A children's choir sing the Olympic Anthem during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at the National Stadium in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022. (Xinhua/Cao Can)

A choir of 44 children coming from a mountainous county in Northern China sang the Olympic Anthem during the opening ceremony of Beijing 2022 and captured the world's attention with sureness in their eyes and clearness in their voices.

On the night of Feb. 4, the day of "Li Chun" which marked the beginning of spring in the traditional Chinese calendar, the Olympic flag was raised once again at the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium in Beijing.

The stadium fell into silence as attendees of the 2022 Winter Games opening ceremony all rose to pay respect to the Olympic flag when it was raised.

A heavenly chorus then emerged. It was the Olympic Anthem, sung by a choir of 44 children standing next to the flag pole - firmness in their eyes, clearness in their voices.

"Plains, mountains, and seas glow with you, like a white-and-purple great temple..." The children sang in Greek.

They were fitting lyrics, as these children are indeed from the mountains.

LOOKING FOR "THE FRAGRANCE OF THE EARTH"

It all started on September 28 last year when Ma Xiaojing and her colleagues drove for nearly four hours from Beijing to arrive at the Malan Primary School in Fuping, a county in neighboring Hebei Province.

As a staffer of the Beijing 2022 opening and closing ceremonies team, Ma was tasked with hosting an audition for the performance of the Olympic Anthem at the opening ceremony.

Since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, the Olympic Anthem was performed at the opening ceremony at almost every edition of the Games.

This was also a task for the core planning team of the Beijing 2022 opening ceremony, led by Zhang Yimou, an acclaimed Chinese director who was also behind the awe-inspiring showpiece of the 2008 Summer Games.

During a discussion, Zhang brought up the idea of "having some simple children sing the Anthem."

"But what's the standard for 'being simple'? What do we want to convey to the audience around the world?" Ma couldn't help but keep asking herself.

The team interviewed a number of candidates, all of which had fallen short of their expectations. Then they saw a video of pupils of Malan Primary School in Fuping Country singing songs.

On her way to the school, Ma tried to imagine what the children would look like. She was a bit uneasy, but also hopeful. Unknown to her, the children were also expecting their guests from Beijing.

"Cute, clean and shy," that was Ma's initial impression of those students. "You could tell the curiosity of some of the kids and that they wanted to talk to you. But they were just too shy and hid behind their teachers," Ma recalled.

The children were in plain dresses, but Ma was impressed by their pure eyes, curiosity and vitality.

"I suddenly understand the chief director's idea. We would like to bring these simple children from the mountains to sing on the largest stage to the world," Ma said.

Ma and her colleagues visited several schools and managed to gather a number of children. Upon her return to Beijing, the directing team for the first time heard the voices of the children from the footage. It was loud and tender, albeit a bit off-key.

When the playing finished, nobody talked as everyone was trying to comprehend what had struck their hearts, until Zhang broke the silence with claps.

"This is it. The heavenly voices of these children are exactly what I have been searching for -- the fragrance of the earth," said Zhang.

THE SONGS OF MOUNTAINS

Back in 2003, Malan village welcomed back a special guest who was born in Fuping, a former revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China during the 1940s, and whose father Deng Tuo used to run the famed Jinchaji Daily here to spread the Party's key policies amid a heavy blockade and attacks from the Japanese enemy.

Deng Xiaolan had returned for the tomb sweeping day to pay tribute to 19 courageous villagers who were killed by the Japanese army after refusing to reveal the whereabouts of Jinchaji Daily staff and printing facilities 60 years ago.

The 300km journey from Beijing to Malan village took her 12 hours including a train ride and two-leg bus rides.

Deng Xiaolan realized that surrounding mountains that protected his father and his comrades during war time now stood as a huge barrier between the villagers and the prosperous outside world. People here still lived under the poverty line.

She started to do her bit to help the village where she was raised by the villagers until she was three. This brought into being the Malan band, predecessor of the Malan Flower choir.

Music injected more life into the small village and made them heard, but no one expected that they could be heard on such a large stage as the Olympics.

"We all know that China has eliminated extreme poverty. Children in mountainous areas are not the same as they used to be," said director Zhang.

"It's great that they stand on the Olympic stage and sing the Olympic Anthem loudly in Greek. It really speaks for itself."

In the four months leading to the opening ceremony, the 44 children completed a daunting task -- learn how to sing a song in Greek, and doing so entirely a capella.

Fu Baohuan, a retired music teacher who had taught the children how to sing in the first place, joined in. Young teachers of Fuping Bayi school stayed inside the campus around the clock to take care of these kids, while the principals of several schools in the town took turns to pick the children up.

Zhang Hongyu, head of the music conservatory of Baoding University, and his colleagues came up with a tailor-made practice plan for the children. They used body language to help the children with music theories, combined the singing practices with games for those naughty ones.

The children in a training session for the performance.

Greek language teacher Qin Yezhen of Beijing Foreign Studies University and his student Lin Jiahao taught the children how to sing Greek and tried their best to translate the difficult lyrics into Chinese in a way that their students could comprehend. A "Great spirit lives on forever," was how one of the girls understood the lyrics.

Each day, the Olympic Anthem resonated across the town, traveling across the mountains and plains, all the way to Beijing.

Then on a winter day in early January 2022, the children boarded a bus to the Chinese capital, a 5-hour trip.

FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE WORLD

Even the naughtiest boys in the choir were in awe when they walked into the giant Bird's Nest stadium.

Born in 2010, Li Zhengze had imagined his trip to Beijing many times. He remembered how he walked into the stadium. "It's different from what I saw in the videos, how could it be so huge?" he said.

There was also Liang Youlin, whose mother had tried to quiet him down by taking him to learn Chinese calligraphy and art in vain. His voice was trembling during their first rehearsal.

In fact, it was a great challenge for the children - all of them traveled on their own and spent the Lunar New Year holidays away from home for the first time. The COVID-19 countermeasures and the tight practice schedule were not easy for these playful kids who have great curiosity for the outside world.

They have their own ways to tackle the unease though. "When on the stage, we imagine the audience as trees on the mountains, or stars in the sky," one of them said.

On Feb. 4, the children sang the Olympic Anthem with purity, beauty and innocence. Under the limelight, they brought joy and inspiration to the world in a confident manner, just as chief director Zhang had hoped.