The Greek Olympic song floats from the mountains of Fuping, Hebei

At the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a group of "tiger-headed" children sang the Greek "Ode to the Olympics", and their young and pure voice touched everyone. This "Ma LanHua Choir", which sings for the whole world with pure children's voices, is not actually a professional choir, but a group of children from the depths of the Taihang Mountains.

These children are from Fuping County, the eastern foothills of the northern Taihang Mountains, which used to be the "three districts in one" of the old, mountainous and poor areas. As an old revolutionary area, Fuping has a long revolutionary history. More than 80 years ago, under the baptism of the smoke of war, the Jin-Cha-Ji Daily was born in Malan Village, Fuping County, and Deng Tuo, then director of the newspaper, led all the comrades of the newspaper to wave the "banner of the war struggle of millions of people behind the enemy lines" and published more than 2,800 issues of the newspaper successively, rallying people's hearts and inspiring morale for the struggle behind the enemy lines, and writing a brilliant stroke for the party's proletarian journalism cause. Deng Tuo regarded Malan as his second hometown, and also deeply hung up on the villagers of Malan Village.

In 2003, Deng Tuo's daughter Deng Xiaolan came to Malan Village to visit the graves of the martyrs. After the event, she wanted the children in the village to sing a song together, but found that the children here could hardly sing anything. "I was so sad that I decided to do something for the kids." In 2004, after retirement, Deng Xiaolan returned to the village of Malan, where he was born, with musical instruments he had collected from relatives and friends, to teach the children to sing. At that time, there were no high-speed railways and highways, and it was often more than 6 p.m. to take a train from Beijing West Railway Station to Dingzhou, Hebei Province, then change to a shuttle bus, and arrive at Malan Village. She just went back and forth like this, twice a month, rain or shine. "As long as they feel that music brings them joy, my wish has come true." She said.

Music awakens this sleeping mountain village. In the past 18 years, Deng Xiaolan has built a music classroom for this place with a pension, formed a "Malan Small Band" after the children's singing skills improved, led the children to perform on the stage of Beijing, Hangzhou and other big cities, and also contacted college music students to teach here. In 2015, she independently designed and self-financed the creation of a three-story "music castle" on the loess slope next to the primary school. "After going to the big city, the children encountered a lot of new things, what a children's palace, Disney Princess Castle, the children especially liked." Fantastic things are all connected together, isn't the music more beautiful, I covered them with one. ”

Deng Xiaolan used music to weave a colorful dream kingdom for the children, so that the children's dream of going out of the mountains became true. "What do the children in the mountains crave most?" It is a wonderful world outside the mountains. Just like that, with music as her wings, she led the children out of the mountains.

Deng Xiaolan volunteered to teach in Fuping County, Baoding City, Hebei Province.

Later, an inadvertent opportunity allowed the children to continue to fly to the world. One day in September 2021, Fu Baohuan, a retired music special teacher who had been volunteering for five years in Fuping, Hebei Province, received a call from the staff of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee. The other party proposed that they had seen videos of children singing on the Internet and hoped to go to the field to see if these children could take on the task of singing Olympic songs at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics more than four months later.

"At that time, my first feeling was that I was happy for the children of Fuping, who had the opportunity to be examined if they could participate in such a major event. But I was also worried that I knew how far Fuping's children were from the concert songs at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. What he did not expect was that Fuping's children conquered the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee in one day and gained the opportunity to appear on the stage of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games.

On the evening of February 4 this year, this group of children in the mountains stood on the stage of worldwide attention and sang for the world. Every child is pure and innocent, and every innocence deserves to be cherished. When you hear their singing of "Ode to the Olympics", you can't help but sing along with them, singing the moving spring and singing warm hope. Hidden in the natural sound of spring wind and rain is innocence, kindness, and people's initial desire for the world.

Zhang Huaqing, a graduate student at Hebei University, has been volunteering to teach in Fuping for two years, "positive, optimistic, and tenacious, which is the deepest feeling that the children here give me." Condensed two years of volunteer teaching life, this is the most memorable for him.

The spirit of the children in the mountains is the epitome of China in the new era. On December 29, 2012, China's march against poverty was issued from the depths of the Taihang Mountains. Seven years later, all 164 poor villages in Fuping were lifted out of poverty. "We all know that China is now out of poverty, and China's children and children in the mountains are different from the past, so what best reflects them is that they stand on the Olympic stage and sing the song loudly in Greek, and that really says it all." Zhang Yimou, general director of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, said so.

【Source: China Military Network】