In the Hopeful “Fields”

English Version

Dutch sinologist Mr. Frank Kouwenhoven has been conducting fieldwork in China since the 1980s, gaining firsthand experience and deep insight into traditional Chinese music, including music of China's ethnic minorities. The journal CHIME, which he founded in Europe, has a history of over 30 years. As an academic publication focused on music, it has made notable contributions to the dissemination, summarization, and study of Chinese music.

Time has passed, and by the mid-2020s, Mr. Kouwenhoven reunites with old friends — composer Professor Dong Kui, Hollywood music producer Hong Wang, and cultural scholar Zang Na. Together, they reflect on the past and contemplate the present, letting their thoughts soar. With Mr. Kouwenhoven’s decades of research experience as a foundation, this cross-cultural dialogue seeks to jointly promote the development of contemporary Chinese music.

Those Years: Stories from the Field

Dong Kui: Hello, Professor Kouwenhoven! We’ve prepared a few questions for you. Let’s start with your fieldwork in China. You've done quite a few music field studies here. Which one left the deepest impression?

Frank Kouwenhoven: Honestly, every trip was deeply memorable. I’ve never been disappointed. I remember back in 1986, my wife, Antoinet (Shi Niejie in Chinese), was studying at Nanjing University, and I planned to join her in the field. We actually met in the Netherlands. Both of us were music lovers, mainly interested in Western music at the time. Later, she came to China to study Chinese music and lyric-writing techniques.

Back then, when I traveled to China, I knew nothing about China. My biggest concern was that I would arrive at the airport in Beijing, and wouldn’t be able to speak a word of Chinese. I didn’t even know how to ask the way to the restroom. It felt like an adventure.

My wife came to meet me at the airport. She had somehow passed through customs and was waiting for me. We hugged, but then she told me she didn’t have her passport with her! The customs officer was totally shocked, but still let her through. That moment made me feel this was a truly friendly country. I thought, the people were relaxed and welcoming. I felt at home, like I could really find my place here.

The first few years were fantastic. I was totally enraptured by fieldwork! But there were still so many things I didn’t understand. The songs and lyrics we collected, the people we talked to. It was all completely different from the world I knew. I remember one winter in particular. It was in the middle of a very cold period. So, we decided to take a little holiday trip in Yunnan. If you ask me about an experience that totally knocked me over going to the countryside, I’d say it was village life in Yunnan. It’s a warm, beautiful place. The women all dressed up in these incredibly colorful costumes while working in the fields. No one made them do it, it was just how they lived.

By the way, whenever I tried to take photos of them, they’d just run away, shy, but charming. I thought, “Spending my life traveling, meeting people, talking with them ! What could be better?”

It’s been nearly 40 years since then, and my passion hasn’t faded. Around that time, my wife and I also met Hong Wang, and we did some fieldwork together.

Dong Kui: Hong Wang, you’ve worked with Professor Kouwenhoven in the field. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Hong Wang: Sure. At the time, I was working as an editor at an arts research institute in China, helping with transcription and proofreading for the Collection of Chinese Ethnic and Folk Music series. The problem was, our education was in Western music , even though I’d played erhu as a kid, I was made to switch to oboe in college! So I didn’t know much about folk music either.

The first time I heard Tongzi Opera from Nantong, Jiangsu, I had no clue what it was. But after a few months, I really started to fall in love with it. It’s such an authentic expression of Chinese music. Later on, I had the chance to teach overseas students at Nanjing University, which is where I met Antoinet and Frank.

Frank Kouwenhoven: Yes, I’ve collaborated with many scholars over the years, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the chance to meet and do fieldwork together in Suzhou. Wang, do you remember our time there? You were working on the folk music collection project and shared a lot with us.

But actually, I want to share a completely unrelated story from that trip, which was totally crazy. We were by Lake Taihu, with orange trees lining the lake. The water looked almost like the ocean. Antoinet and I wanted to swim. The water was shallow, so we had to keep walking further out. We weren’t wearing swimsuits, so of course, people started gathering to watch us. They thought we were completely nuts!

Hong Wang: They probably just thought you’d fallen into the lake.

Frank Kouwenhoven: In the woods near the lake, you could hear working songs and labor chants everywhere. People loved singing. It’s interesting: many regional song traditions seem to originate from places where agriculture began early. That’s true all over the world. The land we were standing on had such deep musical roots. The kind of songs that capture the essence of Chinese musical culture. I often wonder how these musical forms evolved from such rudimentary origins. The folk performers had this amazing freedom. Their music was expressive and full of emotional power. I couldn’t always understand the lyrics, but their voices were moving. And honestly, these kinds of performances can never be truly captured on a recording, because that was rooted in environment and moment.

