The Malanhua Children's Choir
sings from the depths of the mountains to the voice of the children in the Winter Olympics
On the evening of February 20, the Bird's Nest, the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
The lights shone on 44 mountain dolls. The dolls sang "Ode to the Olympics" in Greek. Their clothes and shoes were decorated with ice-blue fish head paper-cut patterns. The clothes were thick and cute, like Chinese traditional New Year picture doll.
With innocent eyes and pure voices, the children sang and swayed to the melody.
During the singing, the Olympic flag was lowered slowly.
The 44 children are from the Malanhua Children's Choir in Fuping Mountains, Hebei Province. 16 days ago, they sang "Ode to the Olympics" in Greek at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
In the past, the Olympic anthems were mostly sung by famous artists from all over the world. This year, Zhang Yimou, the chief director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, inspired the idea of asking the children in the mountains to sing the anthems in front of the whole world. , which he sees as a manifestation of cultural self-confidence.
"The Voice of Heaven", Zhang Yimou commented on the feeling of hearing these children sing for the first time, "especially sincere, especially simple".
And more than four months ago, most of the dolls couldn't read sheet music.
"What a pity for a child who can't sing"
Looking back now, Liu Kai, the principal of the Central School of Xiazhuang School District, Nanzhuang Town, Fuping County still feels that everything is like a dream.
Before the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, he received a call from the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee to see the Malan Band.
The Malan Little Band was founded by Deng Xiaolan, the daughter of writer Deng Tuo.
Deng Xiaolan is 79 years old this year, and her eyes are still bright.
She wears glasses and is small in stature. When she talks, she always gestures, and she can sing anytime, anywhere.
Most of the songs are children's songs, "Little Pigeon" and "Little Rhododendron"...
The Malan Little Band was established in 2006. The original members were children from Malan Village, Chengnanzhuang Town, Fuping County.
The fate of Deng Xiaolan and the children of Malan Village stemmed from a visit to the grave.
Malan Village used to be the residence of the "Jin-Cha-Ji Daily", and Deng Xiaolan's father, Deng Tuo, was the president and editor-in-chief of the "Jin-Cha-Ji Daily".
At the end of 1943, 19 villagers from Malan Village were killed by the Japanese army in order to cover the newspaper comrades.
In 2003, Deng Xiaolan and an old comrade from "Jin-Cha-Ji Daily" returned to Malan Village to sweep the graves of the villagers who died that year, and happened to meet a group of children who came to sweep the graves together.
"Come and sing a song, can you sing "Learning from Lei Feng's Good Example"?" The child shook his head.
"What about "Young Pioneers Song"?" The children still shook their heads.
Deng Xiaolan became anxious when she heard it, and said, "The national anthem will always be sung, right?" Finally, two children raised their hands, but they sang out of tune.
Deng Xiaolan's mother likes music. When she was a child, classical music was always played at home.
In high school, Deng Xiaolan learned the violin at school.
In college, he joined the Tsinghua Band and became a violinist.
"What a pity the children who can't sing." In 2004, Deng Xiaolan, who retired, began to travel between Beijing and Malan Village to teach children music.
The car drove into Fuping, and there were continuous mountains all the way. Fuping was once a famous poverty-stricken county in Hebei, and only got rid of poverty in early 2020.
The soil conditions here are poor, crops are few and the environment is closed.
When the road was not built, Deng Xiaolan came to Malan Village and had to take a car for a day.
Depart from Beijing at 8:00 in the morning and arrive after dark.
This is also the reason why Liu Kai couldn't believe that the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee would come to their valley to pick children.
When Deng Xiaolan first came to Malan Village, Deng Xiaolan found that although the children in the mountains sang with poor pitch, their voices were clean and transparent, "like passing through the woods and flowing from a stream".
Professionally trained, but there is no such color.
She collected second-hand musical instruments from relatives and friends in Beijing and shipped them to Malan to teach children musical instruments.
The accordion is heavy and is assigned to the stronger children, and the little girl plays the violin.
In 2006, Deng Xiaolan selected 6 children from Malan Primary School and established the Malan Little Band.
