WHEN JIANG ZEMIN heard Xuan Ke's orchestra for the first time in 1999, China's strongman was so enthusiastic that he broke with protocol, took to the stage and picked up a flute. He played traditional favourites, tunes from the old days, one after the other. Stunned by this unexpected performance, the orchestra stopped playing and listened. It was a memorable event for Xuan, who once spent 21 years in a mainland labour camp. His decades-long struggle to preserve traditional Naxi music - ethnic tunes from south-west Yunnan - was finally being lauded by those at the top.
Today, Xuan is a maestro, musician and master of ceremonies. 'Welcome! Are you listening to my orchestra tonight?' his voice booms through the concert hall in Lijiang. Every evening, his troupe fills a wooden hall built in the traditional Naxi style, and Xuan himself swaps his jeans for a Chinese qigai. Just two weeks ago, he brought his show to Hong Kong's Academy for the Performing Arts. It was Xuan's second Hong Kong visit; the first being in 1997 during the last weeks of British rule.
The energetic 74-year-old is half Naxi himself. The ethnic-musicologist inherited an interest in foreign languages from his Naxi father, a merchant who was an interpreter for the US Army during World War II. From his Tibetan mother, a singer, he inherited his high cheekbones, shock of unruly hair and passion for music.
Linked to Tibetans, the Naxis are an ethnic group of 300,000 people in Yunnan and Sichuan. The biggest Naxi settlement is around Lijiang, a town protected by Unesco as a cultural heritage site. Naxis are known for their matrilineal culture and their unique pictographic script which is still used today. They practise the Dongba religion, which blends Lamaist Buddhism and Taoism, with some influences from Islam.
One of Xuan's virtues is his outspokenness; but he has paid dearly for it. When he was 28, Xuan was already making a name at the prestigious Central Symphonic Orchestra in Beijing. But when Mao Zedong invited intellectuals to voice their thoughts freely as part of the now-infamous 100 Flowers Movement in 1957, Xuan joined the chorus who criticised the system. Like hundreds of thousands of them, Xuan found himself branded a rightist and was sent to a labour camp, where he spent 21 years.
Music helped keep him sane while behind bars. Deprived of the right to play any music, he used to silently remember the melodies his mother sang, and the classical works he learnt in the conservatory. 'I could spend hours looking quiet; but in my mind, I had a full orchestra,' he says. He also tried to compose. 'Often, the ditties I made up were total nonsense but they kept me going.' By the time he was released, Dr Xuan was 49. 'At that time, I hated big cities because they had been the source of my troubles. All I wanted was to return to the simple life of my hometown.'
He found the cultural scene in China had been devastated. In Lijiang, Mao's Red Guards were trying to eliminate all Naxi customs, which were regarded as 'feudalistic thinking'.