The sky that you look up to is the sky of a man
The young man who used to dream under the starry sky
Didn't know how high the sky was, didn't know how far the sea was
But swore that I would take you far away from home to Hainan
The irresponsible vow, the young and wild one
I realized my vulnerability when I got lost in the darkness.
Looking at your eyes red from crying, I thought of my home away from home
The stars in the sky, please light a lamp of hope for me
The stars light a lamp, light up my home
Let the lost children find their way
The stars light a lamp, light up my future
With a little bit of light, I warmed up a child's heart
The sky is a dirty one, but now it's a dirty one.
The stars are no longer visible in the civilized sky
The sky is not high and the sea is not far away
The heart of a man is higher than the sky and farther than the sea
Learning to lie and chase after fame and fortune
Lost in the reality, I realized my own vulnerability
Watching you leave in tears and thinking of the future of my life
We have to be careful not to let the world get in our way.
The stars in the distance, please light a lamp of hope for me
The stars light a lamp, light up my home
Let the lost children find their way
The stars light a lamp, light up my future
With a little bit of light, I warmed up the children's hearts
Many years later, a downpour of rain awakened me from a deep slumber
Suddenly, the city's rainbow no longer shone
Suddenly the city's rainbow no longer shone
It was the first time I had ever seen the sky, and it was the only time I saw the sun shining.
Suddenly the rainbow in the city stopped shining
A faint star peeked out of the sky
Your eyes are still waiting for me from afar
The stars light up my home
Let the lost children find their way
The stars light up my journey
The stars light up my journey
With a little bit of light, I warm up a child's heart
The stars light up my home
The stars light up my home
A little bit of light, I warm up a child's heart
If you want to categorize his works, I think they can be divided into two categories: realistic lyricism and pure lyricism. Among them, the realistic lyricism category can be further divided into two sub-categories: strong narrative and weak narrative. Maybe this classification is not very precise, but it should still be basically in place. There are not many strong narrative works in the realistic lyricism category, only "Fei and His Woman", "Thirty-Three Blocks", "About Promise", "Your Birthday" and a few others. Among them, the most narrative works are "Fei and His Woman" and "About Promise". This is because these two pieces appear to have narrative elements such as time, place, characters, events, and even the basic outline of the main character's personality is sketched out.
Weakly narrative works, on the other hand, there are many, such as "Middle Class", "Cramming Pending", "The Story of the Youngest", "The Grand National", "Game of Thrones", "Stars and Lights", "The Silence of the Lambs" and so on, and it can be said that the vast majority of Zheng Zhihua's works belong to this category: neither fully narrative, nor fully lyrical. Even the so-called purely lyrical works of this category, in fact, many of them can be seen a little bit of narrative shadow, but it is very light, drowned in the strong lyrical colors. In this category are "Shanghai Tang", "Single Escape", "Tell Me", "Twist Discernment", "Let the Wind Blow", "A Man Like Me", "Let Me Embrace You Into My Dreams", "Use My Whole Lifetime to Forget", etc. Most of the purely lyrical works are love affairs, but they are very light and drowned in strong lyrical colors. Most of the purely lyrical works are love songs, second in number only to the weakly narrative category. One of the characteristics of this kind of works is that you can hardly see any realism on the surface, but you can clearly feel a very strong reality. It is hidden behind the lyrical text, from time to time from the lyrical text through a few breath.
Regardless of which type of Zheng Zhihua's works, in fact, can be categorized under the banner of realism. Realism is a literary technique, and it seems a bit inappropriate to use it to describe Zheng Zhihua's lyrics, but it's not. His lyrics can be read as literary works with a strong literary character. They can even be divided into different literary genres.
"The Great Nation" is so intense in its wording, so blunt in its revelations, and so sharp in its criticisms, that I am afraid that only Lu Xun's miscellaneous essay, "On the Surprise of the Friendship Gang," can be compared to it. Such as "a small island / dirty Taipei / corrupt officials cover the sky / beautiful lies said how many times / said never realized / propaganda slogans that everyone has money / the gap between the rich and the poor pretend not to see / this is no longer a good person to live on the island / etiquette, integrity and shame is not as important as the money dart / this is no longer a suitable for the poor to live on the island / a lifetime of hard work can not even buy a house. " I dare not say that Zheng Zhihua has the talent and thoughts like Lu Xun, but I should say that he has the guts like Lu Xun. The lyrics criticize are pinpointed and to the point, expressing the deep hatred of a righteous young man for the ugly politics of **** back then. This is considered an excellent essay.