Dong Kui: So 1986 was your first field trip to China. What about your last one before Covid?

Frank Kouwenhoven: I did manage a short trip before the pandemic hit, and Hong Wang kindly joined us again. We interviewed artists performing Yangzhou Qingqu and Yangzhou Tanci, and we met the Yangju master Lu Xiaojie. We also visited music scholars in Nanjing.

But then I thought it’s such a pity that my wife and I actually did ten years of fieldwork in Gansu. Later, she passed away. It was a terrible loss. Even in her final days, we were still discussing our field notes. She wanted me to keep going.

After she died, I wasn’t sure I’d ever return to China. She had been my translator,and her Chinese was much better than mine. I picked up a bit, but never became fluent. I thought maybe I could go back to the countryside, but it’s tough, the dialects are incredibly difficult.

Around 2016, I took a Chinese friend with me back to Gansu. We attended a temple fair and tried to do some interviews. But I couldn’t understand what people were saying. They were speaking nonstop, and even my Chinese friend couldn’t follow. The local dialects were just too much.

Still, I’m really glad I took that step. If I get the chance, I’d love to continue.

Those People: A Requiem for the Departed

Dong Kui: It’s wonderful that we can keep this going! So, compared to the 1980s, what changes have you noticed in China during fieldwork? You must have a lot of first-hand experiences.

Frank Kouwenhoven: Compared to forty years ago, today’s China is incredibly dynamic. The pace of development is just unbelievable. But over these past decades, so much traditional culture has faded away, especially music. I once went back to Jiangnan to record folk songs and realized that much of the original material was not available anymore. What people sang to me were either petrified versions or version of songs they had learned in school. But that’s not the same thing! You know, the songs they learned are fixed, structured, kind of like the music you compose. They might have been taught using numbered notation or other systems, but every time they perform them, it’s the same lyrics, same melody.

Whereas no folk singers would ever do that. They never reproduce a song the same way twice, because that music is dynamic, it’s improvising, it’s dynamic.

In Jiangnan, this kind of situation, with only petrified versions of songs being sung, is already quite common. And tourism has a bad impact, too. In places like Gansu, for example, the temple fairs we visited in the '90s still exist, but now they’ve turned into more of a tourist attraction. A lot of people from outside visit, and there are all kinds of stage shows. But those organized shows really have very little to do with the whole original framework in which these sample festivals took place. So yes, I honestly feel that a lot of the truly interesting things are disappearing.

Dong Kui: What you’re describing isn’t just happening in China. It’s a global phenomenon. As we march into a tech age, that process is only going to accelerate. Frank, do you see this kind of evolution pushed by technology as positive or negative? I know it’s a bit of a pop up question, but I find this question fascinating.

Frank Kouwenhoven: You know, I do feel a deep sadness about the massive loss of traditional culture, because it was powerful, it really spoke.

Much of what I see in urban context today feels fake, shallow, and so meaningless. Of course, this isn’t unique to China, we have all that in the west as well. There is no argument about it. Yes, tradition inevitably fades, and culture needs to reinvent, evolve, adapt. That’s a natural process, and of course it’s a good process. But I felt sad at the bottom of my heart for the people who were gone.

I always feel like Antoinet is very much inside me, not in a romantic sense, but just... we have been together for such a long time that I feel I’m constantly communicating with her or maybe talking to the clouds, or to heaven. I know exactly what she would say in certain situations, what she would think. That reverberates in me. So when I say I’ve lost something, it’s not just my wife.

It’s also all those singers we recorded with. Those friendships, those close ties, have vanished along with the people themselves. To be honest, their passing hurts more than the loss of the songs.

I think nowadays, a lot of folk music exists only within conservatories or music departments, under the supervision of professors. But that’s a very narrow space. Culture can’t thrive in a narrow space. You have to open the windows. There has to be exchange. Tradition has to change, it has to renew itself.

And I think there is something that was available in traditional culture. Back then, they did travel, they did share ideas and music in a very natural way. It was a low-key culture and wasn’t affected that much by politics, and it grew more naturally. These days, I focus more on big cities like Shanghai, where you find some really interesting artists and fascinating musicians. But I feel they’re developing under great pressure—it’s hard for them to have the same kind of freedom, natural growth that people had in the countryside.

