"Water Runs Down the Little River" is a folk song from Mizhi Town, Maidu County, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province.
"Water from the Little River" is a folk song composed by Yin Yigong in 1947 after collecting and organizing Yunnan folk song materials, and is known as the "Oriental Serenade". 1989, Huang Hong won the first Golden Record Award for her solo performance of the song. 2011, Yunnan folk songs represented by "Water from the Little River" were listed on the national list of the most famous Yunnan folk songs. Maidu Folk Song was listed on the national intangible cultural heritage list.
On April 26, 2019, Yunnan Starlight Lemon Film and Television Culture and Media Co., Ltd. and Maidu County Tourism Investment and Development Co., Ltd. signed a co-production agreement for the movie "Water Flowing from the Little River" at the county cultural hall, deciding to shoot a movie of the same name as the song. on September 10, 2020, using the song as a blueprint for the creation of a stage art creation project by the National Art Fund -- the opera "Water Flowing from the Little River".
Background:
The creation of the song is controversial. The first is that the song was written by Yin Yigong, a member of Yunnan University's Nanfeng Chorus, who organized and adapted two Yunnan folk songs, "Sheepherding" and "The Moon is Bright", and was inspired by a song that he heard Hua Mingbang, a member of the Nanfeng Chorus, humming on a moonlit night, which he sang repeatedly and modified.
After writing the piece, Jiang Ruasi, the founder of Yunnan University's South Wind Chorus, named it "The Little River Runs Through the Water". According to another theory, "Water Runs Down the River" is not a folk song collected and organized by Yin Yigong, but a song composed by Gao Liang, who wrote the tune "Rice Planting in Big Fields" in 1943 while he was working for the underground party in Yunnan's Mengzi County.
Mao Ziliang, another underground party member, wrote the lyrics. In 1947, Gao Liang's student Hua Mingbang joined Yunnan University's Nanfeng Choir, and by chance, a choir member, Yin Yigong, heard Hua Mingbang sing the song and recorded it. Afterward, the choir's initiator, Jiang Ruashu, named it Little River Runs Through Water.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Water from the Little River