Famous Chin Female Singer to Get Hitched in Australia

19 March 2012: Chin sensational singer, Mai Dawt Hlei Hniang, is to get married with her boyfriend at Victorian Chin Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia this Saturday.

The ‘sweet-voiced’ singer, more popularly known as Hniang Hniang, has already arrived in Australia from Chin State, Burma to take Christian wedding vows with Salai Bawi Cung Nung on 24 March.

Hniang Hniang, 31, said in an interview that she met Salai Bawi Cung Nung, aka Pate, during her trip to Australia in 2008 where he played keyboard at the concert.

Mai Dawt Hlei Hniang travelled as a member of the singing troupe across Europe, USA, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia in 2008 and 2009, raising awareness and fund for mautam-hit Chin victims in Burma’s Chin State.

Singing not only in Chin but also in Burmese, Hniang Hniang surprised her national audience when she won the first prizes of the nationwide singing competition called ‘so-kah-yee-tee‘ for four years in a row from 1994-1997 while in High School.

“My line of contest was on traditional Burmese songs, modern Burmese songs and Buddhist religious songs [There was no line of competition in Chin songs]. I learned the songs by listening to taped Burmese music,” Hniang Hniang told Chinland Guardian.

Born in Falam to Pu Lian Kim and Pi Sui Cin and raised in Hakha, Mai Dawt Hlei Hniang, of Tlangpi village, started singing at the age of 2 and released her first album – Christian songs – while she was only 12.

Her message to the audience reads: “If we can’t do something useful to our people, let’s try not to do something harmful to our people.”

Reporting by Thawng Zel Thang
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