WKMS Presents Music Commentary by Chinese Student (cont.)

WKMS-FM presents a commentary on current Chinese music listening by Murray State University master’s student Lichao Xing during its international music program, "Ports of Call," Sunday, December 10, at 7 p.m. Xing presents samples of pop, folk and classical music.

Lichao Xing comes to Murray by way of Beijing. He grew up near the city of Chifeng in Inner Mongolia in the northeast of China where he completed his preliminary and secondary education. His home village is in a rural area where most people are farmers. Xing says that they are farmers, "but not in the sense you Americans may perceive it, since the so-called "farmers" there don't own a large area of farmland, but are only allocated lands scattered around the village." The neatly groomed young man says that most people there have never been out of Inner Mongolia and few have ever met any foreigners.

Mr. Xing acknowledges that it was difficult for his parents to let him leave for advancing his studies. He explains that, "Life is exceedingly hard there, so most parents have realized the fact that education is the shortcut to success for their children and the following generation, so most parents nowadays will do whatever they can to send their children to college." He keeps in touch with his folks through phone calls once or twice a week, and admits that he will not see them again until he finishes his studies stateside.

Xing met Professor Marjie Bloy at Beijing Language and Culture University during his second year when Bloy was his oral English teacher. Before that, it was beyond "his wildest dreams to think of studying abroad." He says that from the start, she was trying to instill confidence in him. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree, majoring in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. With graduation a reality, Dr. Bloy gave Xing an equal chance of being able to study abroad by paying the fees for him to take the required TOEFL and GRE tests. After the tests, Dr. Bloy worked through her American contact Ed Shinners of Murray. Xing maintains frequent communications with Dr. Bloy, whom he considers both his professor and a member of his family. Xing met Mr. Shinners online about a year before he came to Murray State to study. Bloy and Shinners lobbied on Xing’s behalf with Chinese and American school officials. Mr. Shinners convinced the Murray Rotary Club, individual Rotarians and a number of independent persons to invest in this very promising student.

Mr. Xing is enrolled in the graduate program of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Murray State where he plans to finish his degree within a year and a half. He completes his graduate assistantship work in the morning on weekdays and has classes in the afternoon. He hopes to return to China after his graduate study and find a job in broadcasting or in the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

To get experience in radio this semester, Mr. Xing volunteered to present a section on Chinese music for the international music hour on WKMS-FM, "Ports of Call" 7 p.m. Sundays. He learned how to use the Adobe Audition digital editing software to combine voice tracks and music selections. He worked to slow down his very proficient English, so that it could be better understood in the context of the music. During this brief "module" representing what people are currently listening to in China for Ports of Call on Sunday, December 10, Xing features the Western influenced hit song "Nocturne" by popular artist Jielun Zhou, who is a favorite of student age listeners. Xing presents the Tibetan-born mainland China singer Hong Han with the song "Road to Heaven" dedicated to the completion of the railroad across Tibet this past July. After that, Xing moves to Chinese folk music with the song "Jasmine Flowers’ which originated in the Jiangzhe area in Southern China. He rounds out his module with the song "Liangzhu" or "Butterfly Lovers," the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet.

For more information about WKMS, see wkms.org. Weekly playlists for music presented on "Ports of Call" and other programs are available at the website.