A performer prepares before stepping onto the stage at the Majie Folk Art Fair. [Photos: China Daily]

For 700 years, folk artists from around the country have flocked to a village in Henan to perform in the open air. But the youth's mindset might silence this age-old tradition.

Dozens of opera fans surround Chen Yi as the 15-year-old performs arias in a rye field in rural Henan province. While Chen is a teenager, most of the other attendees of the annual Majie Folk Art Fair, which has been staged for more than 700 years, are middle-aged or elderly.

The event, staged on the 13th day of the first lunar month (Feb 4 this year), is a carnival for folk artists from across the country, who flock to Majie village's grain fields to demonstrate their skills.

Chen, who performed on the quhu (a two-stringed traditional fiddle), was among the youngest attendees. Some audience members started singing along as he played.

At one point, a woman in her 60s calls to him: "Young boy, please perform Blind Man Watch the Lantern (a local Quju Opera) with me."

He obliges.

Someone asks Chen if the woman is from his troupe, to which he responds: "We're total strangers. People just sing whenever they want at this fair."

Folk artists from around the country demonstrate their skills at the annual folk art fair in Majie, Henan province. [Photo: China Daily]

Chen says he once played more than 50 Quju Opera arias for five hours without a break because so many participants wanted to sing along with him. He had to constantly rub his hands together because the field was so cold.

More than 200,000 people, including 1,800 folk artists, attended this year's fair, a Baofeng county government spokesperson says.

Folk artists crooned ballads to the accompaniment of musical instruments or bamboo clappers on hilltops, grain fields and riverbanks.

Some villagers invite the artists to their homes to celebrate harvests or entertain guests at weddings and birthdays.

Villagers and performers negotiate a fee, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand yuan, depending on the artists' skill and reputation.