CASCultural and Arts Studies3083-39573083-3949Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing Pty. Ltd.10.26689/CAS.v2i2.15403ArticleIntegrating the Fang Zhimin Spirit with Poyang Drum Intangible Cultural Heritage in Secondary School Music Education: A Practice-Oriented Studyhttps://artdesignp.com/journal/CAS/2/2/10.26689/CAS.v2i2.15403LiuFang,ShangNa,WangQi2026222026-04-30In most Chinese middle schools, music class is music class, and political-ideological education is something else entirely. The two rarely overlap. I have been teaching music in a Poyang Lake region school for several years now, and this disconnect has bothered me for a while. My students live in a place that produced both a major revolutionary figure, Fang Zhimin, and a distinctive performing art, the Poyang Drum (added to Jiangxi’s provincial intangible cultural heritage list in 2025). Yet in our music classroom, these resources were barely mentioned. So, I decided to try something: what if I designed a music curriculum that brought the two together? What if students could learn drum patterns and dialect singing while also engaging musically and emotionally with the values Fang Zhimin stood for? Over one semester, I restructured my Grade 8 classes around three Poyang Drum pieces, one of which I adapted from Fang Zhimin’s famous essay “Lovely China”. I did not start with a theory and then apply it. I started with what was available in my classroom: drums, students, and a provincial heritage art, and built the curriculum from there. The results surprised me. Yes, students got better at drumming and singing. But more interesting was what happened on the “values” side. In their written reflections, they stopped parroting textbook slogans about patriotism and started writing about Fang Zhimin in personal terms, what his choices meant to them, why his frugality struck them as relevant. Their attitude toward Poyang Drum also shifted. Several told me they had heard it at temple fairs as kids, but never thought of it as “real music”. Now they did. I think this matters because it shows that aesthetic education and moral education do not have to be two separate columns in a school’s mission statement. They can actually reinforce each other, and the Poyang Drum is one way to make that happen.Secondary school music education, Fang Zhimin spirit, Poyang drum, Intangible cultural heritage, Integrated practice

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