Dispatch: ‘Her Power’ in Shenzhen’s multi-ethnic unity
Dispatch: ‘Her Power’ in Shenzhen’s multi-ethnic unity
Dispatch: ‘Her Power’ in Shenzhen’s multi-ethnic unity
China News Service 2024-12-02 12:59:48 422,000 reads
Special Report | Loving the Motherland Deeply, United as One
Shenzhen, Dec. 2 (China News Service) — Title: The "Her Power" in Shenzhen's Multi-Ethnic Unity
By China News Service reporter Suo Youwei. Shenzhen is the city in which all 56 of China's ethnic groups are most fully represented. Transformed from a small border town into a modern international metropolis, China's youngest first-tier city embraces the spirit of "once you come, you are a Shenzhener," showing the city's humanistic bearing and its foundation of civility. People of many ethnic groups who have put down roots in Shenzhen depend on one another and stand united; while realizing their own growth and worth, they contribute their strength to Shenzhen's present and its future. China News Service recently interviewed three women who shine in their respective fields, reflecting the "her power" that multi-ethnic unity brings forth.
Ruxianguli: I don't feel I am an ethnic minority. The 2024 FISM Asian Magic Convention recently closed at Happy Valley Shenzhen in OCT. From the preparations to the event itself, Happy Valley's chief magician Ruxianguli was constantly on the go; judges and contestants who saw her would greet her respectfully with "Hello, Teacher Ruxian," and she would return a warm smile.
Ruxianguli on stage. (File photo)
Ruxianguli, the Uyghur magician known as the "Flying-Card Fairy," made her name while still young, winning the "Golden Lion Award," the top prize of China's acrobatics festival, in 1993. "Acrobatics is a brilliant flower in a garden of a hundred blooms. Before I came to Shenzhen, magic here had no accumulated tradition and no foundation.
At that time Shenzhen urgently needed talent in every field, and I came to Shenzhen with my finger on the pulse of reform and opening up. That was 1998, when OCT Happy Valley was still under construction," Ruxianguli said.
Happy MD, the magic-themed gala that Ruxianguli directed and starred in, premiered in 1998; it combined magic with dance in an innovative way and set a new trend for magic galas in China. The magic galas that followed — Dreamland Divine Comedy, Magic Rose, Light of Magic and others — were widely praised at home and abroad. Today acrobatics and magic have become a bright item on Shenzhen's urban cultural menu, with five to six thousand artists working in the field.
Ruxianguli always performs in ethnic costume, using magic — a global language — to show the world the beauty of Chinese culture. "Every act that has won me a major international award has ethnic elements woven into it. Why? I believe that what belongs to a people belongs to the world, and that is also the source of our cultural confidence," Ruxianguli said. "As one of the birthplaces of magic, China has blended foreign cultures with local characteristics to form rich and varied forms of magic performance, showing the unique charm of Chinese culture."
"I have been in Shenzhen for nearly 30 years. In both life and work I have completely merged with this city," Ruxianguli said with feeling. "Only when someone reminds me that I am from an ethnic minority do I think that I may look somewhat different; in fact I no longer feel that I am a minority at all."
As a child Ruxianguli studied under a Han teacher, eating and living in the teacher's home; today she too has taken in many disciples. "In fact I never consider what ethnic group a disciple belongs to — truly, I have no such notion. If I think you have the makings of one, I will pour my heart and soul into training you. But I do not take disciples lightly either, because it takes even more care than raising your own child."
Wang Fang: Conveying the beauty of ethnic music through children's choirs. "When I look at a map of China, what comes into my mind is the children of every ethnic group," Wang Fang, secretary-general of the Shenzhen Women and Children Development Foundation and head of the Flying Over the Rainbow charity project, told China News Service.
On August 10, 2023, at the invitation of the National Centre for the Performing Arts' "August Choral Festival," the multi-ethnic children's choral concert "Ancient Times and the Earth," jointly presented by the Flying Over the Rainbow Choir and the Shenzhen Concert Hall's "Little Golden Tree" choir, was successfully staged. (Photo provided by the interviewee) The Flying Over the Rainbow public-welfare project for the protection and transmission of multi-ethnic music culture was launched in 2007 by the Shenzhen Sunhoo Growth and Care Foundation; its basic form is to set up "Flying Over the Rainbow" ethnic children's choirs in areas where ethnic minorities live, showing the sunniness, colour and distinctiveness of China's minority cultures. To date more than 50 choirs covering 28 ethnic groups have been formed in 11 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. In 2018 the Shenzhen Flying Over the Rainbow Ethnic Culture Exchange Centre and the Shenzhen Flying Over the Rainbow Choir were founded; based in Shenzhen's Futian District, they organized and launched the "Children's Voices Shine for China" ethnic children's choral week.
Wang Fang came to Shenzhen in 1997 after completing her master's degree; having experienced the career development brought by Shenzhen's openness and market economy, she became a full-time mother, and served for ten years as secretary-general of the Sunhoo Foundation.
"In 2011 my daughter was six and my son three — that 'mother' moment in life when you overflow with love and a sense of beauty for every child. Once, at the Shenzhen Concert Hall, I heard the resplendent beauty of Tibetan, Naxi and Lisu children singing in chorus, and I was overwhelmed," Wang Fang recalled when speaking of why she joined the project. Slowly that liking grew into passion, and finally into her own cause of "caring for other people's children as one cares for one's own."