"Fei and his woman" is a typical realism miniature novel. It is about the main character Fei and his woman in the cruel reality of the environment desperately struggling to live a good life but to no avail, so that the two finally had to decide to break up the tragedy of love. When performing this song, Zheng Zhihua pressed the low noise and told this bleak love tragedy without any hesitation. I think not only me, but every compassionate person will have his/her soul trembling when he/she hears this song for the first time. It's as if the main character is standing in front of your eyes, crying sadly, or as if you are the main character, suddenly getting up from bed in the darkness of the night, and then for some reason losing your voice and crying. When you listen to this song, you will also feel the cruelty of reality, so cruel that "Fei and his woman to survive to the wine escort to make money." When Zheng Zhihua sings this lyric, he purposely increases the tone of his voice to show his anger, yet he quickly lowers his voice and goes on to sing, "Living in this real world / It's inevitable that I have to learn to give up a little bit of my dignity." The author actually buried his great pain and anger in the bottom of his heart, spitting out such an indisputable fact in the sorrowful yet calm tone of a weathered old man. It was not his wish, but it was done. Why? Because he could not allow himself to become so emotionally overwhelmed that he could not manage it, and ended up in an awkward state of aphasia. Here the author becomes an actor who lifts the weight.
In describing Fei's daily life, the author accurately and sensitively captured two pieces of the above. "Fei's temper became worse and worse / often alone, feeling sorry for himself / only secretly shed tears when drunk / hugging a woman to fantasize about his future / Fei and his character became more and more strange / often woke up in the middle of the night from a dream / sometimes found that the woman beside him was not there / groping for his sorrow alone in the darkness." Fei, as a member of the lower class, wants to get rid of his poor and humiliating life as soon as possible, but the author explains in the beginning the reality that "Fei used to be full of ideals / and still nothing has been accomplished". Fei wants to get rid of it, but there is no way to get rid of it. He does not want to live in humiliation, but he can only live in humiliation. He can do nothing about it, although it makes him suffer a lot, but has been bitterly suppressed. Because reason told him that he could not be at the mercy of the pain. But the more he suppressed it, the more he suffered, so he became self-hating. How he wished to find something to dissipate the pain, and as a result he found alcohol. He tried his best to soak himself in alcohol without thinking about what the future of his love for his woman would be. It wasn't that he didn't know that their love could only end in tragedy in the harsh reality. He just didn't want to think about it, didn't want to let himself carry another painful burden. Then just fantasize, fantasize about them finally living a good and happy life. It would be a happy thing for them even if they daydreamed about it. The word "hold" in the phrase "held the woman and fantasized about his future" accurately describes Fei's fear of losing his woman. Losing his woman is the most horrible thing for Fei, she is the only person he can rely on and get comfort in real life, he must hold her tightly so as not to let anything tear them apart. Because if once lost her, Fei's world will be how, that is unimaginable.
After the conclusion of the first installment, a second one follows. Fei wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes that his woman is not there, and the fear of her leaving him forever immediately fills his mind like a river breaking its banks. Maybe his woman was only temporarily gone, but Fei, always skeptical, was inclined to imagine the worst. So all at once he was at a loss for words, his hands groping involuntarily as he tried to feel for something in the darkness that he could rely on, yet all he could feel was his sorrow.
The end of the story eventually came, and it could only be a breakup. "Fei and that woman of his / Finally decided to leave after all / She still loves her man dearly / But this kind of man won't give her a future." The breakup that Fei was most afraid of happened irreversibly, so "Fei's life has lost its dependence since then / Like a child abandoned by its mother / But the proud man has long been spoiled / He still doesn't know how to realize that his original nature has not changed." Fei is desperate and becomes a nihilist in love: "Fei has lost his woman / As if he had lost his soul / He no longer believes in the so-called love / He y resents the woman who left him." Fei does not know that his woman is still y in love with him, waiting for the happy future he can give her. The author thus feels y sorry for Fei: "Ignorant Fei when will you grow up/when will you be able to carry a man's responsibility/do you know that when a woman commits her life to you/she may leave but she is still waiting."
