Feixian brings Yimeng Spirit program to Qilu University of Technology

A Yimeng Spirit storytelling program from Feixian county, Linyi, East China's Shandong province, was staged at Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) on Oct 20, combining songs, speeches, role-play and kuaiban rhythmic narrative for an audience of students and faculty.

The program opened with "the Yimeng Mountain Minor", a folk melody written in Feixian more than 80 years ago, performed by Song Shoulian, a third-generation singer of the song.

Speakers from the county's publicity department and Party education center recounted Feixian's revolutionary history and told the story of Xin Rui, a writer born in Jinan who died in the Yimeng Mountains during the war.

Zhao Yuqing, a village Party secretary assistant in Dongmeng township who joined the village after being selected from the provincial people's congress, described her work at the grassroots level, while Ding Xiao of New Era Pharmaceutical spoke about Zhao Zhiquan, a nationally recognized model worker who led a nearly bankrupt factory to become an industry leader while working through serious illness.

Other segments included a kuaiban performance on the Yimeng Red Sisterhood, a dialogue with the Tang dynasty calligrapher Yan Zhenqing exploring the cultural roots of the Yimeng Spirit, and an account by Chen Xiaoyan, a native of Xinjiang, on the parallels between the corps spirit of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and the Yimeng Spirit.

Zhao Tiange, a student at the university, said she had only known the Yimeng Spirit from textbooks, and that seeing the program live gave her a deeper understanding.

The Yimeng Spirit refers to the tradition of hard work, self-improvement, selflessness and dedication formed in the Yimeng Mountain area, and is defined by close ties between the Party, the military and the people.

Editor：韩蒙蒙