“Fragile” music video (1)

As a follow-up to my Oct. 22 post, see below, for an excellent write-up by Chris Horton in The Atlantic, on the hit song “Fragile” (or Glass Heart 玻璃心) by Namewee and Kimberley Chen, now at 27 million views already, not just 26m … that was yesterday.How refreshing this is! Just like Kimberley Chen says here: “it is not censored, it is not limited, it is not bullshit.”–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

ps. The song again:

Earlier I recommended this discussion. And this is PRICELESS: Namewee responding to China netizens’ comments on Weibo (May 16, 2021, before the song was released):

What a guy! The man has both a spine, and a heart! Such a contrast to all the cowardly censors, spiteful propagandists, and petty trolls in China.

Also see this, very revealing report about how Kimberley was treated in China, as a would-be Tencent talent (her phone confiscated for months, room camera surveillance by pervert staff, and on and on, “This is China”).

Source: The Atlantic (11/9/21)
The World Is Fed Up With China’s Belligerence: Democracies are no longer as worried as they once were about offending a fragile Beijing.
By Chris Horton

In Chinese-speaking communities beyond the reach of Beijing’s censorship regime, the song “Fragile” has been an unexpected hit. With more than 26 million views on YouTube since dropping in mid-October, the satirical love song to Chinese nationalism has topped the site’s charts for Taiwan and Hong Kong, its lyrics mocking Chinese Communist Party rhetoric about Taiwan while also taking aim at Xi Jinping and Chinese censors. Continue reading

“Fragile” music video

This new music video “Fragile” is something else!

“It might Break Your Pinky Heart” by Namewee 黃明志 Ft.Kimberley Chen 陳芳語【Fragile 玻璃心】@鬼才做音樂 2021 Ghosician. Premiered Oct 15, 2021.

  • A nice writeup:

Malaysian rapper Namewee breaks the hearts of mainland Chinese ‘little pinks’ – Namewee and Kimberly Chen’s music is now banned in China.” Written by Oiwan Lam, Global Voices, 19 October 2021.

The Chinese lyrics are fantastic, the English translation a little bit halting, but you get it. (Can’t read the Malay subtitles). The lyrics even mentions the camps and the forced confessions — and are otherwise chock full of allusions to things like the pro-Chinese govt trolls’ disgusting “NMSL” curse, “Your Mom Is Dead.” Also the apples and pineapples, referring to the Chinese regime’s weaponizing of Taiwan fruits; etc. etc. Every sentence politically loaded, while at the same time it can all be read like it’s about complaining about an impossibly thin-skinned and abusive-domineering boyfriend, with a “heart of glass”, always angry and always smashing something, yet always insisting “You Belong to Me.”

In the end, the main thing may be how the Chinese regime is proving the singer-songwriter Namewee 100% right — by censoring him and Kimberley! These massively popular Chinese-language singers are now banned in China. Simply out of spite. Ha — their song just passed beyond ten million views now on Youtube.

I confess I watched it twice.

Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

Weibo suspends 22 K-pop accounts

Source: BBC News (9/7/21)
Chinese social media site Weibo suspends 22 K-pop accounts
By Mark Savage, BBC music reporter

Park Ji-Min from the K-pop band BTS

GETTY IMAGE: Park Ji-Min from the K-pop band BTS. Fans of BTS star Jimin were among those who had their accounts banned

A group of K-pop fans in China have become the latest victims of a crackdown on celebrity culture.

Twenty-two fan accounts have been suspended by Chinese social media site Sina Weibo for what it called “irrational star-chasing behaviour”. They include fans of Korean pop band BTS who crowdfunded on the platform to customise an aeroplane for singer Park Ji-Min’s 26th birthday.

Weibo accused one fan account of “illegal fundraising” for the stunt.

In a statement, the company said it “firmly opposes such irrational star-chasing behaviour and will deal with it seriously”.

It also pledged to “purify” online discussions and “regulate community order” on its platform. Continue reading

Mirror, the joy that HK needs

Source: NYT (8/12/21)
This Boy Band Is the Joy That Hong Kong Needs Right Now
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
The popularity of the group, called Mirror, has offered the city a rare burst of unity and pleasure after years of political upheaval.
By Vivian Wang and 

Jer Lau, a member of Mirror, the Cantopop group, during a promotional event in Hong Kong last month. Credit…Anthony Kwan for The New York Times

HONG KONG — They swarm public squares, crowd shopping malls and form lines that stretch several city blocks. They lean over barricades that strain to hold them and ignore police officers who try to corral them.

