#fayewang

concerts VS campaigning

Tonight is the eve of Spring Festival which is a very important festival in Chinese culture. This song's lyrics was originally written by a very famous poet in Song dynasty called 苏轼 (Su Shi). The popular poem format at that is 词 are usually sung along with music in a particular way according to the epigraph name, and that is why most poems of Song are not like the ones in previous poems of Tang with the same number of characters in every sentences.

Thanks to the English subtitle in the video, the meaning of the lyrics can be clear through it. The singer, Faye Wang, has high reputation in Chinese popular music scene because of her beautiful and unique voice. This concert was held in Hongkong so that she spoke Cantonese in the video. However, Teresa Teng as the original presenter of this song, also grew up and became famous in Taiwan. 

The moon is always mentioned when Chinese poets are expressing their homesick. This poet can be one of the most fabulous poems talking about moon and connecting it with some feelings about life.

-------------------updated on 30th March----------------------

This video is very interesting to me now because the singer spoke Cantonese on the stage, but the song itself is written in Mandarin. However, when I went to the EASON'S LIFE concert in the O2 Arena the day before yesterday, the singer who also speaks a lot of Cantonese mixed with Mandarin and English made me extremely confused and uncomfortable. At that time I suddenly understood what my supervisor said to me: language is power. 

The same problem might exist in some other social campaigning or movement. When people say that there is no limit or transnational boundary in music world and regard the taste as a common or natural response to a particular kind of art, I would argue that the popular music industry is not that pure and simple. Which social media platform those popular singers and their public relationship teams need to pay more attention to depends on where the market is, which could be Facebook, Twitter but also Weibo. On the other hand, people may not be satisfied by just listening to the concerts especially when they cannot understand the language just like me.