In 2008, in Beijing's Zhongshan Park, Malan Little Band gave a performance to the elderly of "Jin-Chaji Daily". This was the maiden show of Malan Little Band.
Knowing that Deng Xiaolan has formed a small band, they are also invited to perform at events in the county.
After the media reports, there are more and more opportunities for small bands to go out to perform, and many companies have donated musical instruments.
In 2012, the little band Malan appeared on Beijing Satellite TV's Spring Festival Gala.
Deng Xiaolan said that the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee found Fuping after watching the video of the Malan Band, and finally decided to select a children's choir here to sing "Ode to the Olympics".
behind the warm
At the beginning, Liu Kai still had no hope for the children to participate in the performance, "After all, on such a big stage, how could our children choose us without systematic training." He once thought that they were just one of the teams participating in the selection. .
Soon, the Organizing Committee of the Winter Olympics went to several primary schools in Chengnanzhuang Town and began to select people. The first batch of more than 70 people was selected.
A few days later, Liu Kai received a notice, "It's settled."
In the end, the choir was named Malanhua Children's Choir. Eight children from the Malan Small Band were selected into the choir, and Deng Xiaolan became the consultant of the choir.
It is a warm and wonderful idea to let the children in the mountains on the stage of the Winter Olympics, but when it comes to the ground, it is full of difficulties.
Children's music foundation is very thin.
Eighteen years ago, Deng Xiaolan went to Malan Primary School for the first time.
The school has only two teachers and four houses, one of which is crooked and supported by a large tree trunk.
The children never had music lessons.
Deng Xiaolan started teaching little by little scales.
Zhang Manhua is the leading teacher of the Malanhua Children's Choir. She started teaching music at Shihou Primary School in Chengnanzhuang Town last year. She is the first dedicated music teacher in this school.
She introduced that "Ode to the Olympics" was originally a relatively difficult song, with a wide range and many changing sounds.
A cappella is more difficult, and pure a cappella requires higher pitch and timbre of the singer.
The Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony documentary "Grand Event" recorded such a scene: At a working meeting of the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, a sub-field director said, "These children are too thin, too thin, (only Can) through a period of intensive training to see what effect can be achieved”.
Zhang Yimou said: "It doesn't matter, we create miracles".
Fuping County transferred two teachers from the best schools in the county to come to support, and four teachers from the School of Music and Dance of Baoding University also came.
Later, the Central Conservatory of Music also sent an instructor.
Children don't understand pitch, teachers can only stimulate children's imagination, "Imagine what it feels like to call someone down on the mountain"...
The time is short, the teachers can only keep repeating the intensive training to let the children master the song.
First teach singing, divide a song into several paragraphs, copy it on the blackboard, and teach it piece by piece.
Two sentences today, two sentences tomorrow.
First unified teaching, and after they are proficient, the children are then divided into groups and given to different teachers, followed by piano practice, and one by one, they will tune the pitch and pitch for them.
Han Shuxin has pigtails and her face is like a round red apple. She is the youngest child in the group, and everyone calls her "Little Doudou".
She is under 6 years old and can't write her own name yet.
Because of her good pitch and lively personality, Han Shuxin was selected into the chorus.
When she first joined the group, she learned for a while, but she didn't want to learn, so she ran to the door and stood.
The eldest child in the choir is 11 years old and has limited attention span.
In order to make the training process not boring and increase children's interest in music, teachers have invented many games.
Such as clapping hands, let the children listen to the rhythm and try to imitate.
There is also "driving the train", where the teacher plays the piano, makes the children line up for a solitaire, and makes moves for the classmates behind to imitate.
After more than half a month, Han Shuxin's participation in the class was much higher, and she didn't slip out of the door during class.
After training for a long time, the children will have a more emotional understanding of the Winter Olympics and become more engaged.
Bai Zhenyuan is a feisty little boy who is in the fourth grade and learns guitar with Deng Xiaolan.
He likes music. During rehearsal, the teacher said that he is not good at singing. After class, he will continue to practice.
learn to speak greek
In October, the village is harvest season.
