The Chinese love to sing

A tuneful Christmas in Beijing. Why do the Chinese love singing so much more than us?

By Peter Foster World Last updated: December 23rd, 2010
11 Comments Comment on this article

You just can't stop the Chinese singing

In China, where my three children attend a bilingual international school, there is a Christmas event of sorts, but the Christian roots are deliberately hidden away with terms such as “Winter holiday” or “Winter Festival”.
I don’t mind this – it makes sense in a truly multi-cultural and polyglot playground – and while there was nothing overtly religious (and I’m not) there were still several rousing renditions of old Christmas favourites like Jingle Bells – in English and Chinese – to get things going.
Which brings me to an observation I’ve been meaning to share for some time. Chinese, of all ages, seem to absolutely love singing and use it as part of the education process far more than us Westerners.
My children’s schooling is split 50-50 in English and Chinese, but after nearly two years of being educated in China, the children know about ten times as many Chinese songs as English ones.
Whenever we drive somewhere in the car, whenever the children are lost in their own thoughts, they seem to be singing Chinese songs – sometimes ensemble, but often three different Chinese songs, all at once and all oblivious to each other.
No matter that, to put kindly, none of my offspring are blessed with the voices of angels (it’s the genes) they still belt out their songs as if their lives depended on it and without the slightest self-consciousness. Personally I love it, particularly when I think that at their age I’d have died rather than sing voluntarily.
And as I said, this love of singing is not confined to the classroom and the schoolyard.
Visit a Chinese park on a Sunday and you’ll find competing groups of adults (mostly over 50s) all singing heartily together, sometimes accompanied by a squeeze box, a tambourine or two and a fiddle.
I asked a taxi driver about where the love of singing comes from – a hangover perhaps from the old revolutionary days – and he said simply “dui shenti hao”, it’s good for your health, which I suppose it is.
As if to prove the point, he then burst into a sonorous rendition of the old Communist anthem East is Red and even as I paid my fare, he was still belting out verses from Beauty and the Beast. I left the cab happier than when I’d got in it.
And on that appropriately harmonious note, here’s wishing everyone a very happy Christmas, or Winter Festival, or whatever you choose to call it.
Mine, I know, will be full of songs.