SINGING MOUNTAIN

Probably the most difficult for me to explain is our next stop at the Singing Mountain Park that overlooks the Forbidden City. As we stepped through the entrance we immediately heard a large group of people singing. Their voices rising and falling and seeming to call out in unison and I was immediately reminded of movies that I’d seen of peasants singing while they worked in the fields. Some women danced and another woman moved gracefully in time as she swirled a huge ribbon on the end of a stick.

We walked a little farther up a steep embankment and heard another group of people singing. We stopped to watch and listen. Blake looked at the sheet music that one of the singers held and said that this song was about living in a strong country where your father was the mountains and your mother the rivers.

Most of the singers appeared to be in their late 50’s and older. There were no young people in these singing groups. There were many younger people in the park but they walked, holding hands, taking pictures of the trees and flowers, and of each other, but they were not singing.

We walked farther up the hill and the voices from the different singing groups rang out beautifully in this green tumble of trees and grassy fields. Each group sang a different song, some had more female voices while others had a deeper tone and sounded more male. There must have been 20 or 30 different groups singing and they were all clearly songs of enjoyment and everyone sang with great vibrato.

Many of the pictures that I took did not really turn out that clearly. The day was hazy and dark and overcast. Blake said that the air quality had been very bad lately, but you know I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and it looked like a sky heavy with rain to me. Well, sure enough, late that afternoon the sky opened up and poured down a heavy blanket of rain. We hailed a taxi and headed for the hotel our heads buzzing with everything that we’d seen and heard.