Kids from Yu’an Primary School, wearing homespun Cheongsam and beating the rhythm with castanets, are singing “Song of Curiosity”, a folk song of Chongming District, with silvery voices.

A ceremony was held for celebrating the publication of “Folk Songs of Yingzhou”, a textbook published by Shanghai Music Publishing House for a music extended course for pupils in Yu’an Primary School in Chenjia Town.

When Chongming folk songs are mentioned, people have an impression that they are folk songs performed by elderly people with slightly rustic Chongming dialect. But in Yu’an Primary School, all pupils from the first grade pupils to fifth grade pupils, can sing Chongming folk songs.

“Leading singer” from the downtown area

The publication ceremony of “Folk Songs of Yingzhou” is live broadcasted to the whole country on WeChat.

The QR code for the WeChat live broadcast has been sent to parent’s smart phones. They have allocated times and wait for the beginning of the live broadcast.

On the publication ceremony, audiences applauded for a speech made by a long-haired woman and everyone rushed to pose for a photo with her, in excited mood.

She is Tai Fang, a special grade music teacher from Jianxiang Primary School in Xuhui District. She plays a critical role in the publication of “Folk Songs of Yingzhou”.

More than one year ago, Tai Fang began to teach in Yu’an Primary School as a voluntary teacher for supporting education. The first thing she did is to know about Chongming folk songs.

Chongming folk song, as one of the second batch of intangible cultural heritages in Shanghai, has more than 1,300 years of history. In the long historical evolution, Chongming people orally created folk songs in the process of production and living and formed folk songs with unique style.

Chongming folk song is a special teaching program of Yu’an Primary School. Since the school launched this program in 2012, this is the seventh year for carrying out this program. Six years ago, Yu’an Primary School regarded Chongming folk song as a part of the school’s curriculum and compiled a school-based textbook, “Countryside Music”.

“I want to do a good job for this program, but the existing textbook is out of date, and we need to upgrade it,” said Tai Fang.

When Tai Fang got ready to devote herself to her works and make all-out efforts, she discovered that there is only one full-time music teacher in the school with nearly 900 pupils. This fact disappointed her. At that time, the school didn’t have instructors to teach pupils sing folk songs. Who takes charge of the folk song team? It requires a lot of music teachers to upgrade the textbook, but who will compile a new textbook?

This is the greatest challenge that this experienced special grade teacher ever met. But Tai Fang refused to give up. She determined to become the “leading singer” for this program.

She lived up to her words. She read a large amount of Chongming folk songs and chose some of the most representative melodies to optimize existing curriculum contents. She determined to adopt a method of listening to the songs by scanning QR code, and thus upgraded the out of date version 1.0 textbook into a version 2.0 textbook with vivid contents.

Tai Fang spent one year in compiling a new fixed copy for Chongming folk songs and created the prototype for “Folk Songs of Yingzhou”.

Persistence of part-time teachers

Before the arrival of Tai Fang, the folk song curriculum was tepid in Yu’an Primary School, and no progress was made. Thanks to the assistance from teachers teaching other subjects, the folk song program survived in the school.

To Shen Jian, director of the school’s teaching studies office, this is a road full of hardships. “We don’t have enough music teachers. Our part-time teachers need to do a lot of things. All of us are natives of Chongming District. Though we can only sing a part of sentences of folk songs, we can still teach kids to sing. Even if we can’t sing the melody, we could teach kids to read lyrics first, and later, ask the music teacher to teach the melody. Many times, when we teach pupils to sing a folk song, we need the cooperation of several teachers.”

Shen Jian was born and grew up in Chongming. She had been listening to the folk songs of Zhang Xiaomo (inheritor of intangible cultural heritage: Chongming folk song) in her childhood. “We cannot interrupt this intangible cultural heritage. We need to pass it down to future generations,” she said.

Some years ago, Zhang Xiaomo became an after-school activities counselor for the folk song program of Yu’an Primary School. Since Tai Fang began to rewrite a folk song textbook for the school, Zhang Xiaomo and her brother, Zhang Shunfa, also joined the program. They deleted some contents from the folk songs that do not suit the new era and contain pessimistic contents.

Teachers teaching other subjects also helped a lot in making this book. They wrote texts, drew illustrations, made textual research for literatures, made interviews, collected folk songs and chose appropriate songs for the textbook.

Qin Guojun, the only music teacher in the school, shouldered the responsibility of recording the male voice for the folk songs. Chen Ju, a math teacher, was responsible for audio-video conversion for the folk songs. The school also invited music teachers from other schools to make music scores.

Children’s songs and folk songs became tangible texts and illustrations, and a folk song textbook that “can sing” has been made.

“This is a miracle,” said Tai Fang. The person who takes charge of the compilation of this music textbook is actually not a music teacher.

The female voice recording for these folk songs came from Zhang Xiaomo. Soon after she finished the recording, she died of malignant tumor, and never had the chance to attend the publication ceremony for this book.

Zhang Shunfa tied the newly published book with a red ribbon and put it on her sister’s tomb. “This is a wish that my sister hasn’t fulfilled when she’s alive. This is also the greatest hope that these folk songs conveyed to people,” he said.

A “folk song doll” developed

“Folk Songs of Yingzhou” is well-received since the first day of publication.

At the beginning of this year, pupils of Yu’an Primary School visited schools in the downtown area and taught pupils in Shanghai to sing Chongming folk songs. They also won several awards in various contests.

“Now we’ve got a lot of awards and supports from various people. There’s new hope for Chongming folk song,” said Shen Jian excitedly.

In Yu’an Primary School, we can see elements of Chongming folk songs everywhere. Everything in the school looks new and fresh.

Visitors will hear melodious Chongming folk songs at the breaks after class and at noon. The school also built a folk song hall. In the hall, there is a folk song tree. When parents wait for their kids after school, they could take a smart phone and scan the QR code on the leaf, and hear kid’s voices of singing folk songs.

Kids love singing folk songs, and parents love listening to folk songs. More and more parents wish their kids to join the school’s folk song performance team and become little folk song performers.

It is worth to mention that Chongming folk songs have also infiltrated into other subjects of pupils.

The teacher taught pupils to make a “folk song doll” on the labor skills class. The doll’s costume and hairstyle imitated pupil’s appearance when they perform folk songs: chubby face, cute hairstyle and homespun. Kids love this new companion of them. They gave a name for the doll: “Yu Wa An Bao”.

Huang Wenjun, a fifth grade pupil and performer of Chongming folk song, holding a folk song doll made by herself in her hands, told our reporter, “In Beijing, there are dolls for the Imperial Palace. In Chongming, we have folk song dolls, too.”