The three-year "Campaign for Preserving China's Ethnic Folk Songs" was concluded in Beijing on March 16, 2004 during the "Fruits of Chinese Ethnic Folk Song Preservation" press conference.

Launched in December 2000, the campaign, an initiative for "Preserving the Intangible Cultural Heritage of China's Ethnic Minority Groups" began in early 2001. Under the auspices of China's Ministry of Culture and the UNESCO (the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Office in Beijing, and executed by the Chinese Folk Artists Association, the campaign was hailed as a preliminary yet significant triumph in safeguarding one of the many Chinese ethnic minority folk traditions.

Good results

Over the past three years, a team of Chinese musicians and folkloric specialists from the Chinese Folk Artists Association and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have been working arduously in remote ethnic-minority villages in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Northwest China's Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

Liu Chunxiang, leader of the research team and vice chairman of the Chinese Folk Artists' Association, said that based on scholarly research and advanced audio-visual documentation, their work has yielded good results, including the transliteration of 385 recorded folk songs, 57 hours of filming, 42 hours of field recordings, transcriptions of complete song lyrics, a full-color brochure for young Chinese readers interested in China's cultural heritage and a 45-minute CD-ROM overview, as well as increased international cooperation and a heightened awareness among the media and general public.

All of the lyrics were printed in Chinese, English and in their original languages, with transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

"The initial work has succeeded in presenting living musical traditions as a social act between performers and the audience," said Yasuyuki Aoshima, director of the UNESCO Office in Beijing. "In addition, it serves as an invaluable example for our society in terms of international cooperation and as a source of inspiration for further work."

Three years of hard work
"It is really hard work," said Liu, recalling his research efforts in the campaign. Carrying heavy notebooks and recording equipment, the researchers traveled over 20,000 km to isolated villages in precipitous mountains and deserts and other remote inhabited areas, to find, interview and record folk singers.

They recorded lyrics and other expressions of ethnic folk songs in three stages: investigation, recording and transcription.

In 2001, the team traveled around the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Gansu and Qinghai provinces to investigate and select the pilot cities and counties; then, from March 2002 to early 2003, they made two trips to the selected areas to record and conduct investigations. The researchers recorded 235 traditional folk singers from 10 different ethnic minority groups, such as the Dong, Yao, Zhuang, Tu, Salar, Yugur, Baoan, Dongxiang, Tibetan and Hui ethnic minorities.

According to Liu, to preserve authenticity, the crew recorded the singers up close, using no montage techniques. The recorded music was transcribed in their ethnic languages, as well as Chinese and English.

In this way, the lively and valuable materials did not only preserve their original flavors, but also helped express the connotations embodied in each folk song and the singer's sensations.

Folk songs on the brink of extinction

Traditional folk songs of China's diverse ethnic minority groups, passed on from generation to generation, are not only rich and colorful art works, but also important historical relics. Regretfully, researchers have found that ethnic folk songs -- like any other intangible cultural heritage -- are fading away.

"Some ethnic groups have their own particular language without the written word. If nothing is done to salvage it, their art will soon become extinct," said Liu Xiaochun, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Like the Dage of the Dong ethnic group -- a unique, multi-part, complex chorus style -- that once caused a sensation around the world, can now only be sung by a handful of Dong people.

Liu said that at present ethnic folk singers are mostly middle-aged and elderly people and that few people under 50 can sing the old folk songs. Among the 67 recorded Guangxi singers, 36 were over 50 years of age (70 percent). In Bagen village, no one under 20 could sing a folk song.

According to Zhao Xiaoyi from the Sichuan Musicians' Association, there are now only eight people in the province who can sing melodies from Nanping folk songs, a famous local music in the Jiuzhaigou tourist destination; less than 10 can play the Qiang flute; and only four can sing the multi-part chorus of the Qiang ethnic group - the youngest of whom is in his 50s.

Liu recounted the sad tale of a Yugur singer named Tuo Yueyu who died just days before the arrival of the second research team. On her deathbed, Tuo asked her daughter why the team had not yet arrived.

The folk art keeper

The phasing-out of folk songs and other folk arts is a result of modernization and globalization, which, researchers believe, has altered the lifestyles of ethnic minority groups. Furthermore, there are limited channels for passing down these skills, which, in turn, is draining the nation's reserves of such precious works.

To preserve these ethnic gems, a nationwide heritage rescue program was launched by the Ministry of Culture last February; before long the National Center of the Chinese Ethnic and Folk Culture Preservation Project was also established.

Zhou Heping, vice minister of culture, revealed that in 2002 and 2003 the government spent a special fund of 6 million yuan (US$722,892) to start up and investigate the preservation project; this year, another 20 million yuan (US$2.4 million) will be earmarked for the project.

Who will then be the guardian of Chinese folk arts?

Many believe the responsibility should be shouldered by all of society: the government, experts and scholars, folk handicraftsmen and ordinary people. According to Zhao Weisui, another vice minister of culture, "Saving and preserving the folk culture of ethnic minorities needs more field research at the grass-roots level."

Inheriting and developing: Long road ahead

Liu says that their work has just begun since they have only covered 10 out of 55 ethnic minority groups in China. His team is planning to record minority folk songs in Southwest China's Sichuan and Guizhou provinces and, if possible, he also hopes to travel to the Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang Uygur and Tibet autonomous regions, as well as Yunnan Province .

The research team will return to the areas in April to deliver CD-ROMs and anthologies of folk songs to local primary and middle schools to help promote a solid traditional culture.

Ethnic folk arts are the particularities of a nation that distinguish it from the others. As a result of these efforts, China's seven-stringed plucked musical instrument was listed by UNESCO among the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2003 after listing China's Kunqu Opera in 2001. Now, China is working to add the Tibetan Opera and the Dong Dage to the world heritage list.