Snowflake helps spread the warmth

YINCHUAN－For Ma Yifei, a 16-year-old visually impaired teenager, the violin performance of the Beijing 2022 theme song, Snowflake, is her best present for Paralympians across the globe.

When playing the piece at the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics on Sunday, Ma thought of the athletes who, despite their physical challenges, had worked so hard to hone their skills and reach the top level of their sports.

"I felt very empowered. I'm also a person with disabilities and wanted to do something for them with my music," she says.

Four days before the ceremony, Ma received a call and knew that she would be performing in Beijing. While she only had a few days to rehearse, behind her performance was a girl's pursuit of her dreams for more than a decade.

Ma, a sophomore in Ningxia Special Education High School in China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, lost her eyesight when she was 2 years old, following an illness.

Ma became interested in music when she was young. She started to learn to play the piano at 5, and violin when she was 9, experiencing "color" through sound, temperature, atmosphere and emotion.

"Sadness or joy, each piece is different," she says, adding that although Snowflake is related to winter, she can feel "warmth, hope and light".

Ma's mother Ha Chunyan, a former primary school music teacher, helped Ma memorize the score before playing.

"She could not see the keys and always played the wrong notes. It took a few thousand times for her to play a piece correctly," says Ha, adding that her daughter is persistent in chasing her dreams. "Despite being a small child, she sat there for three or four hours practicing the piano."

Learning the violin was tougher for Ma. She had problems pulling a straight bow, so she needed to feel the teacher's hands, arms and back to learn the movements of the muscles, and listen to the strings over and over again to train herself.

"After three years of learning, she could still only make squeaky noises," says Ha. She advised her daughter to give up, but Ma refused.

Ma told her mother at the time: "As I've been practicing for so long, it's hard to give up. I believe it will get better if I persist."

In 2018, she had the chance to follow in the footsteps of Sheng Yuan and Cao Yuhan, established musicians from the Central Conservatory of Music, to study music. It was the start of a long musical journey, both in a metaphorical sense and in reality. She traveled from Yinchuan to Beijing for lessons, and her parents took turns accompanying her to Beijing every week. Despite the financial burden on the family, Ha feels that it is all worth it for the sake of her daughter's dream.

"We would leave on Friday night and arrive in Beijing the next morning and then return on Sunday night after two days of lessons. She would go to school on Monday morning, and we would go to work," Ha says.

They were always in a hurry to catch the train and often had bread and instant noodles for dinner, "but my daughter did not seem to be tired, smiling all the way".

Having spent her entire school life at Ningxia Special Education School, Ma has received a lot of love and care from the community.

"We have received a lot of donations. There have also been volunteers describing movies for us," Ma says, adding that without her persistence, she wouldn't have been able to stand on what was her biggest stage to date.

She says that one day she hopes to enroll in her ideal university and continue to study music. "I want to pass on the warmth I feel through music to more people," she adds.

Xinhua