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Shan Ren - Thirty Years (Animated MV)
Thirty Years Animation.flv
Award winning animation of the Shanren Song "Thirty Years", an original composition which captures the flavour of southwest China's Yunnan province and the lives of rural people seeking a future in the cities far from their homeland. Thirty Years was made the official song of the Festival Asia in Barcelona 2010.
Y'all seemed to like the Hanggai post, so I thought I'd put up some more Asian folk-rock for you to enjoy. This is an award-winning animated MV by the Shan Ren Band. Shan Ren is based in Beijing but the members hail from mountainous Yunnan province in Southwestern China (their name means "Mountain Men" in Chinese). This province borders Southeast Asia and has a great diversity of minority ethnic groups. Two of the band members are from the Yi and Wa ethnic groups, and the band mixes the folk music traditions of these and other groups with modern rock, playing both traditional acoustic instruments and modern electric instruments.
This particular song is entitled "Thirty Years" and details the bands' struggles to adapt to life in the big city after moving from their hometowns. It's also sort of a general commentary on China's experience with modernity and urbanization in the past few decades.




Here's a translation of the lyrics. It's basically two different verse repeated over and over. But there's also a bit of spoken dialogue in Yunnannese Mandarin.
Wonderful - thanks for sharing and the background about the track is really interesting!
I know this group! Love their stuff!
That breakdown at 2:30 tho!