Hua’er vocalist Sa Lina performs at the 16th Laoye Mountains Hua’er Festival in Qinghai Province in 2025.
Hua’er, literally meaning “flower,” is a genre of folk songs created and sung by the Han, Hui, Tibetan, Dongxiang, Mongolian, and other ethnic groups in Gansu and Qinghai provinces as well as Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China. The tradition took shape during the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). It is named hua’er because females are often likened to flowers in the lyrics.
People love singing hua’er songs when working in the fields, herding, or traveling. Hua’er singers also get together each year at selected times and places for a vocal contest known as Hua’er Festivals. These events serve as important social occasions for single men and women to exchange and create emotional bonding.
Shanhua’er (mountain flower) is a subgenre of hua’er, and inherits certain features of ancient mountain songs from the Longshan Mountain region. Early examples can be traced back to the pieces recorded in two classic poetry anthologies: the Book of Songs — the earliest existing collection of Chinese poetry and the Yuefu Poetry from around the third to sixth centuries.
This folk art is usually performed as self-entertaining short songs with improvised lyrics, whose melodious tunes are expressed through a high, clear voice — exuding a unique rural cultural identity.
In 2006, Ningxia hua’er was included in the first list of China’s national intangible cultural heritage items, and in 2009, it was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Today, Ningxia has taken a number of measures to keep this singing tradition alive in the modern era: cultivating professional hua’er singers; documenting the lyrics and tunes of the songs in writing, audio, or video formats; establishing 18 hua’er-themed educational and protection bases; organizing hua’er festivals and related cultural events; and promoting this traditional art at schools and public places, as well as through various media platforms.
