Legend of lijiang

Yan Bing will stage a concert to introduce his fellow street performers to a broader audience in Beijing on Aug 8. [Photo/China Daily]

Yan Bing, who has kept folk music alive from a bar in Southwest China, has gotten himself a Beijing gig, thanks to crowd funding. Chen Nan reports.

When folk singer Yan Bing opened a page on Chinese crowdfunding website Kaistart to raise money for a gig at Beijing's Exhibition Theater, the response was immediate.

Only two weeks later, more than 1 million yuan ($161,000) was raised from some 4,000 people to fund the show on Aug 8.

The 35-year-old, better known as Dabing, is also a TV host for Shandong Satellite TV Station and the author of two popular travel books.

He has more than 1 million followers on his Sina Weibo micro blog.

The concert, titled Dabing and His Friends, will feature Yan and 10 other folk singers, who perform at The Cabin of Dabing, a bar Yan opened in 2008 in Lijiang, an ancient city in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

The bar, popular among locals and tourists alike, doesn't have amplifiers, microphones or a stage, and performers sing and play simple instruments, such as the guitar and harmonica, with customers sitting around.

"We will invite 20 people to sit onstage during the performance in Beijing, exactly the same as at The Cabin of Dabing," says Yan, who aims to introduce the folk singers to a wider audience.

According to Lu Zhongqiang, the founder of Beijing-based indie music label Thirteen Month, the original goal was to get 800,000 yuan from the crowdfunding project, with June 29 being the closing date.