Jasmine Flower: Jiangsu's most famous folk song

A dance team from Atlanta, US, used the beautiful Jiangsu folk song when they recently performed on the TV show Amazing Chinese. [Photo/qq.com]

The folk song Jasmine Flower (Molihua) was composed during the Qing dynasty (AD 1616-1912) and was one of the first Chinese songs to become popular abroad.

The song's tune entertains three phrases and depicts the purity of love between young people by highlighting the beauty of jasmine flowers.

The Jasmine Flower song can be found throughout China and there are many regional variations. The origin of the song was considered a myth until two Yangzhou scholars, Zhu Xiangsheng and Nie Feng, published an academic article in 2000 detailing the history between the folk song and Yangzhou Ditty - an old-fashioned type of folk music.

In 2003, the song was selected as Yangzhou's official city song and was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritages on May 20, 2006, by the State Council.

The cultural value and popularity of Jasmine Flower makes it a symbol to showcase oriental charms on the world stage. Giacomo Puccini, a world-renowned Italian composer, used the song in his opera Turandot, which tells the story of a beautiful and cold Chinese princess from the Yuan dynasty (AD 1206-1368). The inclusion of the song in the Italian opera’s debut in 1926 helped propel it to global fame.

Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese director, used the song as the background music in a promotional film of Beijing's biding for the 2008 Olympic Games and Shanghai's biding for 2010 World Expo. The song also amazed audiences from all over the world at the opening ceremony of the Youth Olympic in Nanjing in 2014.