The crowds filling Hong Kong in recent weeks aren’t protesters fighting for democracy. They are devotees of the city’s hottest boy band.

For more than two years, Hong Kong has badly needed a source of uplift. First there were the mass protests of 2019, then the coronavirus pandemic, then a sweeping national security law. The city has been politically polarized and economically battered.

Enter Mirror, a group of 12 singing and dancing young men who seemingly overnight have taken over the city — and, in doing so, infused it with a burst of joy.

Their faces are plastered on billboards, buses and subway ads for everything from granola to air-conditioners to probiotic supplements. They have sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic. Hardly a weekend goes by without one of the band’s (many) fan clubs devising a flashy new form of tribute: renting an enormous LED screen to celebrate one member, decking out a cruise ship for another. Continue reading

Rain in Plural . . . and Beyond

Film: Rain in Plural . . . and Beyond
Poetry, Translations, Inkwork, and Guzheng Harp Music with Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination

From the Institute webpage and additional information:

One of the rare few English-language poets of our present times working across genres and three or more languages and cultures, Fiona Sze-Lorrain presents us poems from her latest collection Rain in Plural (Princeton University Press, 2020), and shares her ongoing processes of translation, music, and artmaking that are in parallel to her writing. In this film, she also reads bilingual poems and translations of Chinese contemporary poets Yin Lichuan and Ye Lijun, American poet Mark Strand, as well as performs a classical piece High Moon on the guzheng.

https://ideasimagination.columbia.edu/events/rain-in-plural-and-beyond

Rapper NINEONE#

Source: SupChina (5/7/21)
Chinese rapper NINEONE# says expressing empathy for men doesn’t make her anti-feminist
She’s a huge star known for her feminist hip-hop lyrics, but now Nǎi Wàn 乃万 a.k.a. NINEONE# is under fire for remarks she made onstage that some women felt undermine their quest for equality.
By Jiayun Feng

nineone

Rapper Nǎi Wàn 乃万 a.k.a. NINEONE#.

Another week, another gender debate. Or so it’s beginning to seem when it comes to the Chinese internet, where public outcry over questionable views about gender and women’s roles has become increasingly swift and loud.

This time, the lightning rod is woman rapper Nǎi Wàn 乃万, also known as NINEONE#. Her remarks at a music festival last week about the burdens men face in society touched off a firestorm of controversy. Many commenters, apparently women fed up with China’s retrograde gender dynamics, told the 24-year-old artist to “check her privilege” before preaching her understanding of gender equality.

“Boys have many dreams, too, when they are young, like becoming an athlete or a professional gamer. But when they reach 18, their goals are all about buying a house and a car,” Nai said (in Chinese) onstage last Sunday, suggesting that because men are traditionally expected to be the primary breadwinner in a relationship, they have to let their passion take a backseat when choosing careers.

And in order to free men from this dilemma, the musician went on to urge girls to have “more consideration and tolerance” for the boys they love, so that they can continue to pursue their aspirations. “Girls need to stay true to themselves as well. That’s what gender equality is really about,” she added. Continue reading

In Memory of Fou Ts’ong

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Guangchen Chen’s tribute to Fou Ts’ong (1934-2020), “The Sufferings and Greatness of a Vulnerable Artist: In Memory of Fou Ts’ong.” To read the whole essay, which includes images and video clips, click here. A teaser appears below. My thanks to Guangchen Chen for sharing with us his memories of Fou Ts’ong.

Kirk Denton, editor

The Sufferings and Greatness of a Vulnerable Artist:
In Memory of Fou Ts’ong

By Guangchen Chen


MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright March 2021)


Fu Ts’ong program note from a performance in New York in the 1965-66 season.

As if 2020 were not bad enough: about a week before Christmas, I received an email from the pianist Patsy Toh; I assumed it was her usual kind holiday greetings. Instead, it was to inform me that both she and her husband and musical partner Fou Ts’ong 傅聰 tested positive of COVID-19. Patsy seemed to be doing OK and was out of hospital already. Ts’ong would stay on for a few more days, and was expected back home for Christmas. I was shocked, knowing how reclusive they were. And I was worried: Ts’ong was 86 and a lifelong lover of pipe smoking. But I was also hopeful, because he had, until recently, always been bursting with vitality and had weathered one challenge after another through his dramatic life. But 2020 proved, right up to the end, deadly: he passed away on December 28.

