Millions of local netizens feel drumbeat of Chinese New Year online

January 20, 2024, was a big day for 46-year-old drummer Zhang Yong, who lives in a village in Linfen City, north China's Shanxi Province.

As the organizer of this year's village gala, an annual Chinese New Year event in which villagers put on their own shows on the village stage, Zhang had planned to livestream the event on video-sharing platform Douyin.

After preparing for a whole month, Zhang and his fellow villagers hoped they could get 30,000 viewers during the livestream. However, to their surprise, over 7.9 million netizens watched their live performance online on Saturday afternoon.

When Zhang uploaded video clips of their show after the event ended, tens of thousands of likes and comments soon appeared. Some said the show reminded them of village galas when they were young. Others said it was a great pleasure to see live performances of traditional folk music online.

The sound of home

The drum music is a must-have in the annual village gala in Zhang's village. They play the "Weifeng gong and drum," creating music that boasts a history of over 4,000 years. The drum and its music were added to the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006. It is still used in various celebration ceremonies, gatherings and traditional festivities.

Zhang told China Media Group that drumming is deeply rooted in the local culture of villages in Linfen.

"It's the sound of our hometown. In Linfen, people will hear drumbeats in all the major events of their lives," he said.

Zhang, who enrolled in a local drum art school when he was 14, still remembers when he first held the drumsticks.

"A group of people were playing drums together, and the sound was so loud that my heart became excited, and I got goosebumps," he said.

He became a drummer in a folk music troupe. But it disbanded in 1999 due to financial problems. At the same time, the village gala slowly began to lose its glory as more and more villagers chose to work in big cities. As the popularity of the village stage waned, so did the enthusiasm for learning traditional folk performances. In Linfen, drums were no longer as popular among young people as when Zhang was young. He had to find other jobs to make a living but still devoted his spare time to the art of drumming.

Inheritance

"Many people say that young people don't like traditional culture. But I think we didn't show our traditional culture to the young people in the right way," said Zhang, who is now an inheritor of the drum music in Shanxi.

Noticing the popularity of social media platforms among young people, Zhang began to post short videos of drum performances and teach drumming skills through livestreaming in 2020. Now, the drummer has over 1.1 million fans on Douyin.

Zhang said livestreaming not only brought him more income but, more importantly, also made more young people interested in traditional drum music. In recent years, he has been exploring ways to attract young people's attention. Since 2012, he and his team have taught more than 30,000 people from companies, communities and schools how to play the drum.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism also supported the cause by launching a series of projects to promote village galas in the countryside in 2021. Data from the ministry showed that more than 20,000 shows were staged nationwide in 2023, with about 130 million participants.

Zhang believes the fine art of traditional Chinese culture will reach a larger audience with the boom of livestreaming technology.