CEASELESS EFFORTS: Sun Hongjun keeps doing his lifetime research on Manchu folk music (COURTESY OF SUN HONGGUI)

Driving down the road from Fushun City to Xinbin County in northeastern Liaoning Province, Sun Hongjun recalled his younger days when he carried a recorder from village to village to document Manchu folk music.

"You cannot imagine what the roads were like more than two decades ago—narrow, muddy, steep and frozen in winter after it snowed," said the 70-year-old man.

Sun, a member of the Manchu ethnic group. The group is one of the 55 ethnic minorities in China, apart from the Han people. There are about 10 million ethnic Manchu people in China.

Sun has been studying Manchu folk music, including folk songs and instrumentals, since 1979. The project was considered an important element of the country's Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986-90).

Knowing that the Manchu folk music traditions were passed down orally from generation to generation and with few written documents, Sun visited numerous small villages to find local artists and record their works.

"Such traditional music survived only in the mouths of folk artists, normally old villagers. Once they die, the music dies with them," said Sun, who also sings and writes songs. Pushed by a strong sense of urgency and responsibility, he ventured to almost every corner of northeast China, covering Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, where many ethnic Manchu people live.

Things were never easy for him. In the 1980s, there were still many villages that were connected to the outside world only by poor roads. The only way to get to those isolated villages was to walk. Sun and his assistant had to hike dozens of miles before reaching their destination.

Sun still remembers one year in the 1980s when he and his assistant were traveling to a village during a freezing and snowy traditional Spring Festival holiday, when all the villagers were free from their farm work. It was very hard for the pair to find a place to stay and a restaurant to eat. They finally managed to find shelter with a farmer's family and it took hours for their frozen legs to get warm.

But beyond the practical difficulties of recording the music was the limited awareness among musicians of the importance of their craft.

"People at that time didn't understand the importance of the cultural heritage that they were born into. Many times I paid them to sing songs," Sun said.

Once he had to sell his mother's jewels for money to carry on his research.

"It was a really difficult situation for them, but what they have done is no doubt a great contribution to ethnic minority heritage," said Zhao Bing, head of the folk arts museum in Fushun City and a long-time friend of Sun.

Sun has traveled 120,000 km in the last 30 years to visit 2,846 folk singers. He and his fellow researchers have archived 2.74 million words and 90,000 bars of written music. He has written 64 scholarly papers and nine books as a result of the music research.

He feels lucky to pursue his career and there has been a great deal of help from many. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and others gave his team a 200,000-yuan grant ($29,000) to help them carry out their research. His daughters also have been financing his work since they established a local private school.

Sun is proud that Aisin Giorro Pujie, the younger brother of the last emperor of China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Aisin Giorro Puyi, once visited him and said that he appreciated the researcher's contribution to Manchu folk music. He even crafted a poem for Sun as encouragement.

Though he is now officially retired, Sun has not released himself from his work. He said he would open a private museum to showcase his collections, including his old-fashioned tape recorder and thousands of tapes.

Manchu Ethnic Group

The Manchu are a Tungusic people who originated in northeast

China. During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of some rebel forces, they conquered the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and founded the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). They ruled China until the Revolution of 1911, which ended the feudal dynasty and established a republican government.

The Manchu ethnic group has been largely assimilated into the Han ethnic group. The Manchu language is almost extinct, now spoken only among a few scholars and elderly people in the remote rural areas of northeast China.