Traditional Chinese Rap?

A typical Beijing scene: Residents of a traditional Chinese alleyway (hutong) play chess. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

I've only just learned about Zhang Bohong, a young musician and CEO of a Shanghai online game company. He's got this great sound that mixes traditional Chinese folk music with R&B influences.

A native of Beijing, who has lived abroad in Los Angeles, Zhang wrote the song "Beijing Natives" or 北京土著 (Beijing Tu zhu) that describes some basic scenes of the city, like the hollers (holla!) of street vendors, the smell of tea in a traditional courtyard home, Chinese comedy routines and children playing in the street.

Check out his music video here. Someone also took the time to make a cartoon animation to this song, which is hilarious. I particularly liked the irony of what the bird does to one foreign visitor and not another.

Zhang also has a purely R&B version of famed Tang Dynasty Chinese poet Li Bai's poem, Thoughts on a Still Night or 床前明月光 (Chuang Qian Ming Yue Guang). Listen to it here.

Incidentally Li Bai's poem Chuang Qian Ming Yue Guang is probably one of the the first poems that Chinese children learn to memorize, probably because it's so easy. Here's my translation of this famed poem:

Thoughts on a Quiet Night

The moonlight glows in in front of my bed.

Looking like frost on the ground

I raise my head to the clear moon

And my head lowers, as I think of home.