Nieh Erh (1911-17 July 1935), composer who wrote the music for "March of the Volunteers," which was adopted as the official national anthem of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The son of a practitioner of Chinese medicine, Nieh Erh was born in Kunming. His father died when he was only four years old, leaving his mother to bring him up in Yunnan. Nieh was fond of music as a child, and he learned to play the violin at the Kunming Provincial Normal School. At the age of 1 7 sui, he went to Canton and enrolled at the Kwangtung Dramatic School under Ou-yang Yü-ch'ien. After a brief stint as a soldier in Hunan and Kwangsi, he went to Shanghai, where he joined the Anti- Imperialist League in 1929 and found a job as a violinist in the orchestra of the Bright Moon Variety Company, directed by the popular composer Li Chin-hui.

In 1931 Nieh Erh met T'ien Han (q.v.) and joined a music group known as the Friends of the Soviet Union Society. He obtained a job as a clerk for the Lotus Motion Picture Company (Lien-hua ying-p'ien kung-ssu), and he soon began collaborating with T'ien Han on songs for the film Glorious Motherhood, including "The Miners' Song." Between 1932 and 1935 Nieh wrote the music for more than 30 film songs, including "Graduation Song" for the film Students in Trouble and the title song for Big Road. At meetings of the Friends of the Soviet Union Society and in the course of his work, Nieh Erh met a number of politically conscious writers, musicians, and film people. His own political outlook gradually became more radical, and in 1933 he joined the Chinese Communist party. In 1934 Nieh Erh collaborated with T'ien Han on an opera, Storm on the Yangtze. Its story was based on an episode that had taken place on the Shanghai waterfront during the Japanese attack on that city in 1932, and Nieh Erh himself played the role of an old stevedore whose grandchild had been killed in the fighting. His best known work, however, was his setting for "March of the Volunteers," a song written in 1934 by T'ien Han for his scenario, Children of the Storm, just before his arrest. Its stirring opening lines and music — "Arise, all you who refuse to be slaves . . ." — enjoyed continued popularity in China, particularly in left-wing and Communist circles. In 1949 this song was adopted as the official national anthem of the People's Republic of China. Before Nieh Erh completed this last film score, his name reportedly was placed on the police blacklist. Early in 1935 he escaped to Japan with the aim of going to the Soviet Union for formal training in music theory. A left-wing variety troupe in Japan gave him work, and on an outing with them, he was drowned while swimming at Kuganumia on 17 July 1935, at the age of 23.

Nieh Erh came to be known in Chinese Communist terminology as a "pioneer of proletarian music." Although he lacked the formal training and the maturity that might have made him a musician of the first rank, his songs were charged with a spontaneity and an emotional vigor that attested to the high degree of talent he possessed. A biographical film made in 1959 bears little relation to the facts of Nieh Erh's life or character.