Otog Front Banner musical wows the crowds in Beijing

An exotic musical -- Shi Liu Hong Le -- created by the Ulan Muqir art troupe was warmly received by a delighted audience when it was staged at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Dec 7.

The art troupe is from Otog Front Banner -- a banner of Ordos, a city of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region -- according to a statement on the Ordos WeChat account.

More than 5,000 people watched the performance. They included leaders of the autonomous region, cities and banners, heads of central government's enterprises in Ordos, the media and the liaison office, officials said.

The musical takes the formal establishment of Yan'an Minzu Institute on Sept 18, 1941 as its main theme.

It tells the touching story about when the call came by the Party's Chinese to form a united front against Japanese aggression, it was answered resolutely. Outstanding young people from the Han ethnic group, the Manchu, the Mongolian ethnic group, the Hui, the Zang ethnic group -- and the Miao, Yi and other ethnic groups -- come to the institute to eat, live, study, work and grow up together.

In the creation process of the musical, the creators deeply explored the red culture of Otog Front Banner.

They blended the work with modern music and took the united pomegranate seeds as a powerful symbol. Finally, they succeeded in bringing the local culture and spirit of ethnic unity to the stage in the form of a modern musical, according to critics.