The 14th Beijing Music Festival presented a concert of Chinese art songs at the Forbidden City Concert Hall last week.

Tenors Zhang Jianyi and Liao Changyong, and soprano Huang Ying performed more than 20 Chinese art songs at the concert, such as How Can I Stop Thinking about Him by Zhao Yuanren and I Live by the Origin of the Yangtze River by Qing Zhu.

Chinese composers began to write art songs with Chinese poetry at the beginning of the 20th century.

To promote Chinese art songs, Beijing Music Festival gave free tickets away, which were snapped up three hours after public bookings started.