Members of the Great Wall Youth Orchestra play traditional Chinese instruments at the New Year concert in Shijiazhuang, north China's Hebei Province, Dec. 29, 2024. (Photo by Wang Zijie/Xinhua)

　　by Xinhua writers Wang Meiqi, Su Kaiyang

　　SHIJIAZHUANG, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- At a recent concert held in north China's Hebei Province to usher in the New Year, the romantic Chinese folk song “Purple Bamboo“ was revived by a U.S. youth orchestra.

　　Playing traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu and the guzheng, the Great Wall Youth Orchestra from Oakland tugged on the heartstrings of its audience with the soft and graceful melody of the song, which dates back thousands of years.

　　“This is the orchestra's first international tour. We're very excited and grateful for that,“ said Sairina Kimberly Merino Tsui, president of the board of the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation, with which the orchestra is affiliated.

　　Upon the invitation of Shijiazhuang University, members of the orchestra, together with U.S. artists from San Francisco, formed a delegation of 51 people and made a six-day visit to China which ended on Tuesday.

　　These performances, along with their performances in the United States, are part of the orchestra's decades-long efforts to preserve and promote traditional Chinese music.

　　Founded in 1995, the orchestra is a program initiated by the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation. It aims to teach Chinese music to children in the San Francisco Bay Area, a place with an ethnically diverse population.