Getting ready backstage, Li Huaixiu is making sure everything is perfect.

She puts on her hand-loomed, bright red costume adorned with dozens of dangling silver charms. Her waist-length hair is tightly braided and wrapped around her head. It too is pinned with silver bangles.

She's nervous but thinks back to a critic's comment about her singing "I heard the voices of the ancestors."

It gives her confidence.

Li is from China's Yi ethnic minority and she's travelled to the nation's capital from faraway Yunnan Province to compete with 4,500 other folk artists.

They are all here to showcase their talents and their cultures at the Third Ethnic Minority Art Festival of China, which ends with a grand gala show today.

All of the competitors are members of China's 55 ethnic minority groups, who together make up about 8 per cent of China's total population. Their communities are scattered across the country with their respective populations ranging from the millions to a few thousand.

The festival gives them a national stage to show off their unique cultures with an interpretation of life that is as estranged from frenetic modern urban ways as it is grounded in a millennia-old tradition.

Clad in their unique and elaborate costumes, they dance and sing in their own languages about love, labour, mountains, wind, water and flowers. Their songs sometimes seem to mimic the sounds of cicadas; their dances are sometimes reminiscent of the strut of a peacock.

As life in China's ever-expanding cement metropolises becomes less about what is real and more about "me culture," ethnic minority art, with its emphasis on tradition, nature and beauty, is finding a more prominent place in the spotlight, infatuating people both at home and abroad.

"It's because we are singing and dancing with our hearts," 30-year-old Li said. "Our sad songs make us shed tears and our happy songs bring us smiles."

Li first participated in a national singing contest in 2004, and her pleasant, high-pitched voice caused some controversy.

"Some of the judges believed my singing should only be performed in the fields or mountains and didn't belong in a highbrow competition," Li said.

"But other critics disagreed and the audience gave me a standing ovation, something that's rare at such a contest."

She won one of the top prizes and recorded her "Seaweed Tune," which has been sold around the world.

The song is now listed as part of China's intangible cultural heritage under State protection because it represents one of the numerous singing styles of the Yi ethnic group, which has about 7 million members who live mainly in the mountainous regions in southwestern China.

While the Yi still speak their own language and use their own characters, some of their history was passed down through song and dance.

"Our ancestors used to live near the sea. They loved singing when collecting edible seaweed, and so we still sing the 'Seaweed Tune'," Li explained, adding that the tune is meant to "sound like waves of the sea as it swings from a high-pitch to gentle, soft one."

Where unique culture grows

Like Li, most of the folk artists competing in Beijing grew up in an environment filled with singing and dancing.

"Life means joy and labour, and we mix them both in my home village," said Lamrim Norbu, a Tibetan singer from the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Deqen in Yunnan Province.

"We dance and sing everyday while we're herding, farming and drinking. We don't have as many cares as the urbanites do."

Like traditional rural cultures around the world, most of the folk artists learn to sing and dance from their elders.

"I learned singing from my grandmother when we were herding together," said Lamrim Norbu. "There was no electricity, no lights or TV back then, so we would sing and dance day and night."

Living in isolated communities that are often cut off from each other by mountains, rivers or sheer distance, most ethnic minority groups have been able to maintain their unique cultures.

"Even now, if a young guy dares to bring back a mah-jong set from the outside he would be expelled by the village seniors," Lamrim Norbu said. "We have been maintaining the purity of our culture despite the influences from the outside brought in by roads and television."

Lamrim Norbu, together with three friends, formed a quartet named Shangri-La after the legendary wonderland of Utopian life and the name of a city in northern Yunnan Province.

Lamrim Norbu refers to his scenic hometown of Deqen as the "Shangri-La of the real world" because it is not only a place of natural beauty but also of cultural diversity.

"Various ethnic groups live together in one village in harmony. We are familiar with each other's languages, singing and dancing.

"There are 24 households with about 80 people in my home village. We belong to five ethnic groups, including the Lisu, Tibet, Naxi, Pumi and Han," Lamrim Norbu said. "We have to know each other's language, otherwise we could not survive."

For many of the artists, myths and legends have inspired their artistic creations.

Ma Lina, a folk artist who directs a dance by the De'ang ethnic minority says it depicts the story of how men and women first came together.

"Women were created flying in the sky while men, who were earthbound, all had identical faces. Women were not willing to come down and live with men as they could not tell one from the other.

"A deity gave men distinguishing features but the women still would not come down to earth. With further divine instruction, men made a lasso of the stock of crops and pulled the women down," Ma explained.

With just 18,000 members, the De'ang ethnic group is extremely endangered and is being kept alive through dance, music and costumes.

"Women still wear braided lassos around their waists while working and dancing," Ma said.

The traditional waistbands, which are part of the De'ang's everyday wardrobe, inspired Ma to create the ethnic group dance, which turned out to be a hit.

Although the varied ethnic cultures are being showcased in contests and are regularly shown on national television, the folk artists are worried about the next generation.

Young people are being pulled into modern life, while the old cultures are losing their appeal.

"I could not find a young man as a singing partner for an important performance," said 36-year-old He Jinhua, a singer of Naxi ethnic group which has a population of about 300,000.

"Those who can sing well are already in their 60s," she said. "Young men just want to go out and find jobs in the cities," said He.

While the Ethnic Minority Art Festival has been held infrequently, it's growing in popularity. The first, held in 1980, attracted about 2,000 participants. The second, held 11 years later in 1991, drew more than 3,500 artists.

This year's festival drew about 4,500 participants.

Although increasingly confident of their ethnic minority cultures, the folk artists often have mixed feelings about their place in history and their community's future.

Like many other folk artists, He Jinhua is hunting for young singing talent to teach. "Many young students give up because they think ethnic signing isn't trendy enough. I have to try my best to persuade them to come back," she said.

After performing on stages across the country and abroad, He Jinhua believes it's more "natural and relaxing" to sing at home, where the "mountains are your only audience."

(China Daily September 25, 2006)