Zheng Zhihua extremely descriptive, the kind of mourning, bleak atmosphere to express the most, thrilling. The arguments in it complement each other. The whole song is tearful and thought-provoking. In just a few hundred words, it concentrates extremely rich thoughts and feelings, which requires a high level of artistic expression, far beyond the reach of ordinary people. In this sense, Zheng Zhihua is a real artist, not just a singer.
Single Escape is a deep love poem, one of Zheng Zhihua's best love songs. The whole poem is centered around the word "love", which expresses the grief of a lost lover. The title already points out the main idea. "Single" means in a state of lost love; "fleeing" means in a state of pain. Because "single" so "escape".
"A man walks toward a long street/ A man walks toward a cold night/ A man is running away from something/ It is not other people but himself/ A man is afraid of something/ It is not cold but loneliness/ A man walks toward a cold street/ A man walks toward a long night/ A man wants to pursue something/ It is not the truth but a phantom/ A man wants to conquer something/ It is not the world but love. " The lost lover carries the pain of lost love in the midnight and wanders the streets. "Long streets/cold nights/cold to be/long nights/crossed and entangled space of time/no feeling of feeling." The poem concludes by explaining the essence of "street" and "night," i.e., "intertwined and entangled time and space." Both the spatial "street" and the temporal "night" are long and cold, and the two become a contradictory unity that can be replaced by each other. But this is just the feeling of the main character in the poem. But why does the protagonist feel this way? I am afraid it is the result of pain, and it is the result of the pain of lost love. This kind of pain is so deep that it makes the protagonist have the degree of "feeling without feeling". The depth of pain is numbness. Of course, there is a reason and a process for the pain to develop to this point.
In the beginning, the main character's four pursuits of himself are all directed to the subject-object world of "love", while ignoring the objective world of "existence". "What one is running away from/It is not someone else but oneself/ What one is afraid of/It is not the cold but loneliness". These two questions point negatively to love. To run away from oneself is to be afraid to face up to the pain of lost love, and to be afraid of solitude is to be afraid of enduring the loneliness of lost love. Both of them indirectly show that the protagonist refuses to accept the loss of love, and his soul still longs to wander in the happy world of love, but the ruthless reality gives him only the loss of love, and he has to accept it, thus suffering. " What one wants to pursue / is not reality is phantom / What one wants to conquer / is not the world is love." The two questions point affirmatively to love, and the pursuit of the phantom is to relive the romance of being in love, even though it is unreal, but he would rather give up the real objective world and pursue the subjective world of nothingness. This is just as Nietzsche said, "One would rather pursue tiger nothing than nothing." Conquering love is to want to have each other, in his opinion, each other and the world contrast, the former is more important, so he wants to conquer love, not want to conquer the world, these two questions directly indicate that in the protagonist of the hunger for love, but the reality is still not able to satisfy his desire, when the desire to realize again, he is more painful.
Since the wish of the subjective world has failed, he turns to the objective world to find comfort, but what does he see? "The midnight light / lengthened my figure / the passers-by / in the fog can not see." What he sees is a lonely lamp, a single shadow, and night fog. All of these were things that made him feel doubly lonely and lost, and so the pain deepened further in his heart. As if reacting instinctively, he immediately turned from the objective world to the subjective world again. "Faded love drifts with the wind / When will the wandering feet stop." "Hot lips / Lure me to make another mistake / Obsessive eyes / Can't keep a fickle heart / Beautiful lies / I'll never believe them again / Extinguished flames / Like my cooling passion." Returning to the subjective world is encountered in imagination and remembrance. Imagination is grounded in the present facing the future. But the present is a time when the love affair is gone with the wind and the future is beyond speculation. Memories are oriented toward the past, but the past is only a vivid memory of a sad past. Imagination and memories are entangled with the loss of love, and the protagonist's pain deepens.
