It is a widespread famous school song with distinctive ethnic features. It is produced in the early years of Republic of China (1912), became popular in the 20s and 30s of 20th century.

Honestly, I learned this beautiful song/music in primary school and have believed since then this is an ancient song written 2000 years ago in Han Dynasty. I did not realize it is actually not that ancient until I planned this post and searched information online.

Reviewing the above list, we can find it’s roughly objective and representative. Opening up the “classic” heart knot, this list is indeed helpful to establish an overall concept of Chinese music in 20th century.

As painstaking as these efforts are, we can take it as musicians’ “big show of the century”, or a “rewarding ceremony”. Now they are on stage, and we might give them some applauds.

Once the list was published, the Central Conservatory of Music was commissioned to collect information for later text, sound publication. Then the first published plan was on the “People’s Daily” overseas edition. On June 5 1993 in Beijing, the official awarding ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People. Representative works from Mainland China, Hongkong, Taiwan were performed at the opening ceremony.

In previous sections, we have covered Songs, Choir and Operas. You probably had difficulty in enjoying them since they are all vocal music in Chinese language. Since today, the other sections are going to be mainly instrumental music. Hopefully it will be easier for you to enjoy them.

But the organizers made a fatal mistake to use the “classic” word. “Classic” has the meaning of artistic value. “Classics” are naturally formed. It is obvious that to generate “classics” by ballot would be impractical. Who votes? What criteria? In what way? there are endless questions. If we only selected “the most representative works of each era”, perhaps we can have a more objective identification criteria.