"Wine Dry If Sold Without" is the theme song of the 1983 movie "Hitchhiking on the Wrong Train", which tells the story of Uncle Mute, a war veteran, and his abandoned baby. In the winter of 1958, Uncle Mute retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a high-class residential area and named her Mei. Since then, Uncle Mute has been a father and a mother, a father and a daughter, struggling through hard times and poverty, and raising Ah Mei on a meager income.
With the help of a young composer, Shi Junmai, Ah Mei became a popular singer. Unexpectedly, after Mei became famous, she forgot the kindness of her mute uncle to her. At a concert, Shi Junmai wanted to see Ami's father when he was near Ami's house. Walking up to Ami's father's window, a neighbor told Shi Junmai about how Ami's father used the trumpet sound of "Wine Dried and Sold for Nothing" to make Ami joyful since she was a child. Shi Junmai got inspired and instead of meeting Ami's father, he immediately went back to his home, and in order to awaken Ami, he wrote a song for her, which is this song "Wine Dried and Sold for Nothing".
Shijunmai mailed the song to her a few days before the concert. When Mei read the lyrics, she cried bitterly and kept learning the song, and all the scenes of her father's hard work in raising her came back to her like a tidal wave. Instead of complying with her manager's arrangement, May sang the song "Wine is Dry if Sold Without", which offended the agency but firmly showed her guilt and repentance for her past life, regretting that she had taken the wrong ride on the road of life.
Expanded Information:
Jiu Gan If You Sell Nothing is a Southern Fujianese saying, roughly meaning "Do you have any bottles of wine for sale". People in southern Fujian and Taiwan who buy discarded bottles and sell them to recycling centers for a small profit walk the streets while shouting "Wine is dry, if you sell nothing". If anyone has empty bottles to sell, he or she will call out to the waste collector.
The song "Wine Dried and Sold for Nothing" is in Minnan, but there are two typos. Southern Fujian retains many elements of ancient Chinese, and there are many words that can't be written if you don't know ancient Chinese, such as "干" (dry) and "倘" (if) in the song's title, which are misspelled words. "The correct word for 'dry' is '瓨' (sounding the same as Xiang), which appeared in Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian" 2,000 years ago and means wine bottle; '倘' should be '倘' (sounding the same as Xiang). should be '当', as it is used in the Nineteen Ancient Poems", which is phonetically translated into "干" and "倘" because many people do not understand it. ".
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