Tribute paid to teacher who brought music to the mountains

Deeply touched

Deng Xiaolan always kept two seals with her－one was a gift from her father that bore the inscription "a native of Malan village", while the other was from her mother and bore the words "a descendant of Malan village". She regarded the village as her home where her life began.

A visit to Malan with her mother in 1997 for research on the history of the newspaper her father headed touched Deng Xiaolan deeply, as she saw just how backward the village was.

However, Malan's inaccessibility shielded the newspaper during the Japanese occupation and also isolated the village from the outside world. After her visit, Deng Xiaolan began thinking about ways to help Malan.

During Qingming Festival in 2003, she and other offspring of staff members at the newspaper paid their respects at the martyrs' tombs in Malan, when more than 20 primary school students were organized to sing the national anthem during the ceremony.

To her dismay, Deng Xiaolan found that only one or two of them could sing the anthem－but out of tune. As a result, she decided to bring music to the mountains in the hope that it could help inspire children.

She told the media that children living in the mountains are like "wild ponies, with their purity and clear eyes". She also told villagers that she wanted to teach the children music and fine arts in the hope that they could leave the mountains and discover the outside world.

When the villagers told her the children were not gifted, Deng Xiaolan said they simply lacked opportunities. According to Chen Yetian, headmaster of Malan Primary School, she often told him that a childhood cannot lack music.

After retiring in 2004, Deng Xiaolan, who learned music as a child, went to the village to teach the subject. When she founded the Malan Band in 2006, friends in Beijing donated instruments to the village, including drums, keyboard, piano, flute, clarinet, accordion and violin. Deng Xiaolan and her family donated 40,000 yuan ($6,284) to renovate the village primary school.

Sun Jianzhi, one of two teachers at the school, who worked with Deng Xiaolan for 18 years, said she was always busy performing a wide range of tasks. "She was a woman of action, not empty talk," Sun added.

Thanks to the donations, children in Malan had musical instruments they had never seen before. They were initially cautious about playing them, marveling at the sounds they produced.

Deng Xiaolan encouraged the children to embrace music, teaching them to play the instruments in the hope that their "melodious sounds" could resonate in their hearts and the mountains.

The villagers said she told them that life without music was boring and that she wanted children in the mountains to have a better existence.

She taught them to sing and to play the violin and piano. When the Malan Band was founded, the children had no musical background and were unfamiliar with the instruments.

The children played the instruments and sang beside the Yanzhi River in Malan. Their fingers blackened with mud, they mastered songs known worldwide, which echoed deep into the mountains.

In 2006, the band was renamed Malan Flower Children's Chorus, and two years later Deng Xiaolan brought the lineup to perform in Beijing's Zhongshan Park－the first time the children had left the mountains.

In August 2013, supported by the Fuping county government, she launched the Malan Children's Music Festival. More than 20 bands and singing troupes from Beijing were invited to perform on a stage built in a valley near the village, attracting audiences of more than 3,000.

In 2015, Deng Xiaolan raised funding for the design and construction of a three-story building on a mountain slope overlooking the village, naming it "Music Castle".

Xi Qingru, an 11-year-old primary school pupil and a member of the chorus for the Winter Olympics, said she will never forget performing on stage in Beijing.

"In our isolated village, Grandma Deng was like a beam of light, inspiring and encouraging us to pursue a better and more meaningful life," she added. "After I grow up, I want to follow in her footsteps and teach children in the mountains to sing."