The whole poem is based on the deepening of the main character's pain as a clue, from the beginning to the end of the end of the pain he experienced -- more pain -- further pain -- further pain -- numb such a process. -- numbness such a process. The things mentioned in the poem are focused on the bull's eye of pain. For example, the long and cold street and night, the lonely lamp, the single shadow, the night fog, the cold wind. There is not a word about pain in the poem, but the listener or reader can feel the deep pain of the protagonist. The author hides the pain between the lines and reveals it once he listens to or reads it, which should be said that this is an excellent poem of bitterness without revealing it.
Zheng Zhihua's songs of realism style, not only in the diversity of the body, but also in the diversity of the subject, his lyrics broke the pop songs in the past laugh also love, cry also love, joy also love, sadness also love a single content mode, from the real life to extract material, write others have not written something. He wrote all the meaningful things he saw, heard, thought and felt into his lyrics, describing the hardships of life, thinking and feeling about life, exposing the ills of the society, satirizing the rich and unkind, criticizing the corrupt politics, reflecting on his inner loss, and depicting and sighing about love. The topics are varied, but always rooted in real life, and can be combined with narrative, description, lyricism, discussion and other modes of expression, expanding the expressive power of the lyrics. His songs have featured all kinds of characters. There are big spenders, unemployed people, middle-class people, **** women, bar girls, students, gamblers, opera singers, miners and so on. These characters became the protagonists of the picture scroll of life of the times created by Zheng Zhihua, reflecting the social reality of a certain period of time in **** in a more comprehensive way.
If most of the singers in RTHK are "Angel" who floats above the reality with their love fantasies, then Zheng Zhihua is an "ascetic" who treks through the harsh waters of reality; if most of the pop songs are "colorful" but light and fluffy, then Zheng Zhihua is an "ascetic" who treks through the harsh waters of reality; if most of the pop songs are "colorful" but light and fluffy, then Zheng Zhihua is an "ascetic" who treks through the harsh waters of reality. If the majority of pop songs are some colorful but light soap bubbles, then Zheng Zhihua's songs are solid and heavy lead. From his songs, we can hear sad memories, helpless reality, superficial debauchery, inner sincerity, ruthless irony, sharp criticism, profound self-analysis, unyielding resistance, and deep sympathy.
"Twisted Braid" is about a memory of love passing away in the wind and rain of reality. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, is a piece of self-deprecation. There are a few paragraphs of the author's inner confession, "The rich one is the boss/the poor one is sad to live/even if I don't like to see it/what can I do." "The smile is too sweet/The tears are too salty/The alliance will inevitably change in the end/The troubles are too many/The future is too far away/Why don't you accompany me to debauch and play with the world." On the surface this song seems to be a cynical approach to life due to the helplessness of reality. In reality it is nothing more than an antidote and a bitter laugh at the sinking ego. As we can see in "Silence of the Lambs", what is written in "Game of Thrones" is just a kind of superficial debauchery, but in fact the author's heart is naked and unyielding against all the pressures of real life. "When there are more and more enemies and my friends have left me, he says, "I am not a silent lamb/I have something to say/Give me a little wine/Let me have the courage/Spill my sorrows to you." This shows that deep down in his heart he is unable to let go of his concern for reality, and under the pressure of life, he still has something to say" and will never give in. In the end, the author declares, "Even lambs roar / Silence is a strength / Are you like me / Learning to be strong in reality." A brilliant piece of satire, "The Problem of Face" is an incomparably pungent and unflinching satire on the big spenders who show off and show off in front of the general public, whose ugly faces are portrayed by Zheng Zhihua. "For a little bit of vanity, they fight to the death / Throwing away a lot of money without frowning and without changing their faces / In front of people and behind them, they compare high and low / In the end, it's just a matter of saving face." The author deliberately sarcasm to them in both English and Chinese. "I give your face, you don't want face/ You lose your face/I turn my face." It's a blast to listen to songs like this. As for the sharp criticisms in "Grand National" have been discussed before, so I won't repeat them here. However, it should be added that Zheng Zhihua's sharp criticism of reality is usually associated with profound self-analysis. He himself once said, "If I am destined to write songs for this land, then I must begin with myself." His critique is a double-edged sword, pointing both to the darkness of the real world outside and to the world of the mind within himself. From the very beginning his songs were directed first to the darkness of the world of the mind. The Story of the Youngest is an example of this, as discussed earlier. I would like to discuss a few more examples on this point here, because I think it is the best thing in Jung's songs.
