A 65-year-old farmer is enjoying a lucrative sideline business as a nightclub singer.

Bai Mingli has been booked at a string of venues in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, in the past few weeks.

Bai, who lives in a remote mountainous village in Qingjian County in northern Shaanxi, had never even stepped onto a stage until last December when he took part in a folk song competition.

He managed to finish in second place at the event in Yulin, northern Shaanxi.

On April 17, the senior citizen became among the top 10 folk singers in the province by getting through to the final of a competition sponsored by local cultural departments.

He has since performed at a string of Western-style bars and nightclubs in Xi'an.

"I know the folk songs Bai sings may not be commercial, but I want my bar to be special and have different attractions from others, so I asked him to perform here," said Hu Minrui, manager of Mengtong Bar in the downtown area of the city.

Other owners of bars and nightclubs in the city have followed Hu's lead.

His performances have attracted many customers.

Jing Weiren, a businessman from Shanxi Province, said he often heard the songs sung by Bai in his hometown as a child.

Bai learned to sing folk songs from the elders in his village when he was working on the farmland or grazing sheep.

"I learnt every word of the songs. I liked them so much I would often sing them when I was working on the Loess Plateau, which my hometown is located on," Bai told China Daily.

Bai performs folk songs called Daoqing (express feelings), which are often sung by lovers to show their feelings to each other.

The songs are popular among people living on the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Gansu provinces and the Inner Mongolia and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions, according to Yun Enfeng, a famous folk singer and chairwoman of the Shaanxi Folk Songs Association.

"With the influx of Western culture and art, young people know more about jazz or rap than folk music nowadays," Yun said.

"We have a responsibility to tell them about Daoqing, songs which have been sung for centuries.

"The folk song competition we helped to organize aimed to promote it more.

"And Bai being welcomed into nightclubs shows that this art has a market. We should find more ways to protect such cultural heritage in the face of rapid social changes and development."

According to Bai, there are some 18 types of Daoqing and he can sing 15.

(Xinhua News Agency May 10, 2006)