Ye Xiaogang: Historical pieces of art take time

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Education is more than just gaining knowledge, it should be about nurturing talent too. That's the opinion of Ye Xiaogang, a CPPCC Standing Committee Member and Chairman of the Chinese Musicians' Association.

Ye is one of the biggest names in China's contemporary classical music scene. He was a member of the class of 1978 from the Central Conservatory of Music, which produced a remarkable number of talented artists.

Tian Wei caught up with Ye and asked him if China will ever see a large amount of talented musicians arise from one class again. Ye said he doesn't think so, because just as a saying goes, “Time produces the heroes”.

"Because during the Culture Revolution, the school close for 10 years, so those kind of arts are in society everywhere, everyone battled for their lives, to survive, but one day the schools open, you got a chance to get in, so that's why all of a sudden everyone, about 30 composers got together in one class," said Ye.

Not only this, the historical pieces of art took a lot of time to compose. Ye took two famous songs in China as examples to illustrate: "During the Second War, China invaded by Japanese, it's after 4 year, the very famous song 'Songhuajiangshang' coming, because people are suffering for four years. The Yellow River Cantata is after 8 years, so it's really take time, especially music."

To become a talented musician, people should motivate themselves, added Ye, "Of course we love to keep update, for the society, for the art, but you have to stand in your own way, cut all of the none necessary things, make music compact."