One day we realized that we would never know a whole folk song anymore, even if we once knew it very well. Sometimes I am on the way of searching for folk songs. I hate the saying, “collecting of folk songs”. Furthermore I want to see the original life of people, to see the attitudes of people who sing in their life and how they sing with their body language, not by writting down their tune in stave or Arabic numerals. In fact, we don’t need to search for our artistic dreams in the far off place. In many places like our homeland, our elders live their lives poorly but perversely: the desolate yellow sands and the mud houses, the yellow village without any color of green, the solid ice which frosts by the side of the withered grass in winter, and the people who live together their whole lives. They know other families in the village very well. Here my parents, my uncles and aunts who suffer from poverty have constructed factories and have produced fertilizer. They quarreled and cried because they can’t support their families on low incomes despite all their hard work. Yet at the same time, these people just feel happy because some small but good changes are occurring in their lives. We and the youth behind us who lived in these same poor lands, are notionate too. However, our lives are changing slowly along with the busy town. When the sun rises up, in all kinds of street parks people can hear the noisy sounds of cars and the disco music which the old people are dancing to. On the street, you can see xiali taxies, tractors, motorbikes. When the nights come, the cocottes and the toilsome female workers pass each other by in the streets. Not far from the street, there are fields covered with loads of fertilizer. Everywhere is the same. All things are dreamlike yet real; it’s our life. We always say that we should find the originals, how could we? We are losing our blood, because we want to follow the steps of the world and always look forward. We dress up in the same brand suits. Even the sound of our tweedles will be judged by a classical standard so people can classify them. Day by day the voices and the hearts of the people have changed under these conditions, but in the streets there still exists different dialects, Shanxi noodle restaurants, people from Ningxia, Gansu counter-jumpers, Xinjiang mutton, and monks from Henna. In the northwest, in many extravagantly decorated bars, people drink and do finger guessing-games into the late night. These places are like battlefields, people are there with their northwest dialects. This is our situation, we ourselves created. The New century is coming, new folk songs are coming. Will the people who sang in the old way ever be able to find their own language today? Can we? Can we have our own tradition? Can we sing the song which belongs to the common people? Can we just sing in our life? Can we put up our first hand pain and joy in our songs? Can we find our way back to our blood? Can we sing just by our bodies? Our expression seems clumsy, but we hope the voice can be heard by the people. It’s about the ground which disappeared in the cause of constructing roads and high buildings. It’s about the common people who look like hilding ants busy with life. It’s about the cries and laughter of our blood. It’s about messages from our distorted homeland. It’s about the details of our life and more, but it isn’t all. Anyhow, I hope I can sing happily in my life!