The branches are covered with apples and pears, the mountains are orange-yellow and pink, and clusters of yellow chrysanthemums are flourishing.
On October 18, 2021, the Malanhua Children's Choir was officially formed, and the children moved into the Bayi Primary School in Chengnanzhuang Town for live-in training.
They had a new challenge: learning Greek.
Lin Jiahao, a student at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and his teacher teach Greek for the choir.
Before coming, Lin Jiahao learned the song in advance and made a teaching plan: start with the most basic Greek alphabet, and then learn the pronunciation.
In the first class, Lin Jiahao taught the first two sentences of "Ode to the Olympics" in Greek.
Deng Xiaolan suggested to use Hanyu Pinyin to mark the pronunciation, but some sounds cannot be found in Hanyu Pinyin, such as the Greek "here".
Lin Jiahao can only teach according to Greek, "bite the tongue gently with the upper and lower teeth", and tell them the pronunciation movements in detail: how to put the tongue and how to move the mouth.
Other words were substituted in English; in the end, the children got the lyrics in Chinese Pinyin, English and Greek.
Children are greatly affected by dialect pronunciation. For example, the word "rush out" in Greek is difficult for children to pronounce.
Lin Jiahao can only correct it over and over again and repeat it in a targeted manner, so that everyone can form muscle memory.
Before coming, Lin Jiahao also prepared a lot of pictures, including nouns and verbs, so that the children could easily understand the meaning of the lyrics and the emotions that the song wanted to express.
After more than 20 days of training, the Greek lyrics were finally taken down.
In December, the choir's training has entered the stage of checking for deficiencies and filling omissions. The teacher will record the rehearsal situation into a video every week and report to the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee.
There was a tense atmosphere in the classroom. The words "no ventilation" were written on the blackboard, followed by an exclamation mark and a box drawn outside.
There are often children who can’t finish singing a sentence, secretly changing their breath in the middle, and the teacher writes on the blackboard to remind them.
In addition to class time, the choir also trains for four or five hours a day.
In early January this year, the Malanhua Children's Choir came to Beijing to participate in a training camp.
In the end, the number of choir members was determined to be 44, and many boys who were eliminated held the principal and wiped their tears.
Bai Zhenyuan was also eliminated due to his hoarse voice. Before he left, the teacher who led the team hugged him, and the stronger boy said he didn't cry.
Keep smiling
The first time I went to the Bird's Nest for rehearsal, the children were very restrained and their expressions were not natural and stretched.
Liu Kai said that when they first started training in the school, the children seemed unconfident, and many students had not even attended the school's June 1st gala.
When they sing, some of them hang their waists, some have their eyes wandering around, and some can't open their mouths.
Everyone's expressions were different, and they felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable with what they were doing.
The teacher told the children to show the feeling of enjoying the music, and asked them to imagine a little star in their eyes, "Bibi whose little star is the brightest".
In order to practice courage for the children, when the school raised the national flag, the principal deliberately asked the choir to sing in front of the classmates, and took the children to sing in crowded places in the town.
But the courage to practice in Fuping is not enough to get to the Bird's Nest.
In order to let the children adapt to the big stage as soon as possible, the teachers can only encourage more, "We want to let the children all over the world hear our singing".
After returning to the hotel every day, the leading teacher will stare at them and practice expressions.
"Keep smiling and think more about happy things, Xiaodoudou." For Han Shuxin, who is over 5 years old, keeping a smile is still a difficult thing.
The teacher had to keep reminding her. Later, when she saw the big sister who lived with her practicing expressions every day, she would also practice smiling in front of the mirror before going to bed.
During the rehearsal, the principal Liu Kai became the "nanny" for the children, ranging from being in charge of safety, to doing homework and tying shoelaces.
Before coming to Beijing, the school prepared clothes for the children.
Two down jackets, one long and one short, sweater, shoes, hat, gloves; I bought a suitcase; I prepared commonly used medicines.
In order to be afraid of losing their children, they made hand cards for the younger children with the teacher's phone number written on them.