Dong Kui: My memory of a fieldtrip dates back to when I was at the conservatory as a student. During winter or summer breaks, we did a full trip to collect music. I remember once, we stumbled upon a funeral on a mountaintop in Yunnan. I stayed there all night. There was a group of elderly women singing songs that felt like they were calling to the soul, or maybe sending it to heaven. I don’t remember the melody anymore, but I remember the texture of the sound, and the environment. I still draw inspiration from that memory. It moved me deeply.

Hong Wang: The loss of tradition is truly heartbreaking! While I was in Beijing, a well-known music producer, Lu Zhongqiang, invited me to work on a series of recordings for the Guoyue Revival Project, a collaboration between Beijing Thirteenth Month Culture Communication Company and China Record Group. These were cross-cultural projects involving musicians from different countries, using different musical languages to “talk” to each other, and we created some very innovative works in the new "national style" (新国风).

Through this work, I realized just how important traditional music is. To truly revive it, you have to go into the field. For instance, I went to places like Guizhou and Inner Mongolia to do field recordings. I also had deep conversations with a much younger Mongolian university student named Naqin. Through her, I learned a lot about ethnic minority music I’d never known before. I encouraged her to do fieldwork back in her hometown, Ordos. She told me she had failed her first attempt at the doctoral entrance exam during the pandemic. I said, "Don’t worry! Go home first. Maybe this is heaven giving you time to do fieldwork." And she really did! She went and interviewed a famous folk artist, and ended up getting stuck at his home due to lockdowns. So she stayed and learned in depth. Now she’s back at Minzu University of China doing her PhD, and I’m sure that experience in the field will prove incredibly valuable.

Those Things: Frank Kouwenhoven and Peking Opera

Dong Kui: Your wife is a sinologist, and you both decided to collect folk songs. You seem to have a strong interest in the music of Chinese ethnic minorities. From your perspective, how would you define ethnic minority music in China? How is it different from Han music?

Frank Kouwenhoven: I’m not a big fan of drawing such distinctions, to be honest, it can lead to misconception. I think people living in particular regions of China can be identified through things like clothing, food, and language. But the diversity within the Han majority itself is far beyond what people often assume. If I go to Gansu, people will identify me as a foreigner. But they would not consider someone from Shanghai as one of their own either. They view people from other parts of the country just as much as strangers.

China is highly regionalized. If you dig deeper, I’d say there are easily over a hundred ethnic minorities in China. Sometimes they blend into each other, and sometimes they remain distinct. You have to explore. There’s fantastic culture everywhere.

Dong Kui: In China, people often say that Chinese traditional music is “universal,” that it belongs to the world. Do you think Chinese music is global, or are there distinct musical dialects?

Hong Wang: I’m often confused about the idea of “music.” I mean, do you know what music is? Why don’t you listen to Irish music every day, or Mongolian music? Because you're not familiar with the language. Everyone has their own musical “language” that they prefer.

Frank Kouwenhoven: Exactly. That’s the point. Music is not a universal language. It’s like spoken language: it’s a vast field with many different systems, and you could even call them dialects.

To really understand any type of music, you have to invest in it. You need to learn about it, learn how to enjoy it, or discover what's interesting in it. It’s a long process. Some music grabs you right away, and other music can take years to fully appreciate. It took me many years to learn to like Peking Opera. I used to think it was horrible! I didn’t like those sounds at all.

There was once an arts festival in Amsterdam, and they asked me to invite Chinese artists for a concert. They wanted us to include Peking Opera. I knew nothing about it, so I contacted a colleague, who was a specialist in Chinese opera. I asked him to recommend good groups. We went to China to visit them.

While we were there, we heard everything from Shanghai yangge troupes to Kunqu in Suzhou and Nanjing. I found it all really fascinating. I remember one rehearsal in Shanghai, where the actors were not in costume or makeup, just rehearsing. Somehow that made it possible to concentrate just on on what was musically happening there, and I saw Antoinet sitting opposite me, and she began to cry. I asked, “What’s wrong?” She said, “Nothing’s wrong. The music is so beautiful.” I was really amazed, but it also sort of electrified my eyes and my ears. Gradually, I was really taken in by it.

That rehearsal featured a very famous Peking Opera performer, Shang Changrong. It was many years ago, but he was truly fantastic.

Later, we interviewed many performers and learned a lot about how instruments cooperate with the singers. I became a Peking Opera fan!

When people organize Peking Opera performances in places like Cologne or Amsterdam, they often ask me, “Can you do a 10-minute spoken introduction for the audience before the show?” You know, if I have to do an introduction to Chinese opera, I don’t want to tell people about the role patterns, about face paintings. That’s knowledge from the textbook, but it doesn’t bring the music to life.

