Healing in a major key

In mid-April, pianist Lang Lang sat at an electronic keyboard inside a classroom at Dahejia Primary School, a small rural school tucked beneath the snowcapped ridges of the Qilian Mountains.

Outside, the Yellow River flowed quietly across the Loess Plateau. Harsh sunlight streamed through the classroom windows. Inside, Lang’s fingers drifted over the keys, the notes flowing through the room like water finding its course.

The children listening might not fully realize that the man before them was one of China’s most internationally celebrated musicians. Many had never attended a live piano performance. They just knew that the music sounded beautiful, and that the keyboard in their classroom could produce sounds they had never imagined.

“When class ended, they didn’t want to leave,” says Zhang Zhengyun, the school’s music teacher, who taught the lesson alongside Lang. He is one of the few full-time music instructors in the entire county.

Dahejia Primary School is located in Jishishan county, Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture in western Gansu province — an autonomous county where ethnic groups account for roughly two-thirds of the population. Long affected by poverty, the county was removed from China’s national poverty list in 2020.