国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

'Silence Choir' gives voice to deaf children, opens hearts

Youngsters from remote mountainous area overcome hurdles, soar on concert stages

By Zhao Xu | China Daily | Updated: 2025-12-03 08:08
Share
Share - WeChat
Li Bo (front row, third from right) and Zhang Yong (front row, second from right) pose for a photo with child members of the Silence Choir at Happy Valley amusement park in Beijing in 2018. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Editor's note: To mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec 3, this story highlights a journey of a choir composed of deaf children who learned how to sing through vibrations and resonance.

Li Bo, a multimedia artist and musician, said he would never forget the sound of a deaf girl's "ah "as — "a lone utterance that flooded my heart completely".

That was in 2013. The girl, Yang Weiwei, has since become a core member of Li Bo's Silence Choir — a group that would never have existed without that one sound, and one composed entirely of deaf children.

In September, the choir took the stage at Beijing's Forbidden City Concert Hall. As the performance began, the music rose — soft and ethereal — as if carried from the distant mountains where the members had once trained. Then, a single stone fell into the musical waters: the first "ah" of a lone voice. One by one, others joined — a continuous drip, a trickle, a stream, and then a gushing current.

"True equality originates from the resonance of the heart," Li said.

Yet it was a long journey — both literal and metaphorical — for Li and his fellow musician Zhang Yong, co-founders of the choir, to come to see the deaf singers as truly equal.

"We took a plane, a train, two buses, and finally a motorcycle ride to reach the school, where I first met the girl," recalled Zhang, who is based in Beijing.

Under the clouds

Nestled deep in the mountains of Lingyun county in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the school was built specifically for local children with various disabilities.

Lingyun means "above the clouds", yet the children's hopes rarely soared that high. Behind the gates of Lingyun School the children lived in a world of their own — moving in rhythms of their own making, some of them hesitant and intimidated by the world beyond, "where people can actually hear", as Li observed.

Therefore, none of the children could understand it when Li and Zhang — "two intruders" to use their own words — told them that they were there for their voices.

"As a contemporary artist, I work with various 'materials', including sound," Li explained. "Once, while walking down the street, I heard a deaf man who had just realized he'd lost something precious. He let out a single cry — so raw and powerful that it seemed to contain every emotion he felt in that moment."

"In that moment, I knew I wanted to include the voices of the deaf in my next art and music project," said Li, whose search — aided by a volunteer organization — eventually led him and his friend to the school.

"There we were, with all our recording equipment set up, yet the children refused to cooperate. They walked past us, avoided eye contact, and when asked to make a sound, simply raised their little fingers — a gesture that meant 'no good'."

Realizing they first needed to connect with the children, Li and Zhang stayed for a week, spending entire days simply playing with them. "Somewhere along the way, we began to see how wrong we had been — forcing these deeply sensitive children to face the stark reality of their disabilities in the name of art. It was time to step back."

And then came the day when Li and Zhang decided to bid farewell to the school's headmaster. As they stood outside his office, a young girl, no more than 6 or 7, suddenly ran up to them. She took Zhang's hands in hers and let out a clear, heartfelt "ah", gazing intently into their eyes.

"She was effectively saying, 'Look, I can do it! I can do it!'" said Zhang. "We looked at each other and realized that this little girl trusted us enough to believe what we had told the children repeatedly: that their voices were truly beautiful. Trust demands commitment. Once it is built, you cannot simply walk away — you must honor it."

1 2 3 4 Next   >>|
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1994 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
荆州市| 郓城县| 沙河市| 安西县| 广河县| 威海市| 新绛县| 佛冈县| 宁津县| 泾源县| 马尔康县| 佳木斯市| 定日县| 黄山市| 三亚市| 张北县| 长岛县| 紫阳县| 翼城县| 铜梁县| 密云县| 九江县| 陆川县| 时尚| 遂昌县| 东兴市| 石河子市| 江山市| 兰考县| 泸州市| 澄城县| 奎屯市| 鹿泉市| 万全县| 清水河县| 涟水县| 九江市| 宜都市| 澄迈县| 叙永县| 大邑县|