A corner for opera lovers.

A riverside harmonica band in Beijing.

The accordion with gusto. CFP

In Beijing’s Shijingshan Park, music teachers help those coming for morning exercise organize into several small choruses. During the Beijing Olympic Games, Olympic songs were popular in the park. CFP

A self-organized band accompanies a park chorus in a Beijing park.

Playing the sax, accompanying the chorus.

This senior voluntarily teaches songs at a park.

Chorus members at a Beijing park circle around their conductor and sing on the Sunday morning.

Professor Gao, now retired, typically rises early on Sunday. For her, weekends are days full of happy anticipation. Her son, now teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, calls to chat, and later in the morning she will go to Jingshan Park and sing.

Located to the north of the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park is one of the first places in Beijing where ordinary citizens gathered for chorus. Professor Gao has joined in for many years, and she and some 20 other members will often begin the “Sunday concert” with their favorite song, I Love You, China, with two accordions as musical accompaniment.

The passionate melody brings her back to her youth. Gao loved to sing when she was a little girl. She was a member of the student chorus when she was in university in the 1950s, and rehearsals and performing activities were a different kind of fun and game for the physics major.

After retirement, Gao began to sing in the park every Sunday. This brought her much fun and joy, and it is good for her health. Gao says that she is deeply moved by the beautiful melody and lyrics when she is singing, and her mind flies back to the time when she was young, vigorous and energetic. And this makes her feel happy. When singing, one has to raise, mobilize, inhale and exhale breaths, and these movements are actually exercise, increasing the vital capacity of the human lungs, she adds.

If singing highlights Professor Gao’s retirement life, it serves as a spiritual pillar to Ge, a victim of traffic accident.

Ge was struck by a fast moving Jeep Cherokee during a commute seven years ago, and the accident paralyzed his legs and bound his life to a wheelchair. Even worse, his head and the nerves of his face were also affected. He had to retire at the age of 45. The accident changed his life and the tragedy inflicted enormous psychological pressure. He remained silent until one day his wife rolled him into grounds of the Temple of Heaven.

Every morning in the park many people do various exercises under century-old cypresses. Some wave red silk ribbons, some practice tai chi boxing, others do aerobics or qigong. Also many gather there singing old songs and traditional opera.

The morning when Ge and his wife entered the park, they saw a large group of seniors and middle aged people singing by a wood. The conductor standing in the center was a man in his fifties. The songs they were singing were those that had accompanied them from youth to maturity.

Since that day, Ge and his wife became members of the chorus. Six years have passed, and the couple have never been absent once for the scheduled chorus, no matter if it was rainy, windy, bitterly cold or blistering hot. Now the couple, who have walked out the small space of home and joined the happy “big family” in the park, no longer feel isolated.

People in this big family take good care of them. Ge’s wheelchair is placed in the middle, so he can clearly see the gestures of the conductor. Though he still may not be exact in tune, and at times can’t follow the tempo, he continues to improve. “Before I had difficulty talking,” Ge says. “And I was irritated about it. Now I can speak more clearly. I come here everyday for singing and I feel happy.”

Singing seems to have helped open a hopeful window for people like Ge, and a family that was once plunged into difficulty by an accident again has some joy.

Some voluntary choruses have their own lyric writers and composers. Han is a retired editor. Discovering that most of the songs sung in parks were old, popular in the 1950s to 1980s, he began to compose new songs.

In 2005, he wrote and composed an Olympic song and taught it at Jingshan Park. The lyrics called out the Chinese people’s dream for the Games, and the tune was well received among park singers.

In the past three years, Han has written and composed more than 100 songs for park choruses. What he has done rewards him with a new life experience and allows him to understand that seniors can still play their roles for the progress of society after they retire. He tells others that he just wants to add more songs to the group’s repertoire.

In recent years, a similar scene is more commonly seen in many medium and large cities throughout the nation on weekends. Many people gather at parks for chorus. The songs they sing range from songs of the former Soviet Union, folk songs, and songs written and composed after the reform and opening up.

These choruses are loosely organized on the basis of volunteerism. The size of the group and the singing level of each group differs. Larger choruses may have several hundred or even more than 1,000 members, while the smaller may only have 20, or even less than 10 members. Larger choruses, often coming into being for a longer time, usually have an amateur band consisting of seniors and middle aged as members. Some of the smaller choruses have one or two accordions, and some have no musical accompaniment. Having or not having musical accompaniment matters little to singers who just come to sing to their hearts’ content. The high-level choruses are able to sing at several voice parts, and the way they can represent famous Chinese and foreign songs are rather professional.

The very first volunteer chorus in Beijing came into being in Jingshan Park in 1992. Now there are more than a dozen such groups in the city. Since there are no special qualifications for admission, people who love to sing can join in. In addition to seniors, there are some young people and migrant workers. Those with a good sense of music may voluntarily assume the job of a conductor; and those who play musical instruments can join with their own instruments as an accompanist.

People gather at parks to sing for their love of songs and for social exchange. For whatever reason, music remains a good medicine for heart and mind. It serves as a bond between people. People gather and become friends because of their common love for music. And their collaboration can also help form a more simple, peaceful and harmonious daily existence. This is the reason why so many come to sing.