Colombian sings personal ode to China

XIAMEN - Hector Jesus Palacio from Colombia was never a singer until he thought of a song with Chinese lyrics in a dream.

Titled Zhongguo Hao in Mandarin - China is Great in English - the song narrates Palacio's personal story in the country where he has lived for more than 20 years.

He shot a music video and posted it on social media platforms such as WeChat and Facebook. The song, which has around 1.3 million views, made the 51-year-old Palacio famous overnight.

Falling in love with China

In September 1994, Palacio came to Beijing to study. He didn't speak any Chinese, and the limited impression he had about China centered on Bruce Lee and kung fu.

"In the beginning, I couldn't get used to the food here. Chinese people like to use vinegar and soybean sauce in their food. It is quite different in Colombia," Palacio said.

He overcame the initial hardships mainly using body language. To order food in Chinese restaurants, he pointed at dishes that other customers had ordered - a gamble that brought him both pleasant and distasteful surprises.

He carried a map whenever he explored the city - with his campus circled in red - so he could ask people how to get back. Nevertheless, there were times he went the wrong way or took the wrong bus.

The first Christmas he spent in Beijing was not a sweet memory. He hadn't adapted to the capital's cold winters and was still unable to speak Chinese. Loneliness was his closest friend in the silence of the night.

These hardships were vividly depicted in the words of his recent song - "Crying alone in my room. Every day I miss my home."

The friends he made in China encouraged him to find a silver lining. They played soccer, hung out on weekends and talked with each other.

"There was a time I had dysentery and was in the hospital. My Chinese friends visited me with flowers and fruits, but none of my South American friends in Beijing showed up," he recalled, with tears in his eyes.

Palacio used a verse to explain the support he received from his Chinese friends and express his gratitude.

As a student, he spent two years learning Chinese, and the third year majoring in physical training. After graduation, he worked as an English and Spanish teacher for kindergarten students and adults in Beijing.

To learn more about China, he moved to Shanghai, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, and Taiwan, and worked as a language instructor and scuba diving instructor, before finally settling down in the coastal city of Xiamen, Fujian province, in 2005.

In Xiamen, he met Wu Jingling, a local woman with long black hair, and the couple got married in 2012.

"Who would have thought that I'd stay in China? I planned to go back home after graduation," he said with a laugh.

Ripple in the water

Palacio now works as a business consultant in a South American company, helping facilitate business with Chinese enterprises.

His peaceful, stable life has seen unexpected changes after a dream he had in July 2017, like ripples in the water.

"I was singing a song with my friends at a summer party in my town in Colombia. They asked me, 'Why do you sing in Chinese? We can't understand what you sing,'" he recalled.

He suddenly woke up and realized it was just a dream. He then recorded the lingering melody on his cellphone. It was an incomplete piece of vallenato - a folk music style from Colombia's Caribbean region inscribed as an intangible cultural heritage.

Vallenato is usually played with an accordion and a small drum, but he didn't know anyone who could play those in Xiamen.

A miracle occurred the following winter when he met Angel Emir Soto in the city of Chongqing during a friendly soccer match between China and Colombia.

Soto is a professional musician who plays the accordion. He came to China in 2015 and lives in Fuzhou, Fujian province, a two-hour trip on a bullet train to Xiamen.

"Palacio needed to finish writing the lyrics," Soto said. "Then I spent two weeks producing the song in my studio."

To come up with the lyrics, Palacio was also inspired and encouraged by his mother-in-law, who told him "to sing about what you actually feel will touch people's hearts".

In addition to videos they posted online, they also performed live in bars in Xiamen at the invitation of friends, with both of them singing and Soto playing his orange accordion.

"The audience clapped their hands to the beat and gave us thumbs-up," Palacio said.

Music knows no boundaries. The duo is working on their second project, translating a Chinese song into Spanish.

"We want to bring China and Southern American countries such as Colombia closer through music," Palacio said.

Xinhua