Ode to the Motherland

The story

"Ode to the Motherland" is a patriotic song of the People's Republic of China, with words and music by Wang Shen (1918–2007), a musician from Tianjin. In late September 1950, on a work trip to Beijing, he passed through Tiananmen Square as people prepared for National Day on 1 October, the first anniversary of the People's Republic, and was moved by the festive sea of flags; he wrote a first draft on the train back to Tianjin. Before publishing it he sought opinions, had the Tianjin music troupe rehearse it, and taught it himself at Nankai University, a Tianjin steelworks, a textile mill and a railway depot.

The Tianjin Daily had no room to print it, but Zhang Heng, editor of the magazine Popular Song Selection, placed it first in his third issue, and the song spread among the workers and students of North China, first in Tianjin, then in Beijing. On 12 September 1951 Premier Zhou Enlai signed an order of the Central People's Government that it be sung throughout the country, and on 15 September the People's Daily printed the score with a notice of the Ministry of Culture naming it one of the two songs, besides the national anthem, to be sung everywhere for that year's National Day. In October 1951, meeting Wang Shen at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Mao Zedong gave him a signed copy of his newly published Selected Works.

The music joins the ode of Chinese folk tradition to the European triumphal march; it is in F major and has three parts. The words have changed several times: Wang Shen revised lines on the advice of the poet Ai Qing, and there are a 1965 chorus version in The East Is Red, a 1968 Cultural Revolution version titled "Ode to the Socialist Motherland", whose words referred heavily to communism and praised Mao Zedong, and the arrangement by Chen Qigang for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The third verse names Mao Zedong; it is often left out for time or cut off in broadcasts, so a full performance, as at the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan (the first official one since the National Day of 2009), has been read as a sign of the standing the party gives Mao and his thought, and cutting it has drawn criticism, as at the National Games of 2025.

Since 1951 it has opened China National Radio's programmes News and Newspapers Summary and National Network News, and it has closed several of the station's channels. Because it often accompanies the entry of the flag at flag-raising ceremonies and is sung at major state, diplomatic and military events, it is called the "second national anthem". It closed the 1964 stage work The East Is Red, was played as China's team entered the 1988 Seoul Olympics, was heard in the 1993 film Farewell My Concubine and was played by the band of the People's Liberation Army before the ceremony of the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. In 2003 the astronaut Yang Liwei took it into space, and in 2007 the lunar probe Chang'e 1 carried it into lunar orbit. At the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics the voice was Yang Peiyi's while another girl, Lin Miaoke, mimed the song on stage, which drew wide criticism at home and abroad. In May 2011 the PLA band and the United States Army band closed a joint concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington with it. Xi Jinping sang it with the performers at the galas for the 15th anniversary of Macau's handover (2014) and the 20th of Hong Kong's (2017), and it accompanied China's entry at the opening ceremonies of the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics and the 2022 Asian Games, held in Hangzhou in 2023.

On 27 July 2015 the song was played before and after a speech by President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam at an event in Hanoi; it caused anger among many Vietnamese, and those responsible were disciplined. A 270-metre musical road in Fengtai District, Beijing, the city's first, plays its melody to passing cars, and Meng Weidong, composer of the theme of CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo, has said that its opening was inspired by the song's first phrase.

What it says

A patriotic song celebrating the People's Republic of China; broad and triumphant, in the manner of a march.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.