“Shanghai is my hometown, generation after generation...” with the Pipa sound and soft language, Comedian Gu Zhujun, Pingtan actor Lu Jinhua, folk singers Yuan Jinfeng and Zhai Yehua debutedon the stage and performed the “Shanghai ballad” in different styles.

This representative work of the composer Hou Xiaosheng shows the Shanghai in different times, with the music inspired by the metropolis infested with foreign adventurers, the “fried dough sticks”, the “suits and cheongsam” to the “Oriental Pearl TV Tower”. With an array of elements including folk songs, Shanghai dialect, saxophone, peddler tune, English accompaniment, the performance is characterized by a high compatibility of Chinese and Western elements and a combination of elegance and popularity.

On December 19, the “Hou Xiaosheng's Concert”was staged in Yihong Theater of the Wisdom Bay Creative Industry Park in Baoshan District.Hou Xiaosheng has been committed to the creation and excavation of Shanghai folk songs, and he has written songs including "Shanghai Ballad", "Beautiful Wreath" and "Dress up the Blue Earth",  as well as the Tiange Musical "Jiao Li Family", the musical sitcom "Shanghai Voice - Wharf Haozi", and the Pudong storytelling sitcom "Song of Married Girl".

When it comes to folk songs, people always think of Xintianyou in Northern Shaanxi, "Liu Sanjie" in Guangxi, and "Ashima" in Yunnan. Are there any folk songs in Shanghai? According to Hou Xiaosheng, Jiangnan's cultural region, local conditions and customs endow Shanghai folk songs with a clear, graceful, delicate and plain style. In order to inherit and promote Shanghai folk songs, Hou Xiaosheng has been collecting and innovating the original folk songs for many years.

Performers of Beicai Town Cultural Center in Pudong New Area, Shanghai performed Hou Xiaosheng's "Sancui Bridge", quoted from the Pudong storytelling sitcom "Song of Married Girl".The musical elements are always connected with storytelling and cymbals. In addition, gorgeous singing and accompaniment, rich stories and characters, big-head baby dance and acrobatics impressed the audiences, and they are impressed by these new ways of singing.

Hou Xiaosheng's field-song musical "Jiao Li Family" was once performed in the 12th Shanghai International Art Festival in China, which shows the local conditions and customs of Qingpu. The excerpt of "Boat Song" leads to a beautiful duet with the theme of Shanghai nursery rhyme "Shake to the grandma bridge". There are also rhymes of mountain songs from Qingpu, Jinshan and Songjiang in the selected passages of the "Symphony of Field Song".

The students from Shanghai Ivy League School and British teacher Dominic Motta took part in the performance "December", an excerpt from farming series works written by Hou Xiaosheng, which shows a folk painting of warm winter for farmers in the south of the Yangtze River. Dominic played guitar in a suit, singing the field song with a different style.

The children from Shanghai Lark Art Troupe and Baoshan District Private Yangdong Primary School brought the ballad medley "Childhood Memories", including the children's solo "Shanghai’s Lane", the scene expression "Little Magnolia", the children's red song "Shikumen" and the "Grandfather's Original Aspiration, My Dream" to show the unique taste of Shanghai childhood.

Dock chant, a representative folk song that highlights industrialization and urbanization of Shanghai, is also a national intangible cultural heritage. Hou Xiaosheng's wharf chant scene performance "Cry from Far East" is a collection of shoulder chant, stick chant, stacking chant and other genres. These original songs were arranged in popular style and the performance team from Dinghai Road Sub-district, Yangpu District totally rocked the theater.

"Eight Songs of Shanghai Urban Style" includes "Welcome Guests under the Magnolia Tree", "New Shanghai", "Have Fun in the Great World Entertainment Center", "Attachment to Suzhou Creek", "Old Shanghainese cannot find his own home" and other songs, which connected the wonderful segments of composer's thirty years of writing about the spirits and styles of Shanghai.

The concert, sponsored by Shanghai Lark Art Troupe and other agencies, was under the guidance of the Shanghai Musicians Association, the Secretariat of Shanghai Citizen Cultural Festival and the Shanghai Mass Art Museum. Hou Xiaosheng said: "The folk songs showed the past, present and future of Shanghai. Let's taste the urban nostalgia in the songs.”