RURAL SCENERY GIVES BAND A TASTE OF THE COUNTRY

During the past two decades, Chinese rock band Miserable Faith has performed in arenas, theaters and outdoor music festivals across the country. Always, it seemed surrounded by wildly cheering fans.

However, when the band visited a small village in Zhenghe county in East China's Fujian province, they stood on a rudimentary flagstone path and performed their piece, Song of the Road, to an appreciative though small audience.

Villagers gathered around and enjoyed the performance against the backdrop of blue sky, white clouds and green trees.

It's a scene from a new TV show, titled China is So Beautiful, which features nine groups of singer-songwriters and indie rock bands traveling to villages and performing there. Miserable Faith and the small village in Zhenghe county were featured in the first episode of the TV show, which premiered on Tencent Video on Nov 18.

"We love performing here. It is so close to nature," says leading vocalist and songwriter Gao Hu. "It's the first time that we traveled to Zhenghe county, where we saw beautiful scenery and met lovely people."

Located between two mountain chains Wuyi and Jiufeng, the county is famous for its tea.

"It seemed to be useless to learn calligraphy, compared to learning woodwork but I really love it," said Chen in the show.

Impressed by the couple's story, the band dedicated Sing For You to them. The song, written by Gao and released in the band's album, The Music Won't Be Stopped, in 2008, was for Gao's then girlfriend.

In the one-hour show, audiences also followed the band picking tea leaves in a vast garden, run by Yang Feng, who keeps his family tradition of growing tea trees in the small village. Before they left Zhenghe county, the band played with children of a primary school of Jinping village, where they met a teacher Ye Xiangmei. The 35-year-old Ye has been teaching at the school since 2013. While the school suffers from a teacher shortage, Ye teaches multiple courses, such as Chinese language and music.

"She is a great teacher who is warm, enthusiastic and caring. She reminds me of my mother, who was also a teacher before her retirement," says Zhang Jing, the band's bassist.

In the show, they performed four of their songs, all against the backdrop of the villages in Zhenghe county they visited. Sunset, waterfalls, animals and villagers were featured in the show, which added a different layer of meaning to their songs.

The first man the band met was Song Zengfu, who took the band to see his bees, his rabbit, and his handcrafted pieces, like wooden rocking horses and bamboo baskets. Song's wife made them lunch and invited the band to drink their homemade glutinous rice wine.

Both in their 60s, the couple enjoy their lives in the small village.

"Our children asked us to live with them in the bigger cities, where they work now. We found it very boring to live in the cities," said Song in the show.

"Though he is getting old, he still loves climbing trees and catching fish in the river. He just cannot leave the village," added Song's wife.

"Many people may decide to leave their hometowns and pursue a better life in bigger cities, but there are still some enjoying themselves in the villages. That's a different definition for happiness," says Gao.

The band also met Chen Mujin, 53, who is known as the "Chinese calligraphy master". Chen couldn't read or write because his family was too poor to afford school fees. However, Chen loved looking at Chinese characters and hoped that he could write one day. While working on the farmland, he taught himself to read and write as a teenager. His wife supported his dream and used the money kept for her dowry to pay for Chen's calligraphy classes.

According to Wang Shengzhi, director of the TV show, besides Fujian province, the creative team also visited villages of other places across China, such as Lianping county in Guangdong province, Jianshui county in Yunnan province and Jingyuan county in Gansu province. Chinese bands, including Jiulian Zhenren and Wu Tiao Ren, are featured in the show.

"These places may not be very popular among tourists but they are beautiful and deserve to be discovered," says Wang.

The director says the TV show was inspired by his other shows, such as Breakfast of China, which brought viewers to travel across the country to taste as many as 30 types of popular breakfasts.

"I met many interesting people when I shot other shows. They have a very different lifestyle from people living in bigger cities and I want to introduce them to the audiences," says the director.

"It feels like an escape from the fast-paced city life by watching the show, especially when we cannot travel due to the coronavirus pandemic," says Zhu Lexian, head of A4 Studio, content production department of Tencent Online Video, who supervised the TV show, China is So Beautiful. "Like the name of the show suggests, there are many beautiful places and beautiful people in China."