Sunday, October 30, 2011

Chinese Traditional Musical Instrument: The hulusi ( 葫芦丝 húlusī) or cucurbit flute


The Hulusi, or the cucurbit flute, is free-reed aerophone who is played amongst the Dai (Thai) and the Yi minorities in Yunnan China. Other minorities in the same area, the Chinese side of the Golden Triangle area, use the instrument to communicate when working in the fields. The Dai people call the instrument a "Bilingdao". Composed of a gourd, main pipes, reeds and auxiliary pipes, the cucurbit flute sounds beautiful and heartwarming. It is ideal for expressing soft and tender feelings. As the sounds are as soft and graceful as shaking silk, the flute is also called "Bottle Gourd Silk".


There is a folklore in the Dai nationality: Long ago,the mountain torrents broke out, a young man of Dai nationality picked up a large gourd to put it in the river, broke through the stormy river and rescued his sweetheart, his faithful love moved the Buddha, the Buddha fitted the gourd with tubes, the young man blowed a wonderful music, and calmed the mountain torrents, he saved all people and restored his hometown. From then on cucurbit flute was passed down from generation to generation in the Dai people.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Moon Festival: 水(shuǐ)调(diào)歌(gē)头(tóu)
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Free Chinese for kids 

The website http://www.poissonrouge.com/schoolofchinese/ offers free online Mandarin Chinese vocabulary activities for children.  Click the towers  of the castle to go to the different rooms - number (shu zi), toy(wan ju), kitchen (chu fang), music (yin yue) animal (dong wu) etc.  Each room has a number of objects to click. Listen to the pronounciation and read the word in Chinese characters and pinyin on the black board. Some objects will launch cute animations when you click them.

Have fun!


Sunday, August 21, 2011

Let's sing together! 卡(kǎ)加(jiā)布(bù)列(liè)岛(dǎo)


Please click on the thumbnail to enlarge the picture.