If you want to understand music, you have to feel it. So I usually try to sing a little phrase of Peking Opera, or get the audience to sing along. Of course, we don’t do it well with just six words per line, and all those inflections in the melody. It’s very hard. But we try!

Then we bring in the percussion. Westerners are used to learning melodies. They sing slowly and solemnly, like church music. But then we suddenly get the Chinese percussion coming in, like da-da-da-da! This extremely fast rhythm completely throws them off. They’ll think: “How is this even music?” But then they start to wonder that maybe it’s like jazz? Lively, free, flexible, full of elasticity.

Different people have different ways of listening. But when you have that phrase in the Peking Opera coming up, everybody goes mad. They start applauding and there is a real communication with what is what’s happening on stage.

So no, music is a universal language. But understanding it is extremely important.

Dong Kui: In China, a lot of conservatories and organizations are working on collecting and archiving folk songs. It’s kind of a national project.

Hong Wang: Yes, they’re trying to conduct surveys and document the current state of folk and traditional music. But we also need to reflect more deeply, where exactly is the music?

Frank Kouwenhoven: Right. It’s great that we can collect as much as we can. If they’re recorded and carefully archived, that has real value.

But the real question is that, what do we actually learn from this? Have we studied the lyrics deeply? Do we truly understand the meaning behind the songs?

For example, Western anthropologists often claim that Chinese rice culture, unlike other parts of Asia, doesn’t have any gods. But that’s simply not true. Nobody ever cared to investigate those folk songs well enough to find out what is actually happening there. There is ample references to the rice made, and the “rice mother” all kinds of rituals that take. So the truth remains hidden.

We need to investigate: where are these songs performed? Who sings them? These questions are far more important than simply collecting more songs to put in our pockets.

That said, there are many brilliant musicologists in China doing great work. They ask the relevant questions and penetrate into the local repertoire deeply. I’ve learned a lot from them. They’re real experts in their fields.

Hong Wang: Yes, we’ve gathered so much folk music. It shouldn't just sit in the library.

Frank Kouwenhoven: Absolutely. But I also see a lot of improvement. Young students today are more aware. They’re eager to do fieldwork, to go to remote places, and they’re asking sharper questions with more imagination, too.

Those Reflections: “Who Am I?”

Dong Kui: You once told me that after visiting China, you actually realize what your own culture is. Could you say more about that?

Frank Kouwenhoven: I'm surprised you ask that. Because honestly, I think you could answer that question better than I can.

Obviously, I wasn’t a sinologist when I started. I had to go deep into all aspects of Chinese culture. I read obsessively to try to understand China’s historical development. I wanted to make sense of what I was seeing in the countryside, of the fantastic water landscapes in Jiangnan. Where did they come from? When did it all start?

I believed that clever thinking must lie behind all these questions. So I read anthropology, history, sociology, musicology for five or six years. In the end, I really did become a sinologist, a scholar of Chinese music.

And I thought, wow, this is incredible!

I have almost never read a book on Western history. I’ve never even read a book on Dutch history. I realized I needed to address my own culture too. Who am I? I should investigate not just how they think, but how I think.

In a way, I’m deeply grateful to China. It taught me so much about Western culture. It taught me about the meaning of being human, not just as a Westerner, but as a Dutchman.

It’s an ongoing process. I’m spending more time learning Chinese, and also reflecting on my own languages. What’s different between Dutch, English, and Chinese? When I draft an article in Dutch or English that I’ll later publish in Chinese, I realize I’m not just translating. I’m reconstructing my way of thinking.

Yes, it’s a two-way process. That’s what makes my experience in China so meaningful.

All right! Great! Can I ask who is Frank Kouwenhoven now?

Dong Kui: Through studying Chinese music, you gained clarity about yourself. Let me ask you something else. Last time in Amsterdam, we talked about my music. Could you share your thoughts again? It might help me reflect as a composer.

Frank Kouwenhoven: I remember asking you what kind of composer you wanted to be. You said you hoped to become a Chinese composer. But actually, that’s a question of double identity, because you live in the U.S.

I remember that you gave me a CD of your work with a distinctly Chinese flavor. I found them interesting, and there are some really nice pieces there. They might not sound extremely “Chinese” because there are no Chinese instruments involved or Chinese type of singing or Chinese words. But I believe, that we’re first and foremost human beings. Whatever our race, language, or passport, those things matter probably less than who you are as an individual.

