Singing Across Continents: Reviving Post-Pandemic Transnational Cultural Dialogue through the 2025 Naxi Tour of Portugal

In May 2025, Naxi folksinger He Jinhua (和金花) and instrumentalist Huang Limei (黄丽梅) from southwest China embarked on a two-week tour of Portugal. The anchor for the tour was the 8th Lisbon Conference: Chinese Music and Musical Instruments. Based in Lisbon and Mafra, this is an important annual European venue for Chinese music. He Jinhua and Huang Limei performed twice and co-presented a paper on Naxi folksong at the conference. They also gave concerts in the northern cities of Braga and Aveiro, led a workshop on Naxi music and dance at a local Chinese cultural centre in Lisbon, and recorded a CD. This was the first appearance outside China for Naxi traditional music since the pandemic, and the small scale and focus on concentrated scholarly and artistic interaction contrasted markedly with the many high-profile international tours and major festival appearances before 2019. The 2025 tour illustrated an individual-focused, dialogic model of musical exchange arising out of long-standing personal friendships and reciprocity rather than institutional or state fiat. The two artists invested months of time adapting their repertoire and mode of presentation for this flexible format, aiming to honour tradition while also undertaking artistic experimentation and inviting in-depth engagement from their Portuguese audiences.