Fou Ts’ong was a pianist of rare musical sensitivity and formidable cultural sophistication. Born in Shanghai in 1934, he was raised in an atmosphere steeped in learning, both East and West. He was tutored at home by his father, the eminent translator of French literature and art critic Fu Lei 傅雷,[1] who spent his formative years in Europe. Fou Ts’ong grew up in the company of old recordings made by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Edwin Fischer, and the Capet Quartet, among others. With relatively scant formal training, he debuted with the Shanghai Symphony at the age of 17. In 1953, he won the third prize at the George Enescu Competition in Romania, and then the third prize and best mazurka performance at the 1955 Chopin Competition in Poland. Subsequently, he had an international performing career that spanned almost six decades. But what distinguished him as a unique artist was his ability to combine the aesthetics of two distinctively different traditions—the Chinese and the European. Furthermore, he and his family were victims of Mao Zedong’s communism, and the pain he suffered his whole adult life can be heard in a palpable way in his music. [continue reading]

Veteran pianist Fou Ts’ong dies at 86 (3)

Fou Ts’ong was a very dear friend of mine. His passing is a great personal loss. I have been in regular contact with Fou Ts’ong’s family and a few close friends around the world since he was hospitalized. It is a huge loss for us all. And we should remember him in the proper context, though I must say China Daily‘s tone did not in the least surprise me. We are planning a commemorative issue in the forthcoming Mingpao Monthly 明報月刊. I have previously written a chapter on him and his father Fu Lei in A New Literary History of Modern China (Harvard UP, 2017, 650-656). I am also in discussion with a record company to release some of his concert performances.

Guangchen Chen <guangchen.chen@emory.edu>

Veteran pianist Fu Ts’ong dies at 86 (2)

As Magnus Fiskejö was, I was taken aback by how little was in China Daily‘s notice on Fou Ts’ong’s death and even more by the terse sentence on his famed translator father, Fu Lei. For an expansion on Fiskejö’s comment, see Richard Kraus’s chapter on Fou Ts’ong in his Pianos and Politics in China, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 70-99.

Sincerely,

Eva Chou

Veteran pianist Fou Ts’ong dies at 86 (1)

As regards China Daily‘s report and how they try to claim him and even his father, “… His father Fu Lei was a prominent writer and translator … ” … Melissa Chan today commented on Twitter, on how Chinese state media reports consistently leave out that Fou’s (Fu’s) parents were in fact tormented to death in Mao’s ‘cultural revolution.’ It’s another reminder that Chinese state media cannot be relied upon. Chan also brings up the hypocrisy of Chinese ultranationalists now berating Fou Ts’ong for living in the UK.

They probably don’t like that Fou called a spade a spade, with a very clear analysis of how its communism is really a form of fascism. See: “Fou Tsong : I wept for China.” — The hell with China. That’s the attitude!’ The famous pianist talks about the tragedy of a country led by ‘gangsters’ …

On a different note, see the tributes by Fou’s colleagues, and a clip of Fou Ts’ong playing as a young pianist:

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Veteran pianist Fou Ts’ong dies at 86

Source: China Daily (12/29/20)
Veteran pianist Fou Ts’ong, 86, dies from COVID-19
By chinadaily.com.cn/CGTN

Fou Ts’ong. [Photo/VCG]

Veteran pianist Fou Ts’ong died on Monday from COVID-19 at the age of 86, according to media reports.

Fou Ts’ong was battling COVID-19 in the UK, his student Kong Jianing confirmed on Sunday.

Fou Ts’ong was born in Shanghai on March 10, 1934. He won the third prize and the special “Mazurka Prize” at the 1955 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Since settling in London in 1958, he has performed throughout the world, earning himself the title of “Piano Poet”. Continue reading

Chinese songs that say ‘me too’

Source: SupChina (12/16/20)
Chinese songs that say ‘Me Too’
A powerful, heartbreaking anthem, the song explicitly highlights the pervasive problem of violence against women in China.
By Jiayun Feng

Few opening lines in Mandopop history pack the same punch like “Our names are not Xiao Juan / The alias is our last defense.”

