In the late 1930s, when Wang Luobin was performing in the Hexi Corridor in Gansu as part of the propaganda for the Northwest War Troupe, he recorded a Xinjiang folk song called Yariya from a Uyghur merchant from Xinjiang. It is a folk song that has been circulating in the southern Xinjiang region
"Lift Your Cover" dance
.
Wang Luobin recorded the origin of this folk song in his "Musical Notes": "This dance is a kind of vernacular game in the southern Xinjiang. During the fall harvest, when resting on the wheat field
, an old man puts on a woman's costume and head covering, and then makes a twisting movement. A youth sings and dances beside him, and at last lifts the cover, only to see that it turns out to be a gray-haired old man,
and everyone bursts into laughter and then goes on with their labor." This vernacular game, which originated in the rural areas of the southern border, is a form of entertainment invented by people to amuse and relieve themselves during labor, and has little artistic value in itself.
Soon after the Qinghai Children's Antiwar Drama Troupe was founded, Wang Luobin, who worked as a music teacher at the Kunlun Hui Min Middle School in Xining, was busy writing programs for the children to perform. He found out the folk song "Yariya" that he had recorded in Hexi
and planned to use the music and dance material of this vernacular game to write a song-and-dance program for the troupe's children, who would sing and dance at the same time. According to custom, the bride's head can only be lifted once
when she marries. But Wang Luobin had the ingenious idea of having the bride's head lifted four times in a row. When performing on stage, each time the head is lifted up, there will be a different artistic effect. [2]