Ba Nong, Shi Ba and Lu Min made their stage debut together as a band last year in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where they performed Song of the Land for the first time. They felt great about that performance and decided to perform as Wayina, which Ba Nong first founded in 2006 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
Shi Ba and Lu Min also come from Guangxi. Shi Ba used to make a living as a busker, while Lu Min worked on a construction site. They also write their own original material.
"We do rehearsals when we have performances, or when Ba Nong needs our help in the field," said Shi Ba on the reality show. "We love to discover creative ideas, whether it's in regard to farming or music. Both are a way of life for us."
Song of the Land was featured on the second album of the band, which was titled River Without a Name and written from 2008 to 2009. While the second album recorded Ba Nong's emotions after returning to his hometown, the first album, titled Drifting Cloud in the Sky, which was written from 2005 to 2006, was about his life after leaving home to work and live in Guangzhou.
Ba Nong wrote Song of the Land when he returned to his hometown to help his parents on the farm. At that time, he worked as a graphic designer at a company in Guangzhou, and the song, he says, portrays how he viewed his hometown after he had seen the "big world outside".
"I lived in Guangzhou for some years, where I had a busy lifestyle. It was very different from the one I had in my hometown. When I returned home, I had a different feeling about the place where I was born and raised, and about the land, which offered me food and everything I had as a child," says Ba Nong, who studied art for a year after high school and hoped to study it at university. Unfortunately that dream didn't come to fruition.
