China has one of the oldest civilizations, as it has been inhabited for over 5,000 years. It was traditionally ruled by dynasties, such as the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911). A revolution in 1912 saw the end of the Qing dynasty and the formation of the Kuomintang party by Sun Yat-san. They struggled with the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, for control of the country while fighting Japan in WWII. The Chinese initially welcomed communism, but polices such as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) led to the deaths of more than 40 million people.

According to myth, the gods and humans used to live in peace a long time ago. Then the gods became angry and flooded the world. A brother and sister were able to survive by hiding in a giant pumpkin and riding out the flood. There were no people left in the world, so if the brother and sister did not have children, there would be no more people. Brothers and sisters were not allowed to marry, so they decided to roll stones down a hill. If they landed on top of each other, it meant heaven wanted them to marry. The brother secretly hid two stones on top of each other at the bottom of the hill, and led his sister there after they rolled the stones. After they got married, the sister gave birth to a lump of flesh, which the brother cut into twelve pieces and threw in twelve directions. These became the twelve peoples of ancient China.

There are three major religions in China: Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Taoism is the most widely practiced religion, and is based on a belief in Dao, a spirit of harmony that drives the universe. Confucianism was founded by Confucius (551-479 B.C.). It is comprised of a system of moral values based on reason and human nature. Buddhism was founded in India by Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B.C.). It is based on four holy truths: 1. life consists of suffering. 2. Suffering comes with desire. 3. To overcome suffering, one must overcome desire, and 4. To overcome desire, one must follow the eightfold path and achieve nirvana.

In most ethnic groups, the man is the head of the family. Though the position of women has improved greatly under communist rule, they are still not equal politically. The most common foods are rice, vegetables, pork and freshwater fish. Most Chinese wear western dress, however in some rural areas, traditional dress is still worn. The Chinese tend to care very much about education, as the first university was founded over 2,000 years ago.

Music is part of many local religious festivals and ceremonies, including the dragon and lion dance. Also, a form of music called Yayue (elegant music) was used in solemn state rites. These rites usually had religious overtones, such as the Confucian rites and the rites dedicated to heaven and earth. Yayue has always been performed by a chorus and instrumental ensemble. The instrumental ensemble was sometimes called bayin (eight sounds), because it represented the eight essential timbres: metal (bell), stone (chime), clay (ocarina), wood (wooden box and scraper), gourd (a type of mouth organ), silk (zither), bamboo (flute) and leather (drum). The size of both the chorus (dengge) and bayin varied from dynasty to dynasty.

The texts of hymns praising Confucius were uniformly composed in eight lines of four words each. The syllables were set to pitches of equal duration, and the melodic movement was very disjunct. The vocal melodies were accompanied in unison by the chimes and bells. The Chinese apparently had a great interest in symmetry, as a bell would signal the beginning of a melodic phrase, and a drum would signal the end. In Buddhist music, vocal music is sung to drum accompaniment, the rhythm of which can be in regular meter (4/4 or ¾), alternating meter, or in ¼ (or free meter).

Picking Flowers is a Chinese piece written by Lei Qiang, who is from Shaanxi, a rural province in central china. In this region there is a strong musical influence that goes back thousands of years. This area of china placed a large importance on folk music history (as far back as the Tang Dynasty 600AD). This influence can be heard in the piece with the large importance placed on overall tone of the piece. This is because in Chinese music tone plays a large importance on the meaning of phrases. Another Chinese characteristic is the music being poetic, making it have to have the right mood to be in tune with the music. This piece features an erhu (Chinese fiddle) that is over 1000 years old. It also has tambourine, flute, a Chinese guitar like instrument called a Pipa, woodblocks, and a bass. The woodblocks sound like a metronome and are played throughout the piece playing eigth notes giving it a clear and steady beat, which is common in Chinese music.

• In the piece the background sounds and bass line plays a repeating accompaniment melody

• The Solo line, the erhu plays a flowing legato melody

• The Flute also trades off with the erhu and the two also both play the melody

• The Chinese guitar like instrument also plays the melody after the erhu plays it the first time.

• The bass line is more rhythmic and its purpose is to support the melody. It is constantly repeated throughout the song

• Because the piece is so legato the melodic seems flowing and soothing

• Unbalanced phrasing

• Its about picking flowers

• Theme played on different instruments

• The piece beings with bass and the pipa playing

• at 4 seconds the Erhu, wood blocks, and tambourine enter

• At 16 seconds in the Erhu changes its primary melody slightly

• At 21 seconds the Erhu stops and it is just bass, pipa, and tambourine

• At 25 the Erhu begins with its original melody once again

o This is a repetition of the first phrase and goes till 45 seconds where the Erhu stops

• At 46 seconds the pipa plays the melody with tambourine and bass as background

• At 56 seconds the flute enters and plays the melody with pipa, woodblocks, and tambourine as background until 1:02

• At 1:03 it returns to the original melody played on Erhu and repeated until 1:40

• At 1:45 the flute enters and plays V, III, I and ends the piece with a decrescendo at 2:02.

Yo-Yo Ma: humanitarian, globe-trotting teacher, good sport, ice-dancing fan and heckuva nice guy. Oh, and he plays the cello.(Smithsonian magazine's 35 who made a difference). Joshua Kosman.

Smithsonian 36.8 (Nov 2005): p86(3).

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution

IF YO-YO MA DIDN'T EXIST, no novelist in the world would have dared invent him. The combination of virtues--musical, intellectual, personal--is simply too implausible.

