Hua'er (Qinghai Flower Song Fairs)

Hua'er is a folk song shared and shaped by the Han, Hui, Tibetan, Dongxiang, Bonan, Salar, Tu, Yugur and Mongolian peoples of Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia in the northwest, named for its lyrics that liken women to flowers and sung in Chinese with a soaring, drawn-out melody. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 and UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Hua'er is sorted by tune family called "ling," and the Qinghai region alone keeps more than two hundred and fifty of them; the singing is free and impassioned, often improvised as call-and-response in the hills, at temple fairs and flower-song gatherings. From the eighth day of the fourth lunar month to the sixth day of the sixth, flower-song fairs succeed one another across Qinghai at Qilisi, Danma, Qutan Temple and Laoyeshan, drawing singers of every people to meet and match verses—a great folk event.

Hua'er is a treasure of folk music jointly created and shared by the peoples of the northwest, carrying their feeling, faith and way of gathering, and holds irreplaceable value for the study of ethnic relations, oral literature and musical tradition in China's northwest.