Music camp offers foreign youngsters a close look at Chinese culture

Students from around the world play pipa at the Confucius Institute International Music Summer Camp in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]

More than 60 students from the United States, Canada, Denmark, South Africa and other countries joined the two-week Confucius Institute International Music Summer Camp in Beijing, which ended on July 16.

The theme of the camp was to study Chinese traditional instruments. Chinese music professors including Chen Ziming, Wang Cizhao, Zhou Guoping, baritone Yuan Chenye and other musicians gave lectures. Musicians of traditional Chinese music instruments demonstrated more than a dozen of Chinese instruments to the foreign students.

The youngsters were impressed by the guqin, the seven-stringed zither which was listed as UNESCO's intangible heritage in 2003.

In the opening and closing concerts, the students performed the Western instruments together with the Chinese instruments.

The annual music camp is organized by Confucius Institute and the Central Conservatory of China since 2014. This year, the Confucius Institute with Portland State University organized students to the camp for the first time. Portland State University and the Central Conservatory of Music will have more cooperation in future.

Two participants play the drum at the Confucius Institute International Music Summer Camp in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]