Answer to Question 1
From the 1930s film songs performed by small Western-style jazz/pop bands accompanying a pentatonic melody sung by a female film star became popular. Often these songs presented lyrics with either charming romantic images or social inequalities.
By the 1980s the popular music industry shifted to Taiwan and Hong Kong shaped by new trends in Western and Japanese music. Reintegration of a commercial music industry in mainland China also took place, which included a variety of popular music stylese.g., Northwest style, Chinese rock and the spread of karaoke.
The current internationalizatio n of contemporary Chinese music is exemplified by the Twelve Girls Band and their electronically mediated arrangements of Chinese music performed on traditional musical instruments such as erhu and pipa.
Answer to Question 2
The qin (also called guqin) is a seven-stringed zither with the strings stretched over the top of a rectangular resonator chamber. The strings may be plucked, or strummed either singularly or in combination. Three Variations on Yang Pass is a solo piece for qin.
The erhu is a two-stringed (bowed) fiddle; musicians such as Liu Tianhua have adopted Western-style musical features (e.g., vibrato, minor key, compound meter) to solos for the instrument. An example of this style is Liu Tianhua's erhu solo Festival Night Canzonetta.
Some Chinese piano music illustrates the socialist realist style that predominated in China from the 1940s to the early 1990s. Under this style music was supposed to be accessible to normal people and exploit themes of a communist society. An example of this style is Liao Shengjing's The Joyous Festival of Lunar New Year's Day, which presents simple music with the stated program of village people enjoying a festive atmosphere.
Northern Chinese leopard kept in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris
This fanciful depiction of marital trends may not be too far off the mark.
Predicted Temperature Trends Through the 21st Century
Predicted Temperature Trends Through the 21st Century
Current and future trends and impacts (IPCC)