Singing the sound of nature

"I was mesmerized by the strange sounds," TanghisKhoo recalls. "I kept wondering, 'How can a single person produce multiple vocal tones at once?' It was both fascinating and mysterious."

A gifted musician, TanghisKhoo also plays the piano and the morin khuur (the Mongolian horsehead fiddle), but it wasn't until he graduated from high school that he decided to focus on khoomei, traveling to the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, to study at the Mongolian National University of Arts and Culture. Last year, he graduated, and now he's on a mission to spread the art, using social media to share its magic with the world.

One of his teachers is Od Suren, a revered figure in the world of khoomei. Now in his 70s, Suren first came to China in 1993 to teach, and has since mentored over 1,000 students.