In Wang Fang's view, children's choral singing is bound up with music, aesthetic education and art, while the founding intention of Flying Over the Rainbow came above all from the cultural genes of the fine traditional music of China's ethnic groups — which is why it has won the combined support of all sectors of society. Over 16 years the Sunhoo Foundation and the Flying Over the Rainbow Centre have joined with like-minded institutions and organizations to hold, every year, many children's concerts and a series of ethnic cultural exchange events across the country, Shenzhen included: bringing children of the frontier out of the mountains to perform and exchange in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Kunming, and taking children from modern metropolises such as Shenzhen into the mountains for on-site learning in nature and in the homelands of multi-ethnic musical traditions, so that children of every ethnic group benefit from a deep "two-way nourishment" between city and countryside.
In March 2016, organized and coordinated jointly by the Sunhoo Foundation and Taiwan's Vox Nativa education organization, a Kazakh children's choir took the stage at Taiwan's Yushan Starry Sky Music Festival. Taiwan's Vox Nativa Children's Choir was in turn invited in 2017 to pay a return visit and take part in the series of ethnic cultural concerts held in Aksay County, Gansu Province, and in Shenzhen. In 2018 Wang Fang led 12 members of the Shenzhen Flying Over the Rainbow Choir onto the stage of Carnegie Hall to sing Chinese ethnic songs.
In July 2024 the "sister choir" of the Flying Over the Rainbow Choir — the Shenzhen Concert Hall's "Little Golden Tree" multi-ethnic children's choir — won two gold awards at the 13th World Choir Games in New Zealand. The Flying Over the Rainbow Ethnic Culture Exchange Centre also formally signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the organizing committee of the World Choir Games, reaching a strong consensus on promoting China's long-standing and richly varied multi-ethnic music culture around the world; and on the occasion of the 2024 "Children's Voices Shine for China" ethnic children's choral week, it invited the World Choir Games council's special China-region meeting to be convened in Shenzhen for in-depth discussion and exchange across multiple cultural dimensions, focused on China's rich and varied multi-ethnic music culture. Wang Fang said that choral singing, as a shared language, can deepen understanding and friendship among children worldwide.
"For more than a decade I have firmly believed that China's multi-ethnic music culture is dazzlingly varied and long in history, and that it is a very important branch of the world's music culture. I think Flying Over the Rainbow represents the most beautiful children's voices in China, because it has the depth of a multi-ethnic music culture behind it," Wang Fang said.
Kong Li: Building a platform to spread the intangible heritage of many ethnic groups. Ancient Dai brocade looms, brocades of many ethnic groups, Jingpo silver ornaments, Shui horsetail embroidery, Tibetan black clay jars, and even Naxi Dongba calligraphy, classical Dai literature and Yao long drums quietly present the colourful memory of Chinese ethnic culture inside the Wanxiangya Ethnic Intangible Heritage Hall in the Energy Logistics Building in Shenzhen's Futian District.
Kong Li visits Mie Yanzuoxiang, an inheritor of Dai brocade weaving in Yunnan. (File photo) Photo provided by the interviewee. Kong Li, who built the Wanxiangya Ethnic Intangible Heritage Hall single-handedly, is vice-president of the Shenzhen Association for the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Development. A Jingpo from Mangshi, Yunnan Province, she has been running businesses in Shenzhen for more than 30 years. Since childhood she has had a strong interest in the fine cultures of ethnic minorities, and in recent years she has actively tied her company's business focus to protecting her hometown's traditional minority culture and developing its resources, leading the company to unearth and compile classical Dai literature, organize training for folk craftspeople, and develop and sell intangible-heritage derivative products.
"If we want more people to love and know the fine culture of our ethnic minorities, we must keep innovating in traditional crafts and inject vitality into them. They must have the soul of tradition and also embody the spirit of the new era." Inside the heritage hall, cultural and creative products incorporating traditional ethnic elements are displayed in profusion. She has taken the Dai weaving and brocade and the cultural products she has salvaged to cultural exchange exhibitions in Britain, Thailand, and Hong Kong and Macao, China, pushing ethnic weaving and brocade, and ethnic culture, onto the world stage.
"Only by running the business well can I do more of what is within my power for ethnic unity work in Shenzhen," Kong Li said. She has brought together the intangible heritage resources and fine farm produce of all 56 ethnic groups to build the "Pomegranate Seeds" platform for supporting ethnic farmers. The platform not only promotes the spread and sale of ethnic cultural products and ethnic farm specialties, but also strengthens market competitiveness by continually optimizing resources, meeting diversified consumer demand. In the future it plans to make further use of the internet, big data and technology to expand markets and improve service quality, while giving back to the countryside and actively supporting rural revitalization.
As a member of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the CPPCC and president of the Futian District Association for Ethnic Unity and Progress, Kong Li has in recent years actively put forward proposals on ethnic culture and on hot issues of people's livelihood. Since 2017 she has organized and coordinated the Futian District multi-ethnic "Adapt and Integrate" urban project, bringing minority legal advisory teams, ethnic arts performance troupes, small intangible-heritage markets and other activities into communities to help ethnic minorities adapt to and integrate into city life. The advisory team currently has 25 lawyers from various ethnic groups, who not only help mediate disputes and provide legal services but also attend to difficulties in life and work and to psychological problems.
"Shenzhen is my second home, and as a citizen of an international city like Shenzhen it is very meaningful to be able to take part in ethnic unity work," Kong Li said. She has also organized exchanges between the association and community groups, cultural organizations and business federations in Hong Kong and Macao, in ethnic cultural exchange, food-based support for farmers, traditional culture and intangible-heritage creative products — reaping friendship along with returns. (End)
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