"The Opera Man Who Fell in Tears" is the song that shows the most depth and comprehensiveness in this regard. The image of the opera singer is portrayed in a very real and touching way. There is a double point in the song, one is to the real-life actors, and the other is to the author himself. The double pointing also produces double criticism. This criticism in the song has a broad social meaning, revealing the pain behind the glory of the star's life. The lyrics of the whole song are showing the other side of the pain of the star's life. Since the lyrics are too long, only a part of them will be quoted here. "When the lights come on / Forget the nervous trembling / Forget the dignity and perseverance / Bow your head in reality / The colorful stage / The floating and sinking career / The crowd is gradually dispersing / The loneliness of facing the falling curtain." "The time of great popularity / No time to rest / No original self / Bowed down in fame and fortune / Luxurious surliness and profligacy / Empty restlessness and degradation." At the end of the song, the author thus triggers a deafening exclamation of life: "Who is writing this play of life / A lifetime of true and false acting out riddles / Is everyone wearing a mask / Acting out a play they don't want to act."
If "The Players in Tears" completely combines the critique of reality and the critique of oneself seamlessly into an inseparable whole, then "The Sailor" and "The Stars and Lights" naturally transitions from this critique to the other critique, "The present piece of sky/is a dirty piece of sky/the stars are in the civilized sky/can't be seen anymore/the sky is actually not high/the sea is actually not high. The sky is actually not high / The sea is actually not far away / The human heart is actually higher than the sky / Farther away than the sea / Learning to lie to others / Chasing fame and fortune, I am / Lost in reality / Only then did I realize my own fragility." ("The Stars Spotlight") "Nowadays, I / Life is like acting / Saying words that don't mean what they say / Wearing a mask of hypocrisy / Always deceiving myself with insignificant achievements / Always somehow feeling a pang of emptiness / Always relying on a little bit of alcoholic anesthesia to be able to go to sleep." "Searching for proof of life / The city's asphalt is too hard / No tracks can be trodden / Proud and ignorant modern man / Doesn't know how to cherish / That spoiled sea and sky and earth." ("Sailor") These quoted lyrics reflect the sordid social environment and my decadent life within it, and are very reflective and critical of the latter. It is particularly noteworthy that as early as 1992, when "Sailor" was written, the author was very conscious of the environmental pollution problem. Although there is only one sentence: "Proud and ignorant modern people / don't know how to cherish / the ocean and the sky and the earth that have been spoiled by civilization." But it contains the author's deep concern. I'm afraid this is unique in the pop songs of that time.
The last point to be made about Zheng Zhihua's lyrics is "deep sympathy". This should be his songs can cause the majority of listeners **** the most critical factors. His sympathy is mainly oriented to the bottom of the society, the edge of the people, to such a number of aberrant people choose to humiliate the survival, expressed full understanding. He y knows that such a choice is not what they want, but the reality forces them to do so, which is not their fault, and what is really at fault is some other people. Almost every one of Zheng Zhihua's realistic lyrical works is filled with deep sympathy for them. Which song is not like that, "Fallen Angel", "Fei and His Woman", "Your Birthday"? Before the text of his autobiography, Fallen Angels, Zheng Zhihua had this to say:
"Fallen Angels is a song and a true story.
"Fallen Angel" is about a woman of the world who has been played by reality and love, on both sides. For the sake of reality, she played a **** woman; for the sake of love, she played a mother. This life, she played a child, played a woman, played many roles, but she never played herself.
He's a great actor, but a lousy screenwriter.
Fallen Angels may be a trope, it may epitomize it, but from her, one can capture a split-screen earth, a split-screen era, a split-screen you and me."
This passage gives a clearer picture of the tragic fate of the song's disheveled-faced, fashionably dressed, heavily made-up heroine and the author's deep sympathy for her. Zheng Zhihua knows that he can't change the fate of people like this heroine, Fei and his woman, his friend in "Your Birthday", etc. The only thing he can do is to record the tragedy, so that these people who are living in humiliation can be understood, sympathized, blessed and helped by the world.