Before coming, Liu Kai deliberately held a parents' meeting, and explained the situation of material preparation to the parents of the children, saying: "Where the conditions are insufficient, we will make up for it with love."
But on the first day in Beijing, the choir began to adapt.
When in the mountains, the children walk to school and are not used to driving.
In Beijing, I take the bus from the hotel to the rehearsal field every day. On the way, many children get motion sickness and vomit in a mess.
A few days later, Liu Kai coordinated with the children to move to a hotel near the Bird's Nest, and walked to the rehearsal field every day.
The temperature in the mountains is low, the air in Beijing is dry, and the air conditioner is blowing, and the children started to have nosebleeds. The teachers who led the team quickly bought salt water spray.
The first time you go out alone, your child will inevitably feel homesick.
During the training camp in Fuping, the principals of the five primary schools took turns to accompany the children to live at the school.
Han Shuxin sometimes gets emotional, and Zhang Manhua, the teacher who leads the team, will encourage her that "Mom and Dad will see you on TV".
"Can my classmates see it?" "Yes." Han Shuxin calmed down.
A few days later, she suddenly leaned into Zhang Manhua's ear and said, "Teacher, I was homesick last night, but I only cried for a while, and it was fine."
Before coming to Beijing, Liu Kai was full of apprehension, afraid that the children in the mountains would be told that they "don't understand the rules".
Unexpectedly, the children are unexpectedly sensible. After eating, they will clean up the garbage. When they see the cleaning aunt, they will take the initiative to help.
Give 105 points to children's performances
On February 4, at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, it was the Malanhua Children's Choir's turn to appear.
The 44 dolls wore red hats, white cotton-padded jackets with tiger heads, and tiger shoes on their feet.
Liu Kai, who was sitting in the auditorium, clasped his knees tightly with both hands, and said in his heart "Don't go wrong, don't go wrong".
The Olympic flag was raised and the children began to sing.
Liu Kai's eyes stopped on a child, and when he shook his body, he swayed in the opposite direction.
Dense sweat suddenly burst out from Liu Kai's forehead.
Fortunately, the child adjusted in time, and after more than 2 minutes, the performance ended smoothly.
Liu Kai bounced from his seat at once, and excitedly stretched out a hand and waved it vigorously towards the stage.
And this little mistake unexpectedly became an easter egg for the show. It made this simple and pure show more vivid and unpolished. Many netizens commented: "One of them is reversed, so cute."
Deng Xiaolan sits in the auditorium of the Bird's Nest.
She was equally nervous, wondering how the children would behave.
Seeing the group of mountain children she brought with her standing on such a big stage, Deng Xiaolan was a little dazed, "It's really like a group of Smurfs in the forest."
The full score is 100 points. At the end of the performance, she said she would give 105 points to the performance of the Malanhua Children's Choir.
At the closing ceremony, the children's costumes changed from fiery red tiger-headed clothes to ice-blue fish-headed clothes that symbolize "more than a year in the past".
Liu Kai said that he found that after the opening ceremony, the children were much more confident.
During the rehearsal at the Bird's Nest, I was less nervous and laughed more naturally and relaxed.
During the closing ceremony, Liu Kai watched the children's performances on the TV in the waiting area.
Seeing the final action of "standing still", Liu Kai's tears fell.
Before taking the stage, he was still very worried, "afraid that the audience will look at it with scrutiny or critical eyes".
He said that this experience had a great impact on the principal in his mountainous area. Due to teacher restrictions and consideration for further studies, he had always lacked confidence in strengthening the school's music, sports, and aesthetics education.
At present, many primary schools in Chengnanzhuang Town have not filled up the teachers of music, body and beauty.
Now, he is determined to let more children enjoy the fun of art and sports, "they can enrich the minds of students".
Among the students trained by Deng Xiaolan, many were admitted to the Conservatory of Music.
But Deng Xiaolan said that her purpose is not to make Ma Lan's children become students of the Conservatory of Music or participate in a certain performance, but to make them good friends with music. "As long as he likes music, my goal will be completed." .
Beijing News reporter Wang Shuangshuang