Ellen's podcast

It is very difficult for me to translate this essay. It took me a whole week. But I would like to do it for I believe many of you may be interested in our Chinese culture and Literature. There must be many improper usage in my translation. Please correct at least one of them if you like to read it and this will encourage me to do more.

The Chinese writer of this essay is the famous writer and philosopher in China, Zhou Guoping. It was written for a reciting performance of Tang and Song poetry. Because the author declares that the excerpting is not permitted, I do not paste it here. If you want to read the original characters (You must be a Chinese expert), please click http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_471d6f6801000ak8.html

Chord Songs of Song Dynasty

Prelude: Art Entertainment

Tonight, let's sail backward along the time river and disembark on the beach of Yangtze River a thousand years ago. The view that is opening up before us is a celebrated dynasty in our history. It was extremely glorious and extremely humiliated. It left us endless memory and endless sigh.

Song Dynasty lasted over three hundreds years. It had an united and prosperous first part, however, in the last part it forfeited the sovereignty and impotently settled for new capital in other place. It had too much mirth and too much tear. However, the mirth and the tear together produced a magic flower in Chinese culture, Song Ci.

Now we comes to the capital of Northern Song Dynasty, Bianjing, now called Kaifeng where you might not imagine its luxury at that time. On the extensive streets galloped fine vehicles and horses, People and visitors roamed on the busy roads. Look around, everywhere was engraved house, drawn pavilions, ornamented doors and red curtains. Along the the deep streets and lane lined side by side the song houses that the number was over ten thousands. The most unusual thing was that when all the whorehouses, song houses, tea-houses and pubs in the city were full of orchestral string and flute music. What a luxuriant scene. No matter you were an ordinary citizen or a dignitary, you could go there. No dynasties could overtake Song Dynasty that supplied the scholar-bureaucrat munificent life. So they led easy lives. Feast and drinking prevailed. Geishas played an important role Whatever in public entertaining places or private feats. Chord songs were a necessary program. Their melodies were ready-composed and literators and poets wrote lyrics enthusiastically. Once an excellent lyric come out, the song would soon be sung all over the country.

Today you may not believe it that China once was a world of popular music for seven hundred years during the Sui, Tang and Song dynasties. The vivid and fast Indian styled music, which was from the Central Asia and Turkestan, once became a rage all over the China and overwhelmed (captivated) both the court and public. So the Chinese ancient music with slow tempo and monotone was left out in the cold and only used in sacrifice rites. In two dynasties, Tang and Song, the Courts set up training houses which were actually the court orchestra and national music college, for rehearsing, educating and composing popular music. There was a 大晟府(literally means big bright prefecture) in Song Dynasty. if it was translated into modern Chinese, it would be called national music administration which exerted as national music press to compile and publish prevalent song scores. At such zealous atmosphere, the writing of Ci became the most fashionable thing and the art of Ci reached the peak in history. Song Ci is regarded as literary treasure of Chinese that can be on a par with Tang Poetry and Yuan songs.

Writers of Ci were literators and scholars, while singers were mostly pubescent girls. This produced subtle connections between them. There is no other types of literature that was deeply influenced by female. For example, in one of Song Ci, "Her eyebrows are like the moon/smiles with /her two dimples are on her smile face/ She sings a song lowly." Of cause the Ci that was song by a beauty by the flowers under the trees should be affectionate. So for a long time, the topics of Ci were mainly about sentimentality for season changing, feelings of parting and love stories, with main style delicate, graceful and restrained. Ci and Shi (poem) began to take different and unwritten roles. Shi conveyed will while Ci conveyed feeling. Shi needed to be solemn but Ci pursued charm. It seemed that all the feelings about love between male and female and about the unheroic loving thought which could not be written into poems (Shi), however, could be thoroughly expressed in Ci. Ci was dedicated to transmit euphemistic and touching feelings and to describe deep and refined emotion. It developed such subtle aesthetic taste into superlative. In the ancient China that characters were generally used to bear and spread thoughts and theories, Song Ci may be the unique literature of aestheticism. No styles of literature can match up to Song Ci on esthetic sense in word, artistic conception and music.

Of course, graceful and restrained was not the only style of Song Ci. Su Shi was the first man who blew a strong, bold and unrestrained wind to Ci. Then Shin Qiji did the same. The boundary between the Shi and Ci was broken up by their influence. The topic scope of Ci enlarged. Ci developed into a new poetry style that could express both feeling and will. After the Accident of Jingkang ( in 1126, Song was invaded by the northern country Jin. One of the royal members escaped into southern China and set up Southern Song Dynasty), the poets in Southern Song imposed sad for land separation into the grace and restraint and mixed grief for undone ambitions into the unrestraint in Ci.

Song Ci is the product of music and the lyrics of popular songs. It is a pity that the song scores have been lost. With Song Ci's passing on along the history, it has separated from music for a long time and been appreciated as literature. Tonight Let us inquire after the Song poets with the music by today's musician, and the songs and recitals by today's performers. We will present our admiration to those litterateurs a thousand years ago who were expert in melodies and poetry formats.