The story of women facing physical and psychological abuse is not an easy one to swallow, and Tán Wéiwéi 谭维维, a Chinese singer who is known for her outspokenness on social justice issues, doesn’t sweeten any of the details in her latest single, “Xiao Juan” (小娟 xiǎojuān).

A powerful, heartbreaking anthem, the song explicitly highlights the pervasive problem of violence against women in China. Singing from the perspective of Xiao Juan, a common pseudonym used in Chinese media for unidentified or anonymous survivors of domestic abuse, Tan reckons with the unfair treatment of the victims and the lack of repercussions for their perpetrators, all while telling specific tales of women being assaulted by “fists, gasoline, and sulfuric acid.” Continue reading

Violinist blames China for losing his job

Source: NYT (9/13/20)
A Violinist Lost His Seat and His Job. He Blames China.
In a lawsuit filed in New Jersey, a former member of the well-known Shanghai Quartet said he had been dumped after a remark he made on social media was misinterpreted as an ethnic slur.
By Melena Ryzik

Yi-Wen Jiang, a violinist formerly with the Shanghai Quartet, says in a recently filed lawsuit that he was unfairly forced from the group after a remark he made on social media was mischaracterized. Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

Yi-Wen Jiang, a violinist who was, until recently, billed as a member of the Shanghai Quartet, an internationally known chamber group with roots in China, says he didn’t give the pig emoji a second thought.

Responding to a post on social media about Chinese-American relations a few months ago, he typed in the image of the smiley pig face — “the cute one,” he said — and went about his day. But his posting soon caused an outcry and he was called a bigot for what his critics said was his effort to deride the Chinese people as pigs.

Within days, Mr. Jiang had lost his job and, he said, his reputation.

Now Mr. Jiang, who has been a U.S. citizen for over two decades, has brought a lawsuit in New Jersey Superior Court, contending his offhand remark on social media was purposely distorted by those who object to his longstanding criticism of the Chinese government. Continue reading

A brief history of HK protest music

Source: LARB, China Channel (7/17/20)
A Song for Hong Kong
A brief history of Hong Kong’s protest music
By Alec Ash

Crowds at Hong Kong’s Umbrella protests, 2014. Parts of this article first appeared on the LARB China Blog in 2017. All photos by the author.

Hong Kong has long been a city of song. In the 60s and 70s it was the music bars of Wan Chai and the neon-lit karaoke joints of Kowloon. In the 80s and 90s, Cantopop became central to the city’s cultural identity (as well being go-to KTV picks in mainland China, an important form of soft power). After the handover to China in 1997 Cantopop lost its mojo – supplanted by K-Pop – but over the last ten years a new musical form has come to Hong Kong: the protest song.

Song is often married to dissent, from Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ in 1939, with its haunting arboreal imagery of lynching, to Bob Dylan’s 1963 ‘Masters of War’ at the height of US-Soviet tensions. In Hong Kong, musicians took up the mantle in response to Beijing’s slow encroachments on their freedoms, from the protest pop of Denise Ho (subject of a New Yorker profile just last year) to the crowd-sourced anthem of last year’s protests (see my LARB piece following a frontline fighter). Now a new security law muscled in by Beijing has muzzled them. To mark the city’s silencing – and in hope that its voice will still be heard – here are personal vignettes of four periods of the city’s recent history, through the prism of three songs and a silent coda. Continue reading

HK bans protest song and political expressions at schools

Source: NYT (7/8/20)
Hong Kong Bans Protest Song and Other Political Expression at Schools
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
Singing “Glory to Hong Kong,” posting slogans and forming human chains as a form of protest are banned under new guidelines issued by the city’s education secretary.
By Gerry Mullany

Students formed a human chain during a pro-democracy protest near their school in Hong Kong last month. Credit…Isaac Lawrence/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Hong Kong’s education secretary on Wednesday banned students from singing the protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong,” posting slogans with political messages or forming human chains, saying “the schools are obliged to stop” such activities.

The statement by the secretary, Kevin Yeung, ratcheted up the pressure on the pro-democracy movement as Hong Kong residents struggle to determine what is acceptable behavior under a strict new national security law that China imposed on the semiautonomous territory last week.

Students, including middle schoolers, have been a driving force in Hong Kong’s protest movement. Beijing’s imposition of the national security law last Wednesday — and the subsequent arrests of teenagers at protests — has led some families to express concerns that their children could be in jeopardy for singing pro-democracy songs or even for expressing such sentiments in their homes. Continue reading