The spring breeze
Why my heart is annoyed by the spring breeze
I can't tell
I borrowed the wine to send you off
The night rain is freezing
The rain is reflecting in the photos
Turning back seems to be a dream
Unable to flick
Fascinated by staring at you
Faded photos
Everything is in the photos
They are all in the photos, but they are not in the photos. p>
E...
Like a flower that's not red
Like ice that's not frozen
But it's like there's a million things to say
It's a shame I can't understand you
E...
It's the glass of wine that's getting thicker
Or the vacuum in my heart
How can I feel the vibration
In the photo
That can be cast in the photo
Wish I could find it
Cracks in the time
Nightly indulgence
To tell you that it's hard for me to find you
Returning back to the past is also a dream
It's still like passivity
It's a dream.
Evading gazing at you
But y imprinted in my mind
You know, Jacky Cheung's song is about a mysterious name to the Chinese people in the 1930s -
Lee Heung Lan, and it's hard for anyone under 40 to relate to the slow-burning, melancholy atmosphere, because Shanghai at that time was a very busy place in China's history, and it's not a place for people to be. It's hard for anyone under 40 to relate to the slow-burning atmosphere, because Shanghai at the time was a gaping hole in China's cultural sensibilities that had never existed before. Shanghai was a gap in China's cultural sensibilities that had never existed before, a place where the influx of imported cultures and the new Chinese culture collided. However, through the eyes of the singer, we may be able to get a glimpse of some of the intriguing circumstances of the time.
Japanese born in China
Lee had already found and recognized her own twinkle in order to make a name for herself in Shanghai. Her original name was Yamaguchi Shuko, and her family called her Dou Dou. A native of Japan, she was born on Feb. 12, 1920, in North Yantai, near Fengtian (present-day Shenyang) in China's Liaoning province, and soon moved her family to Fushun. Her grandfather, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, had been a keen student of Chinese studies since childhood and admired ancient Chinese culture, so he came to China from his native Saga Prefecture in 1906 and lived there for a long time. At the time of her birth, the pseudo-Manchukuo state was established under the banner of "Five Races", and many Japanese thought that a new era was about to begin, but the opposite was true.
Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, was nominally the head of the pseudo-Manchukuo, but in reality he was only a puppet, and the real power was held by the Japanese Kwantung Army, which abused and killed innocent people and made the people's lives unbearable. Witnessing the devastation of China, his father, Fumio Yamaguchi, who worked for the Shenyang Railway Bureau, and his mother, Ai Ishibashi, who also admired Chinese culture, were very sad but helpless, and could only pin their hopes for Sino-Japanese friendship on their daughter, who was born in China. They promised her to their good friend General Li Jichun, then president of the Shenyang Bank, to be their adopted daughter. Li Jichun gave her the name Li Xianglan, which was his pen name, and later Li Xianglan became her stage name.
In 1943, the young and naive Li Xianglan, full of love for China and Japan, and longing for the future life, came to Beiping and studied in Beiping Yiyi Girls' High School under the name of "Pan Shuhua". Pan" was the surname of her father's sworn brother, Pan Zhengsheng, who was the mayor of Tianjin at that time; "Shu" was derived from the name of Yamaguchi Shuko; and "Hua" was the name of her father's brother, Pan Shuhua. "Hua" means born in China. This name of course also contains the hope that China and Japan are friendly **** meaning.
Beijing Yiyi teaching girls high school, is a high school, junior high school for girls complete. It was there that she received a good education, laying the foundation for her future acting career. She wrote in the book "the first half of my life - Li Xianglan biography" recorded the situation of learning: "I came from the Northeast to join relatives, as a Chinese - the goddaughter of the Pan family - - on the Yiyi teaching girls' school. -I went to the Yiyiqiao Girls' School, named Pan Shuhua ...... When I went to school, the three of us traveled together, and when I left school, I was sometimes the only one left. In those days, I used to stop by Beihai Park, practicing my Chinese pronunciation or looking up dictionaries on the uninhabited island, as well as going to the distant Tai Temple."
Because she was born beautiful, spoke fluent Chinese, and had a beautiful singing voice, when "the Li family had a daughter who was growing up", her artistic talent and special origin were soon recognized by the pseudo-"Manchurian Film Association", which was manipulated and planned by the Japanese invaders. They mobilized her to join the association. They mobilized her to join the association and decided to package her as a Chinese singer to promote the invasion policy. Young and ignorant, her heart full of infinite hope for the pseudo "Manchukuo", in Japan Fengtian Radio new program "Manchuria New Songs" sang "Fisherman's Daughter", "Zhaojun Complaints", "Meng Jiangnu" and other Chinese songs, and even more famous with a song "night to the incense" and. As a result, the "singer Li Xianglan" was brought to the forefront and quickly became a household name in both the singing and movie worlds, becoming a "superstar". After she became a big star, Li Xianglan acted in a number of movies that propagandized for the Japanese army or whitewashed the Japanese war of aggression. At the time, everyone thought she was Chinese, which also brought her misfortune later.
With the escalating war of Japanese invasion of China and the outbreak of the Pacific War, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Japan became the enemy of the world's people and fell deep into the quagmire. On one side was the killing spirit, on the other side was the song and dance, in the sword, her singing voice like adulterated ecstasy wine, in soothing people's soul at the same time also wear down its exuberant fighting spirit. Despite the chaos, her popularity continued to grow. In the early days of the Pacific War, her performance at the Nippon Theater was so enthusiastically received by the audience that seven and a half circles of fans surrounded her, causing chaos and making the news a sensation. At that time, she received a letter from Kenichiro Matsuoka, the eldest son of the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yoichi Matsuoka. The letter said, "The value of a person cannot be measured by the presence or absence of fame. The value of a person does not show on the surface of a person, and you should value yourself. Now is the time when personal values are being fooled, and you must respect yourself even more, or you will only be at the mercy of the country's current situation. I hope you will always respect and love yourself." These words are intriguing. In one of the darkest periods of Japan's history, the son of Foreign Minister Matsuoka, who was designated a war criminal after the war, wrote such a letter to an actress posing as a Chinese (or "Manchurian") who was working for Japan's Far East policy. This gives a sense of both the strength and the weakness of liberalism. It can only serve as a form of resistance, and will not come to fruition.
