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Feature: Two Nations, One Friendship Melody
When night falls Tuesday in the " City of Angels" by the river of Chao Phaya, Plaza Athenee, a downtown hotel emerged fully decorated with lanterns and streamers. It is the venue where a major event of the culture-exchange between China and Thailand due to take place.
Leading folk dancers and singers from both countries will join hands to celebrate the ever-lasting bilateral friendship with their impressive performance. Most important of all, Princess Chulabhorn, the third daughter of Thai King, will display her newly acquired skills of playing the two-thousand-year-old Chinese instrument of Guzheng, or Chinese zither.
"This concert will be the event which have the biggest scale and influence in the cultural exchange between the two nations this year," said Zhou Heping China's Deputy Culture Minister, who is leading some 50 Chinese artists during a friendly performance tour in the country.
"We are invited by Princess Chulabhorn to bring dances and songs which are enriched with five thousands years of Chinese culture to the people in Thailand, " he told Xinhua.
The official noted that Chulabhorn's performance of Guzheng tonight will compose an unforgettable page in the history of China- Thailand cultural exchange.
Among the audience are Queen of Thailand Sirikit, Princess Soamsawali, wife of the Crown Prince and other members from the royal family, as well as dozens of high-ranking officials.
The first program features a band comprising five young female Chinese musicians, each of them plays a different traditional Chinese instrument. When the compere said that some of the instruments, like Guzheng and Pipa, all have histories of over one thousands years, the impressed audience gasps in admiration.
As the music of River and the Flowers of the Spring Night, a famous ancient masterpiece rises, all the audience were inebriated in the ancient, quite and deep Chinese atmosphere created by the band with the wonderful sound.
Then artists of different nationalities of China performed a series of well-known traditional dances including the Dai nationality's Peacock Dance, the Uygur Dance and the Han nationality's Red-Silk Dance, it once again captured the Thai audience with its indication of the territorial vastness and cultural variety of China.
As the waves of loud applause for the outstanding performance of Chinese artists wanes, the most highlighted item of tonight's show comes to the stage. Princess Chulabhorn appears in a traditional Chinese Cheongsam and is seated beside a Guzheng at the center of the stage.
With impeccable skills, she played a series of solos of Chinese and Thai songs, namely the Clouds Chasing the Moon, Yao Nationality Dance, Butterfly Lover, Toei Khong and Lao Sieng Thien with the traditional Chinese instrument.
It is hard to imagine a just-over-three-month learner of the complicated Chinese instrument can play so well and so impressively.
The Princess's love affair with Guzheng began in her recent visit to China late last year. "I was taking a cruise on the Lijiang River in Guilin, hearing serenades of Guzheng played by some music students, and it was the most beautiful sound that I had ever heard," recalled the princess at a news conference few days before.
"The charm of Guzheng is its mellifluous sound that can communicate a range of emotions, from romantic to aggressive, that no other instruments seems to be able to do," said Chulabhorn, who plays piano and guitar since childhood.
Li Yang, who has taught the princess the rudiments of Guzheng said at the concert that Chulabhorn's progress has been phenomenal, because normally it will take a person two to three years to be familiar with the instrument.
"She loves Chinese culture so much and she is so diligent, spending three to five hours a day to learn Guzheng, " she said.
The concert finally reached climax as Princess Chulabhorn and Li Yang, together with Li Hui, a Chinese Erhu-player, co-perform an unforgettable song, Thais and Chinese Are Brothers, which was composed over 20 years ago by Thai and Chinese musician to celebrate the establishment of the two nations' diplomatic ties in 1975.
The perfect combination of Guzheng and Erhu, boosted by a symphony orchestra and a groups of singers, thoroughly demonstrated the themes of the song,-- "Beijing--Bangkok, Bangkok-- Beijing, different languages but the same voice, join hands we are brothers...the friendship will last forever!"
As time rolls into the depth of the night, the concert is going to an end. However, the endless melody which the two nations plays together, seems still lingering around the ears of everyone.
According to the organizer of the concert, the group of Chinese and Thai artists will follow Princess Chulabhorn to continue their performance in Northern and Southern Thailand within this month, in order to bring the friendship melody across the nation.
Music has no boundary. As the song describes, "music will set up a golden bridge between Thai and Chinese people and laughters will be heard in both Chao Phaya and the Yangtze rivers".
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