Performances of folk songs ranging from elites to peasants give insight into the lives and experiences of individuals. In both Michael Nylan's chapter on the Odes and Chen Kaige's 1984 film, Yellow Earth, the importance of folk song rhetoric is highlighted as a body of knowledge and teachings that represent culturally accepted norms, ranging from themes of knowledge, pleasure and human integration. Combining lyrics with music was believed to be a “spontaneous expression of public sentiment” used by rulers to gauge the “welfare of the common people” (Nylan 79). Therefore, the significance of the collection of Odes as an accurate reflection of historical events and emotions parallels the role of folk songs used to convey the impoverished feelings of villagers of a feudal Shanbei in the Yellow Land. While Yellow Earth masks the roles of folk songs under the guise of traumatic experiences, these folk songs are used to promote individual and social empowerment, working in tandem with the functions of more sophisticated folk songs in the Odes. Yellow Earth opens with a scene of young Cuiqiao witnesses the definitive paralysis of a woman's autonomy, an arranged marriage. Living in a feudal, patriarchal society where arranged marriages are commonplace, Cuiqiao's position as a girl is automatically disempowering. As the film elaborates on this celebratory and festive occasion, there is a man who sings about both the celebration and the wedding. As Michael Nylan states, “The Odes anthology itself repeatedly draws our attention to the human desire for social engagement and the sense of mutual well-being engendered when that engagement is competent and loving” (100). Therefore, the performance of these particular people... in the center of the paper... conveys the shared experiences of unhappiness and helplessness. Cuiqiao's folk song performances are often paralleled with images of the desolation of the land or the ambiguity of his singing. Much like the Odes' function as a “teaching tool,” while Cuiqiao is never depicted singing, the ambiguity creates a more recognizable folk song that can move the masses and encourage virtuous change (Nylan 75). The function of both Odes and Cuiqiao folk songs functions as expressions of intense emotions, which are interpreted to understand “human capabilities and aspirations and how to motivate them” (Nylan 75). While the mechanisms of the feudal system ultimately prove too intolerable, the ending of Cuiqiao's story is his final act of self-reliance in pursuit of personal liberation, strengthened by the performance and promises of the communist's folk song..