“Thick brick walls rise high and tall, Dapengsuo City stands firm and strong…” Recently, Ballad of Dapeng, an innovative masterpiece derived from “Dapeng Folk Songs”—a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage (ICH) carefully crafted by the Dapeng Sub-district Office—officially entered 4 primary schools in its jurisdiction for inheritance teaching. With their tender yet full-bodied singing, the children wove the grandeur of “waves surging around the nine dragons” and the lofty aspiration of “youngsters holding beacons aloft” into the melody. This breathed vivid new life into the “sound fossil” bearing over 600 years of history, marking a solid step forward in the Dapeng Sub-district Office’s practice of deeply integrating ICH protection with campus education.
Rooted in the “Dapeng Military Dialect”, Dapeng Folk Songs are a unique genre of folk music born from the integration of northern and southern dialects, fishing songs and Hakka folk tunes by the garrison troops of Dapengsuo City during the Ming and Qing dynasties. They also serve as a “living document” recording the history of frontier defense and the civilization of marine farming. Ballad of Dapeng, launched this time, is the core achievement of the creative transformation of this ICH project. With lyrics written by Huang Zhiwen and Lin Yuzhi, composed by He Wenguang, arranged by Song Lei and performed by the China National Radio Children’s Choir, the work is deeply embedded in the original melody of Dapeng Folk Songs. It not only fully preserves the distinctive features of the “Dapeng Military Dialect”—turning the modern phrase “stands firm” into the archaic “qide lao” and “many stories” into the local expression “many guzai (tales)”—to pass down the spiritual core of “Dapengsuo City Culture” from generation to generation, but also innovatively incorporates modern guitar arrangement and children’s vocal performance, breaking the communication limitations of traditional folk songs.
The lyrics depict the region and its history through scenes like “thick brick walls”, and condense heroic spirit with dynamic images such as “burning in the heart”. Furthermore, from the children’s perspective of “youngsters holding beacons aloft”, it transforms the feelings of family and country into imitable concrete actions, making the “passing of the torch” take root in joy.
The Dapeng Sub-district Office has organized on-site teaching activities in 4 schools including Shenzhen Middle School Dapeng Campus and Dapeng Central Primary School. The children learned to sing the song line by line following the teachers, sometimes imitating the action of “holding beacons aloft” and sometimes reciting lines in the “Dapeng Military Dialect”, with their clear voices echoing across the campuses. Through hands-on experience, they not only felt the unique charm of ICH art, but also initially touched upon the historical context and heroic spirit of their hometown through the imagery in the lyrics. “The song turns abstract feelings of family and country into something tangible. When the children sing ‘Defend our rivers and mountains to be heroes’, pride fills their eyes,” sighed a teacher who participated in the teaching.
It is reported that Ballad of Dapeng is planned to be included in the music curriculum of primary schools under the Dapeng Sub-district Office as a compulsory piece, building a living inheritance model of “gene preservation and innovation + campus teaching and learning”. This model promotes the transformation of ICH protection from static recording to dynamic inheritance, allowing Dapeng Folk Songs, which carry the wisdom of immigration history and marine farming civilization, to regain vitality among young people.
A relevant person in charge of the Dapeng Sub-district Office stated that this activity takes education as the carrier, allowing the ICH project, which contains historical codes and creative ingenuity, to return to contemporary life, and become a vivid footnote to the symbiotic and prosperous development of Dapeng’s local culture and the cultural ecology of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). When children’s voices meet the folk songs of the “military dialect”, the seeds of cultural inheritance have been sown on campus, enabling teenagers in the new era to understand the history of their hometown through singing, cultivate their feelings of family and country, and grow into guardians and inheritors of local culture.
