy of 200 yuan for some of the classes they gave in Huanxi, each lasting 2.5 to 3 hours, he added.

The township government provided the subsidies for the first three months, while the Fuzhou Cultural Center covered the cost for one month. Now, though, the Fuzhou Committee of the Communist Youth League of China regularly provides funding.

Nie recalled that the musicians taught without receiving any subsidies for an extended period of time.

Initially, funding from the township government ensured that all the musicians received free dinners if they went to give classes, but the money soon stopped. Nie estimates that Yang has spent 20,000 to 30,000 yuan to provide food for the musicians. "She knew we had not asked for payment for the classes, and she insisted that we should not have to pay for our food as well," he said.

He added that a lack of equipment poses another challenge, as a standard traditional Chinese orchestra requires more than 10 types of instruments, he said. Many of the originals — some bought by the Huanxi township government in 2019 and others donated by the Fuzhou Cultural Center in 2020 — are badly worn and need to be replaced. "As we recruit more members, we obviously don't have enough instruments," Nie said.