| |
 |
A Tibetan nightingale
|
Su Qiang
BAZHU'S lilting singing voice draws in her audience, and like them I couldn't help staring at the singer, a 19-year-old Tibetan girl from Sichuan Province.
"When working, we wear traditional Tibetan clothing," Bazhu told me with a sweet smile. "The meaning of my name," she later explained, "is a fairy."
"It's the first time I've lived so far from home. I really want to know more about the outside world. At first my dad would not let me leave, but I finally convinced him," Bazhu said. It was hard not to picture the cute girl winning over her parents with stubbornness and tears.
"In my hometown there's old saying which goes 'whoever can speak is a singer, and whoever can walk is a dancer'. I learned singing on horseback when herding yaks," she noted with pride.
Before coming to Shenzhen last October, Bazhu worked as a singer in a Tibetan opera troupe. Now she is working at the Zhaxidele Bar, a Tibetan-style bar, as a waitress and of course as a dancer and singer.
"I like Shenzhen although the pace of life is too fast for me. And I can learn a lot here."
Nowadays, Bazhu is a little bit homesick because the Tibetan lunar new year (February 24) is coming and she has never spent such an important festival away from her family.
"I miss my parents, my sister, the great mountains, the plains and bright stars. Here I can rarely see stars," Bazhu said regretfully.
"The first glass of wine is for Buddha, the second is for parents, and the third is for all the friends…" so sang Bazhu, filling the Zhaxidele Bar with the old toasting song.
|
|
|
|
