Minority Pumi burst into song and dance to breathe life into culture

They herd sheep and toil on farmland by day, often sporting comfortable, cheaply made western-style clothes. But at night, they don ethnic costumes and hustle around their villages, urging neighbours to join in with traditional song and dance.

This group of Pumi ethnic minority youngsters has put together a bustling night scene that has thrived over the past few years. They aspire to revive and pass on a traditional culture that has been much neglected in recent decades as they, and the rest of the mainland, rush headlong into economic development.

Scattered across various counties, mainly in the mountainous region of Yunnan , but also in Tibet and Sichuan province , the Pumis are one of the smallest of the mainland's 56 ethnic minority groups, with a population of just 30,000.

The musical initiative is the brainchild of Chen Zhe, a lyricist who made a name for himself in the 1980s writing pop songs including The Red in My Blood is the Colour of the Flag (Xue Ran De Feng Cai). He launched the programme in 2004, more than a decade after setting up the Folk Vogue Project in 1992 to preserve Chinese national and ethnic culture by recording ethnic music in far-flung regions.

'At first, I didn't do anything other than record their music because I thought we should let this community evolve its own course,' he said.

'But then I felt something was wrong as we, the outsiders, were mesmerised by their culture, but these people didn't really appreciate their own cultural wealth. They were puzzled at why I was so into their music. I thought I should do something.'