But the energetic, ever-smiling 57-year-old insists he has no regrets.

"When I play the music, I'm happy -- I don't feel tired, I don't feel hungry, and I'm not bored," he said as he introduced the ensemble he set up almost a decade ago.

"I've been doing this for years, and I've never been ill. I'm happy."

The group plays every week in a pagoda in Xian in the northern province of Shaanxi, once known as Chang'an, grand capital of China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which is widely regarded as a high point in Chinese civilisation.

"I realised that this ancient music was going to disappear as no one was playing it, so I set up this group," said Li, the ensemble's drummer.

"My aim is to revive, transmit, protect and develop Tang Dynasty music. As a Chinese person, I have this responsibility," he said, wearing a green and yellow tunic like those worn by musicians who played this music for Tang emperors.

Li's 18-member group is a mixed bunch, including a fashionable 22-year-old tourism student and a 59-year-old policeman nearing retirement.

Li said that 60 years ago, when the People's Republic was founded following decades of civil war and revolution, there were 50 groups practising this music in Shaanxi.

Now, after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to wipe out China's ancient traditions, only 12 groups remain throughout the country, totalling 200 people.

Li says Tang music is the earliest form of written music. While some academics believe it originated later than the seventh century, there is a general consensus that the music is among China's oldest.

It blends drums, bells, flutes and pipes, and during the Tang Dynasty performances were for the elite only, something Li finds amusing as he points to the pedestrians who stop and listen as his group plays.

He said he discovered the music in 1981 in the same way -- walking past a group of men playing their instruments in the street. He took in the "sheng," which looks like a teapot with pipes protruding from the top, and the "pipa," a pear-shaped lute, and was fascinated.

One of the musicians became his teacher, and Li became so passionate about it that he decided to set up his own ensemble, spending an inheritance of 1.5 million yuan (220,000 dollars) left to him by a wealthy grandfather.

His passion has cost him more than money -- his wife left him seven years ago, saying he was putting the music before her.

"I now don't have a wife, and I don't have a child, so Tang Dynasty music is my wife and child," said Li, who also gave up working in 1999 and now relies on his own money, and some government donations, to live.

Shows are regularly performed in Xian -- one of China's major tourist destinations as the home of the famed Terracotta Warriors. Li is also working to have a theatre built that will become the home of Tang Dynasty music, much as Beijing has its Peking Opera house.

His main aim, he said, is to popularise the music and to that end his ensemble has played some unusual venues, including to planes full of foreign tourists flying between Xian and Beijing and Shanghai.

Although the vast majority of Chinese know very little about the ancient music, Li is confident its popularity will spread as people learn more about its history and listen to its melodies.

"The Tang Dynasty was China's most powerful and prosperous period. Commoners were very affluent and the country was very rich. The music expresses that refined and harmonious life," Li said.

"So regardless of people's age or profession, if they listen to the Tang Dynasty's refined and melodious music, all people will like it."

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