Some things don’t need to be worn like a flag. They emerge naturally.

Dong Kui: I sometimes ask myself, “Who am I?” As a composer, I’ve just finished a new piece that’s about to premiere. I’m also one of the speakers. The organizer asked me to talk about myself and my music. Suddenly, I had no idea what to say. Isn’t the music enough?

Frank Kouwenhoven: If you’re panicking or thinking, “Oh no, I don’t know what to say about my own music,” then let the music speak. That means it already has weight. It stands on its own. Talking won’t make it better.

What makes music good? If you talk for five hours and the music is bad, it won’t help. But if it’s good music, you don’t need to say anything. Everyone will just say, “Wow, that was amazing.”

I think that kind of non-conscious attitude towards what you make is the best. Like the folk singers I admire，they’re not trying to construct their songs for you. They’re just singing. Maybe it’s a song that’s been passed down，but they’ll still say, “This is my song.” Because it comes from their voice and their body.

To me, that is the essence of music.

Zang Na: Exactly. Music can also just be itself. It can speak for itself. Just like how Professor Dong reflects on her identity as a composer. In a way, we’re all answering the same question: “Who I am”

Epilogue: On Interviews, Journals, and Other Things

Dong Kui: Today’s interview has been incredibly rewarding. Frank, let me take a moment to tell you about our arts criticism project. So far, we’ve interviewed several overseas artists and researchers. The goal of this project has always been to foster in-depth dialogue around cultural, artistic, and musical topics.

Zang Na: Yes, Professor Dong was actually the first person we interviewed, nine years ago now. We met back then in Silicon Valley, California. The conversation sparked a lot of inspiration. We realized this format allowed for a more open and distinctive kind of research.

Dong Kui: Later, Hong Wang joined us. As you know, he’s a multi-instrumentalist with tons of creative ideas. Each year, we interview artists and scholars, then publish selected discussions as articles in professional journals. It’s a bit like anthropological work, and very interesting and meaningful. And we’re going to keep doing it!

Speaking of publications, you founded the Chime journal on Chinese music studies in Europe over 30 years ago. I know it's an academic journal, but could you tell us more about it?

Frank Kouwenhoven: Chime mainly publishes ethnomusicology articles, but we also occasionally include pieces that lean more toward sociology or anthropology. Our budget is quite limited, so we have to manage it carefully to keep everything running: our annual conferences, the website, and of course the editing and publication of the journal itself.

For many years, our archive was housed in the Leiden Library. But the cost became too high. So we eventually moved our collection—books and recordings—to Heidelberg University, where they had the funding to begin digitizing the materials. That was a very satisfying development.

Zang Na: Digitization makes it so much easier to preserve and access large volumes of research materials. That’s great!

Frank Kouwenhoven: There’s a funny story, actually. Some students from the U.S. wanted to do research on me and my wife. So they went to Heidelberg, and there they found all the recordings, including ones of my wife playing erhu with her teacher. I never even knew those recordings existed! After digitizing, Heidelberg sent them back to us. It was really amusing.

In any case, it means that Heidelberg is now safeguarding this material, and the process will take years to complete. We're talking about a massive amount of material!

And there’s more, we donated all our musical instruments to the Museum for Science and Culture of Macau, in Lisbon. It's a wonderful museum focused on Chinese culture. They held an exhibition later on, and I was completely surprised by the sizeable collection. We really had invested a lot over the years!

Right now, our website, annual conference, journal, and newsletter are still running well. I really hope all of this can continue into the future.

Dong Kui: Do you manage all of this yourself? Or do you have assistants helping you?

Frank Kouwenhoven: I’ve invited PhD students working on Chinese music to help me with various tasks. But I’m aware that I’m already 68 years old. What happens to the journal if someday I’m no longer here?

So we’ve put out a call for people who care about this work, to form a circulating board of directors, each serving for two to three years. That way, the journal can keep going. A lot of people are interested, so I’m hopeful it will continue.

As for fieldwork, I want to emphasize that our journal has always functioned a bit like a news magazine. We do peer-reviewed academic articles, but we also include interviews with composers, and fieldwork reports that are more narrative than scholarly. We simply document what people encounter in the field. In that sense, maybe we’ve been something of a pioneer.

At the same time, we maintain a critical perspective on academic research itself. I believe that’s one of our core values.

Interviewee —

Frank Kouwenhoven: Dutch sinologist and editor-in-chief of Chime, a European journal dedicated to the study of Chinese music.