Nowadays, do Chinese children even know it? My generation grew up in this truly beautiful song. The melody and rhythm are actually quite sophisticated, yet it exudes naivety and happiness. And this slightest hint of ideology was good enough to get by in 1955:
我问你亲爱的伙伴
谁给我们安排下幸福的生活
It’s so subtle that it’s not propaganda at all.
Last Friday I was at a small party at Jay’s, and we karaoked after dinner. One of the guests has a very good voice, tender and articulate. I heard her sing pop songs before, but was dumbfounded when she sang the title. Mesmerized and hypnotized. Transfixed and transposed.
Yeah I was exaggerating a bit. But it was pretty close. She sang with an almost perfect teenager voice that is bright, pure, naive, innocent, and chaste. It immediately inundated my mind with the scene in 《祖国的花朵》(I’ve never seen any other part of it) in which the red-scarfed “young pioneers” sang the song while rowing in the North Pond, a tremendous feeling of “déjà vu all over again”.
And it’s not just me. Everyone loved it so much that we asked her to sing it again to wrap up the party. The second time wasn’t as shocking, but still extraordinary. Wow. The power of human voice.
In some sense, 1955 marks a turning point in New China. The “Three Large Movements” (土改、镇反、三反五反) after the birth of the nation were mostly over as well as the Korean War, but the movements on intellectuals are picking up stream from 批判武训 in 1951, 批判胡适俞平伯 in 1954, to 胡风反革命集团案 in 1955 (胡风 was fully rehabilitated in 1988). 1957, 1958, 1962(四清), 1966, …
幸福的生活 was like a kite soaring away in the East Wind. Fortunately the thread, albeit terribly thin at times, remains uncut, so we’re able to pull the kite back bit by bit. When we finally see it again, it doesn’t seem like what we remember or expect it to be. Did the kite change, or have we changed?
November 29, 2006 at 1:15 pm
That’s pretty much the feeling of everyone when we heard her sing.
I guess this is another difference between men and women. You would explore the history of a song and expand to the whole history that is related. For us, a song is a song. A good song is enjoyable to hear and brings good feeling. That’s it.
Anyway, I think it’s totally understandable for the 幸福的生活 we are enjoying nowadays to be different from the utopian that people were fascinating back in 1955. After all, 40 years passed by, and everything in the world, including the “kite” and the people change with it. It is true that the wheel of the time is accelerating on a terrifying speed in the last century, and is it absolutely a good thing? I guess no one can answer for sure, we will all have to wait and see.
November 30, 2006 at 9:58 am
I only thought of history when I wrote the blog. It would’ve completely killed the enjoyment if I had thought about it while listening to her sing.
The irony of “utopia” is that it never actually existed (especially in the country side), except for maybe a few dozen people who’s not yet been “beaten down” in all the movements. Even Mao himself ended up totally miserable, manipulated by nurses and guards like a common Chinese emperor.
Like the setting in Orwell’s 1984, the utopia is created and maintained by propaganda and coerced into people’s head. I’m not saying there were no happy days in the city, but how fleeting and ephemeral.
November 30, 2006 at 1:23 pm
The material ‘utopia’ promised by Mao might not have ever existed. But the psychological utopia did exist and lasted for a while, thinking about the overall optimism among people during those years (with the exception of 冷静的知识分子, who obviously analyze about the sustainability of this utopia, or who had more things taken away from them under the new system).
Yes the utopia is fleeting and ephemeral, followed by disillusion – kind of like the post-vacation depression I am having now..:)
I do like the historical background regarding an occasion. It’s like seeing a picture in two medium, one clear and stylized in water-color, the other with more details and depth in oil painting.