mandarinretro

Album art for Yao Surong (姚苏蓉) Love is Forever 不變的情. Released 1971 by Crown Records.

A rare Mandarin cover of a Vietnamese song! I have always loved this song by my favourite Taiwanese 70s star Yang Hsiao-ping and wondered what "Famous Vietnamese Song" (越南名曲) on the album art was alluding to. There was nothing online in Chinese but I solved the mystery on Vietnamese Wikipedia. The original song is by Khánh Ly, who shot to fame as a protest singer during the Vietnam War.

空 kong1 means "empty" in Mandarin but was borrowed into Vietnamese, where it became the standard negator "no" (không). So here the chorus escapes mostly unscathed! Yang sings one verse in Vietnamese. The song was also covered by Teresa Teng.

Some lyrics from the Mandarin version:

"Empty, empty, my dream is already void

Empty, empty, you've gone away - where is your shadow?

Like a dark night, not a glimpse of light

Lonely with nobody to rely on, I love you all on my own

Like floating duckweed in the ocean

You Ya - Just Live Through the Day For You (1971), words and music by Liu Jiachang. Part of a putative "Spaghetti Western Wave" of Mandopop in the "Free Asia" region during the 60s-70s.

"Just live through the day for you

That is my heart's desire

Don't let my heart break, knowing it won't end

Why let this resentment carry on?

However many lovelorn doubts are buried in my heart