Songs of the fields

Hani people celebrate the Kai Yang Men festival with dances and music in the Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture in Yunnan province.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

The ancient music of the Hani people faces decline, Chen Nan reports in Yuanyang county, Yunnan province.

He sits alone on a bench in the sun, surrounded by people, most of whom are tourists.

As the show starts, he watches dancers and singers enacting scenes that show them planting seeds, farming fields and harvesting. He murmurs a song and nods his head.

This is Zhu Xiaohe, a 79-year-old man from the Hani ethnic group, who lives in the village of Dongpu in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

The village is located in Yuanyang county, in the Honghe Hani and Yi autonomous prefecture of Yunnan.

In 2007, he became the first in his ethnic group to be recognized as an inheritor of this form of intangible culture.

He sings ancient Hani songs, or haba.