Culture> Music and Theater

Expatriates' rich contribution to China recognized

By Lin Qi ( China Daily ) Updated: 2013-11-12 08:13:49

Bob Bellows and Deng Peitong perform at the 2013 China Right Here Award ceremony in Beijing. Zhang Wei / China Daily

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In the nine years since they met, Bob Bellows, an 84-year-old jazz singer and Deng Peitong, a 14-year-old visually impaired pianist have been performing together, bringing their love of jazz to Chinese audiences.

Bellows moved with his wife from the United States to Zhuhai, a coastal retreat in Guangdong province. He regards the town as his second home and took on a single student - Deng, who was born without eyesight but learned to play the piano at age 3.

The unusual friendship has jazzed up both of their lives. When Bellows teaches Deng colorful, creative music, he also learns about the richness of life.

"Meeting Niko (Deng's English name) has taught me a lot. I got to understand what being blind feels like," Bellows says.

"Niko keeps improving. She will be a strong talent with a great future. I just hope when I'm not around she will be taken good care of by other people."

Bellows celebrated this new chapter in their lives by singing What A Wonderful World, accompanied by Deng on piano, after receiving the 2013 China Right Here Award, a ceremony which was held in Beijing on Friday.

The annual award was launched in 2009 to extend the influence of a bilingual television documentary of the same name. The program focuses on expatriates' experiences across China, and has documented about 150 people since its debut on Tianjin Satellite Television in 2006.

The first episode was filmed by David Lai, a Canadian-Chinese documentary maker and the program's chief director, and told the story of Sabriye Tenberken, a then 36-year-old German social worker in Tibet.

Having lost her eyesight at age 12, Tenberken made her way to university. There she learned the Tibetan language, and developed the Braille alphabet for written Tibetan. She has brightened the lives of many visually-impaired children by founding a special school for them in Lhasa in 1999, and teaching them Tibetan Braille.

"One story led to another, and we came up with about 20 expats' stories in the first year," Lai says.

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