Mandarin Course

Chinese Music Hottest 3 — Star Bright, Star Light 星光燦爛

Lyrics Starry Night You are like a gust of wind gently blowing, blow open a spring in my mind like fireworks. You are like a river quietly flows, churn up minute waves in the heart. Just like been through the desert single and alone, hastily leave once loneliness at first sight of happiness. Just like the outcome of flowers blosomming at the blink of eye, all the worries were cast aside in the cold. Moon curved curved hanging on heaven and earth, you looked looked with many new and beautiful discoveries. I singing singing songs always so sweet, you free free forget all sadness, enjoying runing wild. I want more of the brilliant starlight, I want more of self courageousness. I am not afraid of the long nights in the future, because everything is simple once there are dreams. I want more of the brilliant starlight, I want more of self courageousness. because there is wind and rain more blue the sky, because everything is simple once one can fly.

2007.02.18 Street Singing Boy in Lhasa, Tibet

This is a clip from HDV footage filmed in Lhasa, Tibet during the Tibetan New Year in 2007. During the New Years season, pilgrims from around Tibet gather in Lhasa, the Tibetan regional capital, to visit holy sites. Street peddlers, entertainers and beggars throng the streets to financially benefit from these pilgrims and tourists. Monks are seen to give generous hand-outs to the poor during the New Years. We were solicited by a family of street musicians, who could speak broken English in addition to Tibetan and Chinese. The young boy alternates between Chinese popular songs and Tibetan songs. We later found out that one of the songs was “Xiao Wei – Little Rose”, a love song originally sung by a Malaysian Chinese pop star. Seeing that our crew was from the West, the boy alters part of the Mandarin lyrics to sing, “I wish could go to America with you”, which causes the audience to laugh. The next song that he sings is in a non-standard Tibetan dialect, and our translators could not make out the words from the recording. Towards the end of the clip, a local Chinese policeman carrying a long stick approaches the family, and the young boy is instructed by his mother to hide the money he has received. The tension among the police and the multitudes of pilgrims is tangible during this season. The young boy’s singing in this clip has since been re-mixed into a station ID sound byte at the podcast “i-morley”. It has been heard by thousands of listeners. Other sounds recorded in …