For 18 years after her retirement, Deng Xiaolan volunteered to teach music in a rural village in Hebei province. Her inspirational teaching and the enthusiasm and talent of her pupils culminated in the children singing the Olympic anthem at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics on Feb 4.

Deng passed away at the age of 79 on March 21 at the Beijing Tiantan Hospital.

Deng's involvement with the rural children can be traced back to her parents. Her father Deng Tuo was the publisher of Jinchaji Daily, a newspaper based in Malan village in Fuping county, Hebei province, from 1939 to 1948. It was a predecessor of People's Daily.

Deng Xiaolan was born in 1943, a year that witnessed the spilling of blood inside the village. Amid the Japanese aggression, 19 Malan locals were killed for heroically refusing to divulge information about the newspaper.

Under the influence of her parents, who both had a passion for music, she learned the violin and singing when she was young. She joined the school band after entering Tsinghua University, and also taught her colleagues to play the violin after graduation.

In 2003, when Deng Xiaolan returned to the village along with former members of Jinchaji Daily to pay homage to the martyrs, a group of local children also attended the ceremony.

She wanted to sing a song together with the children in commemoration, but none of the children knew the well-known songs she named. Even when she asked if they could sing the national anthem, only two children raised their hands and their singing was out of tune.

"I personally like music a lot. Music is like my friend, who's always there whether I'm happy or sad. When I arrived in Malan village, I learned that the children couldn't sing. If they couldn't sing, then they wouldn't know how to appreciate music. Life would be so pale if it doesn't have music, such a richly colorful part of life," Deng said in an interview with Phoenix TV.