Recently, the large-scale cultural program Everlasting Classics was released by China Central Television and it received great comments from the audiences. The songs in the program swept across various social media and topped the list on multiple music platforms. The Minister of Education, CHEN Baosheng hoped that the classics will be more involved in the campuses, so that young people can better inherit the outstanding Chinese traditional culture. WANG Liguang, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and President of China Conservatory of Music, proposed at the two sessions that the education concept of Everlasting Classics will be popularize to the grassroots and all people. 17 CPPCC Members, such as ZHENG Xiaolong, YAN Meijuan, GONG Hanlin, QI Jianbo also strongly supported it. In addition, JIA Pingwa, deputy chairman of the National People’s Congress and vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, and LIU Guanren, deputy chairman of the National People’s Congress and vice chairman of the Shaanxi Provincial Political Consultative Conference, also praised the program.

In Everlasting Classics program, the content such as Ding Fengbo (The Northern Song Dynasty litterateur, SU Shi’s work), ) Dark Prunus Mume (The Yuan Dynasty painter, WANG Mian’s work) and Mosses (The Qing Dynasty poet, YUAN Mei’s work) and other classics were reinterpreted with modern music. It caught a lot of Chinese viewers and recently it’s popularity appears in Taiwan media and the American newspaper network, leading to an upsurge of “singing ancient poems. The broadcast of the program has also become a hot topic of discussion in the two sessions.

CHEN Baosheng, the Minister of Education, talked about the word “chanting” when he talked about Classics. In ancient China, “chanting” was a combination of reading and singing. “Chanting” was a pun, as a form of expression, as well as an expectation that the classics can always be circulated. After watching the program, CHEN Baosheng praised the program as a brand created by CCTV. The Ministry of Education can provide some support for the Everlasting Classic and also participate in the contribution of Chen’s own power. He is particularly pleased with the hope that many poems in the program can enter the campus and become part of the cheering dance of the big class, and finally become the work that the students can say and sing casually.

For the recent popular Everlasting Classics, the National People’s Congress representatives JIA Pingwa and LIU Kuanren believed that the combination of excellent traditional Chinese culture and the positive expression which acceptable from the young people regarding to this issue is both a trend, as well as a task that must be promoted.

As an artistic literary worker, WANG Liguang has been thinking about how to improve public awareness and appreciation of excellent traditional Chinese culture through the mass media. He said that culture and art are by no means superficial “singing and playing instruments” but they purify the soul and shape the ordinary. Personality is an important means. Therefore, he proposed in particular the proposal to popularize the aesthetic education in the form of the Everlasting Classics to grassroots and all citizens. This proposal also received joint support from 17 CPPCC members.

The core of the proposal is that aesthetic education should respond more to the requirements of the times and be integrated with grassroots cultural activities. WANG Liguang pointed out: “There are about 2,864 counties in the country, and each county has at least 10 to 20 townships. There are few of hosts and managers of these cultural platforms like Mr. Liang Jun who picks up his youth by himself. Many of them work quietly through days and nights in order to enable educators on these platforms to pass through our higher education and shape thousands of Liang Jun, so that our communication can be strung together from top to bottom in a flash to form a very smooth cultural communication channel”.

Earlier, in an interview with a reporter from Deep Cultures, WANG Liguang said: “I learned that we have more than 320,000 primary schools in China, so my proposal for the CPPCC also hoped that we have some outstanding songs in Everlasting Classics can be promoted to the primary and secondary schools, allowing our children to have their own songs, and the classics of Chinese culture to be imprinted in their hearts, which is a very good means to promote Chinese culture, and will make the children of generation after generation have been able to build a culture of self-confidence since childhood.

As a member of the joint proposal, CPPCC National Committee Member XI Meijuan said that “the classic works can be played on the artistic classes of the elementary and secondary schools and also during breaks between classes so that children could be influenced unconsciously from childhood”. Another CPPCC National Committee Member GONG Hanlin, also stated, “We are not pushing hard to sell anything to the children. We just try to help them obtain the edification of Chinese ancient poetry when accepting in an artistic form, which can make the best of both worlds.

Everlasting Classics has been used as a large-scale cultural program launched by CCTV. Soon after the program was given, it scored a high score of 9.4 on Douban. The average ratings of 34 cities in the first four periods were 1.42% in 34 cities, all of which hit record highs in cultural programs. In just one night, a 300-year-old poem Moss was remembered by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Only 3 days, the readings regarding Mosses on WeChat exceeded more than 30 million copies, and the related video broadcasts exceeded 50 million, becoming the hottest topic in the Moments during the Spring Festival. There were nearly 200 million video views of the four issues of the program, and there were nearly 100 articles in 10W+ articles. 17 songs related to the program conquered QQ music charts. The popularity of the program continues to increase, which let more people to feel the cultural new weather of “poetry chanting the classics is popular in China”!