I suppose readers would believe a fictional character who was one of the finest cellists in the world--after all, somebody has to be--and they would likely accept the idea that gorgeous tone, impeccable technique and boundless interpretive sophistication are all necessary parts of that designation. They probably wouldn't even balk at a performing repertoire that included standard masterpieces, newly commissioned classical works and a host of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary projects. But to go a step further and claim that this artistic paragon was also the nicest person in the classical music business--universally renowned for his modesty, amiability and collegial spirit--would be pushing credulity.

And yet it's all true. At 50, Ma has established himself as an instrumentalist of extraordinary technical gifts and expressive directness. But he is also a reminder that musical excellence can coexist alongside prodigious human decency. In Ma's case, these are not distinct attributes. His personal warmth and generosity inform his playing, making every performance a richly human interaction with his listeners. In addition to being a solo virtuoso, he is a committed chamber player and artistic partner; his collaborations with his longtime duo partner, the pianist Emanuel Ax, and with artists from all parts of the musical and cultural spectrum--even ice dancers--are notable for their easy give-and-take. Ma boasts a megawatt smile and a lack of self-importance that would seem disingenuous in a lesser artist. He has been one of People magazine's Sexiest Men of the Year, bantered with the Muppets on "Sesame Street" and seen his name serve as a punch line on "Seinfeld."

But Ma isn't celebrated simply because his name can raise a laugh when spoken in conjunction with that of Boutros Boutros-Ghali. It's because he can make music the universal language that it's sometimes claimed to be. His performances of the cornerstones of the cello repertoire--beginning with Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and continuing through the major showpieces by Schumann, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Prokofiev and Britten--combine technical razzle-dazzle with plain-spoken eloquence. When he plays Bach, you hear the composer's profundity, but you also hear what so many performers miss--the buoyant dance rhythms, the ingenuity and the sense of fun.

And unlike many classical virtuosos whose careers are devoted almost exclusively to the same small circle of recognized masterpieces, Ma's musical interests extend far beyond the tried and true. Among his more than 50 recordings are discs devoted to Argentinian tango and Brazilian dance music, collaborations with country crossover artists Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer, movie soundtracks, and a wide range of contemporary classical music by such composers as Tan Dun, Philip Glass and Peter Lieberson.

Since 1998, Ma has devoted much of his attention to the Silk Road Project, which he launched to explore and celebrate the music of civilizations in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Named for the legendary network of trade routes that once extended from China across the Asian subcontinent to the Mediterranean, the project offers newly composed and traditional music that blends strains from Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, China, Mongolia and more. The project, which was the centerpiece of the Smithsonian's 2002 Folklife Festival, has spawned a flurry of performances, recordings and educational programs by the Silk Road Ensemble--a collective of musicians in which Ma, characteristically, serves as but one among equals.

Ma was born in Paris in 1955 to Chinese emigre parents, both of them musicians. The family moved to New York City in 1962. He and his older sister, Yeou-Chang, who plays the violin, were both prodigies--the two performed that year before President Kennedy and the first lady--but, still, Ma came slowly to the life of a professional musician. He studied humanities at Harvard, and although he had kept up his musical pursuits at the Juilliard School of Music and the Marlboro Music Festival while in his teens, it wasn't until after he graduated from college in 1976 that his career began in earnest.

Ma's technical brilliance and his insatiable curiosity about the entire range of musical experience quickly paid off. It took him only a few years to master the standard cello repertoire, after which he set out to create new worlds to explore. He commissioned concertos from composers as diverse as the modernist Leon Kirchner (a mentor from his Harvard days), the neo-Romantic Richard Danielpour and the film composer John Williams. He collaborated on a series of short films based on the Bach Suites with artists such as choreographer Mark Morris, filmmaker Atom Egoyan and ice dancers Torvill and Dean.

I've heard Ma perform countless times, and each occasion was an event to be cherished. But my favorite memory of him comes from a 1990 appearance with Bobby McFerrin and the San Francisco Symphony. Ma and McFerrin improvised together, and the two got on splendidly. Then, after intermission, McFerrin led the orchestra in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--and there was Ma, sitting in the back row of the orchestra's cello section, playing along and grinning like a kid who'd just slipped past the guards at the ballpark and positioned himself behind third base. By any reckoning, he should have been relaxing in his dressing room or heading back to the hotel. But there was music going on, and he couldn't stay away.

"If I know what music you love, and you know what music I love, we start

out having a better conversation."

--YO-YO MA, SMITHSONIAN, JUNE 2002

JOSHUA KOSMAN is the classical music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

"China." CultureGrams 2007: World Edition. Provo: ProQuest Information and Learning, 2006.

"Chinese." Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Eds. Timothy L. Gall and Susan Bevan Gall. Detroit: U*X*L, 1999.

Wong, Isabel. "Music: Music and Religion in China, Korea, and Tibet." Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay

Jones. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.

Kosman, Joshua. "Yo-Yo Ma: humanitarian, globe-trotting teacher, good sport, ice-dancing fan

and heckuva nice guy. Oh, and he plays the cello.(Smithsonian magazine's 35 who made a

difference)." Smithsonian 36.8 (Nov 2005): 86(3). InfoTrac OneFile. Thomson

Gale. INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY HIGH SCHOOL. 2 Dec. 2006

<http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC- Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=ITOF&docId=A138991757

&source=gale&srcprod=ITOF&userGroupName=lom_inac&version=1.0>.

"Music: Music in China." Encyclopedia of Asian History. 4 vols. Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1988. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills,

MI: Gale Group. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/History/

http://www.myss.com/images/Worldreligions/Taoism.jpg

http://international.ucla.edu/asia/lessons/gbuchanan/karyn3_files/chinafamily.jpg

http://thetempleguy.com/blog/images/blogimages/instruments.jpg

http://files.calabashmusic.com/samples/49464/lei_qiang_picking_flowers.sample.mp3

http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/images/country/headings/flags/china_flag_large.bmp