Shanbei music

The folk songs that have long been sung on the Loess Plateau, in the extensive Shanbei region in the northern part of the Shaanxi province, are an encyclopedic collection of melodies to reveal the history, social life, culture, customs and beliefs of the communities in the area. The tunes are free-spirited, and the emotions are rich.

An ongoing exhibition at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum zooms in on how this unique tradition had been preserved in Yulin, Shaanxi. It re-creates the social and cultural atmospheres of Shanbei to bring people into the history of how those songs were created amid farmwork, festival celebrations and marriages. Their happiness, sadness, pain and anger have been given full expression in the melodies. The exhibition will end on June 27.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 16 Hujing Donglu, Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-8799-1766/1866.