Movies and Politics in the History of a Chinese Popular Song: From Tang Wei, Li Koran, Zhou Xuan to Abing the Blind

The seduction scene performed by Tang Wei in the movie, "Lust/Caution" (2007), directed by Lee Ang and distributed worldwide, is a cover version of Zhou Xuan's evergreen song, "Songstress of Heaven's Edge" in her movie, 'Street Angel" (1937). In between these seventy years, the same song has been recorded and re-recorded in various dialects and contexts. Despite its popularity, it has rarely been revealed that the song is melodically related to the well known Chinese erhu (bowed lute) piece "Moon Reflected on the Second Spring" by the legendary Abing the Blind (1893-1950). Yang Yin Liu (1899-1984), the master Chinese music historian who recorded and transcribed Abing's performance in 1950, had tried to deny the obvious connections between Abing's erhu piece and the popular Southern Chinese folk tune Zhixin Ke, which is basically the prototype of Zhou Xuan's song in the movie. This paper is a study of the reception history of Zhou Xuan's song and Abing's erhu piece. By unfolding the historical and political contexts under which Yang Yin Liu portrayed and protected Abing, the cultural ramifications of the song, the erhu piece, the individuals and politics involved are contextualized. Later cover versions of the song by Li Koran and Teresa Teng, and the movie soundtrack of the 1937 movie are also analyzed. In a way, the entwined history of the movie song and the erhu piece is rich enough to be a focused, yet comprehensive ethnography of Chinese music of the past seventy years.