Across a stone bridge in Lijiang's old town in Yunnan province, next to part of an old stone wall that looks as if it will collapse at any moment, stands a quaint little cafe filled with Tibetan antiques. It is called Dadawa Cafe. Sometimes, if one is lucky, Dadawa herself may be there, sipping green tea and resting between sojourns in southwestern China.
One of China's best-known Tibetan new-age pop singers, Dadawa is Han Chinese whose real name is Zhu Zheqin, and she hails from cosmopolitan Guangzhou. Yet, she has become a symbol of Tibetan culture and fusion music. Just how does a city girl from Guangzhou become a Tibetan icon and a spokeswoman for protecting cultural ethnicity and diversity?
'I had a heavy feeling for some time when I lived in the city,' she said. 'We [people] stopped believing. So I started to travel. I found a totally different experience when I was in southwestern China, because of the culture, the atmosphere, the way people live. It really touched my heart.'
Dadawa's journey brought her to Sichuan province, where she met a composer who helped her collect Tibetan folk songs. Fusion composition resulted in Yellow Children, which became one of her biggest hits, followed by Sister Drum. When not composing, singing and recording, Dadawa travels through western China, seeking inspiration and sharing her philosophy.
She believes in ethnic diversity. 'The ideal world for each person is different. You have your own mind, your ideas, your country. For everyone, this is different.' She does not buy into the globalising melting-pot culture: '[We should] refuse to make all things the same.
'I think the problem is not globalisation, it is that we have a limited knowledge of how humanity should develop.' Her ideas should, perhaps, be heeded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, whose development models sometimes do more harm than good.
