s the song “Rose, Rose, I love you” was going on in the West Hall on the Songjiang campus of Shanghai International Studies School (SISU), its singer Ji Xiaolan distributed 66 roses to the audiences during performance.

Ji, President of Shanghai Hailin Orchestra consisting of eight musicians, has dedicated four songs to more than three hundred students, teachers and residents on May 8. Ji is famous for singing classic songs of 1980s and 1990s. The other three young singers, a saxophone player and a trumpeter performed a variety of songs, including My way, Nightlife in Shanghai and American Patrol with a jazz touch.

Before 7 p.m. when the performance started, the hall had been already filled with students, teachers and residents nearby. Some of them are huge fans of the leading singer, Ji Xiaolan.

Audiences’ reaction towards the concert was mostly positive. Zhong Qinglin, a resident in her fifties, scurried to the stage to take pictures with Ji. “She is a big shot in Shanghai,” Zhong said, “Her elegance, virtuosity and passion for old classic Shanghai songs set her apart from other singers. ”

Zhang Songhan, a freshman of SISU’s School of Japanese Studies, is a fan of old songs and thinks highly of the concert, “Beautiful memory floods back and I can’t help singing along with the singer on stage.” 

No entrance fee to the concert was a bonus provided by the government. The government invested more than a billion to art groups for their performance in universities from 2005, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Since then, an increasing number of professional art groups has started to participate in this program. From 2013 to 2017, the number of art groups increased from 16 to 22 and the number of their shows increased by 22.6% to 363 in 2017.

The graph below shows the respective proportions of four main kinds of performances from 2015 to 2017. Traditional Chinese shows, such as Kunqu Opera, and modern Chinese shows, such as original Chinese stage play were the majority.

According to a survey conducted on a nationwide scale in 2016, more than half the students who attended to the free performances think the program was enlightening and could cultivate their love for arts. The percentage of students who viewed the shows as not memorable was low.

At SISU, 10 students from each school and 20 students from graduate school are asked how many times they watched the free shows and about twenty percent of 100 students have watched at least six times. On the other hand, about 15% never see one.

Among those who almost attended to every show, in this case, those who have watched more than six times, more than 90 percent of them were satisfied.

Song Luyu is a sophomore student from School of English Studies who loves music and plays the piano well. “I really want to enjoy a lovely show in the evening but sometimes I just got so much to do,” Song said, “I am really grateful to those artists who travelled all the way from the city center to Songjiang and I really wish I could have seized every chance they came here.”