Anthem of courage

Usually, it takes two weeks for the students to memorize a new piece, but for the opening ceremony performance, due to the limited time for preparation, the teachers spent two days learning the score, and the students took just three days to memorize their individual parts.

The official music score, after a composer arranged the original anthem for the ensemble, was distributed to the musicians in mid-January, and members of the ensemble immediately started intensive training instead of going home for the winter vacation.

The youngest of the ensemble, among now more than 70 student members, is 10-year-old Wu Haoyu, who plays the bass drum. His method of practicing drumming is by setting up a metronome with the correct speed, and committing the tempo to memory.

"I'm also learning to play the piano, but unlike practicing piano where I'm alone, playing the bass drum is like being the assistant conductor in the ensemble. I have to concentrate on the rhythm. After the training, I felt that my rhythm became much steadier," Haoyu says.

Haoyu is among the few day students at the school, so this experience was his first time leaving home for such a long time. Before leaving for Beijing, his parents had him cramming to master basic skills to take care of himself, such as washing clothes.

Though he missed his parents terribly, the help and care given by older performers and teachers warmed his heart, Haoyu says.

According to Zhou, the ensemble is a team of solidarity. On campus, it's common to see a student with impaired vision walking alongside two or three students that lack it totally. And at the rehearsals in Beijing, the ensemble usually walked in neat formation, with members placing their hands on the shoulders of those in front of them.

Another member Cai Xiaoxue, a 17-year-old clarinet player, also says that members with low vision often helped her and other sightless students.

For her, the biggest difficulty of the opening ceremony performance came from the outdoor environment, something which she was not accustomed to, as the group mostly perform in auditoriums.

"The open-air stadium is so big and spacious. The notes we played didn't even get reflected back, so sometimes we had trouble hearing both our own instrument and the music played by our fellow performers," Cai says.

The low temperature was also an issue, as Beijing nights, at the time, often fell to below zero. To get used to the environment, the teachers took the students to rehearse outdoors every day, beginning with 10 minutes and gradually extending it to 30-minute sessions.