Fluent in Chinese and Japanese, with a stunning appearance and a European vocal singing voice like that of the then Hollywood jade starlet Deanna Dupin, she fully embodied the Japanese vision of the ideal Chinese woman. In this way, Li Xianglan became the "sugar-coated bomb" of the Kwantung Army's war policy.
The Years of the Singer
Li Xianglan's experience was unique. Although she was a pseudo-Chinese actress created by the Japanese, made films promoting Japan's Far East policy to console the Japanese army, and became a goodwill emissary to Japan from the Japanese side in the pseudo-Manchurian, China, these were not
enough to erase the totality of her artistic accomplishments.
She had a melodious voice and a high level of singing attainment. As a student, she studied florid soprano with a famous soprano, Mrs. Podolessov, and later worked as a radio singer, which was the beginning of her singing career. She sang countless classic love songs throughout her life, and according to her own memoirs, "Half My Life," the three most popular songs among her listeners were "When Will You Come Again," "Suzhou Nocturne," and "The Song of the Night". The song "When Will You Come Again" is an interlude from the 1930s movie "Three Stars and the Moon," and although the original singer was Zhou Xuan, she sang it with a different flavor. Just like a few old photos of her, her colorful and charming face, wearing a cheongsam, oriental but not Chinese, with a hint of ambiguity between her eyebrows. Suzhou Nocturne was written especially for her by Japanese composer Ryoichi Hattori, using Chinese melodies as a basis and American love songs as references.
I'm afraid that "Nocturne" is the most well-known song, which was specially written for her by composer Lai Kam Kwong, invited by the Bai Dai Records Company, with reference to Chinese folk ditties, but in which the melody and rhythm were completely adopted in the European and American styles, and scored as a brisk slow rumba, which spread all over the red-lighted and green fallen areas. Unfortunately, it is a song that has not been banned to this day, and although it is very catchy, many people can only sing it privately. In an autobiography she wrote for herself, she said, "Despite its popularity, the song did not stay popular for long, and the sale of both the Japanese and Chinese versions was later banned ...... on the grounds that any foreign soft love song would disturb the wind and discipline." Not only that, but she was summoned by the Ministry of Public Works Bureau in Shanghai in 1945 for singing the song. She said, "They suspected that I was singing the song in anticipation of the return of the
Chongqing government or the ****-producer government." For the rest of her life, she remembered the song's lyricist, Lai Kam-kwong, whom she invited to visit Japan in 1981, and they sang the song onstage at a cocktail party while a group of "Night Coming" fans sang and circled the stage.
In her autobiography, she also mentions another song that was banned because it was accused of being "decadent and demoralizing enemy music," "Parting Blues. The song was so popular with Japanese soldiers that when the performer was asked to sing it, the officers, though pretending to leave the meeting, shed tears and hid in quiet admiration. Her songs "Three Years", "One Night Stand" and "Hate to Meet You When You're Not Married" were even more popular with her fans, and when she performed them at a concert in Shanghai in June 1945, both Chinese and Japanese fans in the midst of the war went crazy for her. It was her last public performance in Shanghai, and two months later, at the end of the war, she was arrested for "colluding with the Japanese army".
Besides singing, she made many films in the pseudo-Manchurian cinema, Shanghai, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, etc. In April 1991, she handpicked seven of her own films to be screened at the Hong Kong Film Festival. The seven films were: Night in China, The Bells of Scion, My Nightingale, The Most Glorious Days of My Life, Escape at Dawn, Scandal, and Lady White's Demon Love. Among them, "My Nightingale" was a film she made in the pseudo "Mannyei" era, which took nearly two years to make and cost 250,000 yen, equivalent to five times the investment of a normal movie. The movie is a story about a father and daughter, and she herself considers it "a musical film of global significance and a true musical film in the history of Japanese cinema." The Brightest Day of My Life, her masterpiece after returning to Japan after the war, was produced by Matsutake Films and was voted the fifth of the ten best films of all time for its portrayal of a dancer who falls in love with her father's killer. Escape at Dawn, a love tragedy scripted by Akira Kurosawa, was voted the third of the ten best films of that year. The White Lady's Demon Love is based on the Chinese folktale The Legend of the White Snake. A Night in China, on the other hand, leaves the audience with the impression of a gorgeous Chinese woman and her sweet singing voice.
Her songs gave people dreams, and the movies she appeared in were sensational. She made "Mulan in the Army" and "A Million Pieces of Fame," in which she became famous for her role as Lin Zexu's daughter. She interpreted the two films differently, believing that they were perfectly understandable to Chinese audiences in terms of patriotic resistance to the enemy - the anti-Japanese - and she even said that they were films that could be accepted by both the Chinese and Japanese sides. However, her real hit came in the 1950s when, following her performances in Hollywood movies and Broadway operas, she was invited by the Hong Kong Film Company to make several movies, including The Golden Lotus, One Night's Lust, The Mysterious Beauty, and so on, all of which featured interludes that were performed and recorded by her. Although some people accused her of starring in films full of Japanese militarism, art cannot be a complete propaganda tool for militarism. In addition, she participated in the "documentary art film" The Yellow River and the Russian-style music film My Yellow Warbler, and was followed by spies from both the Soviet Union and Japan for the latter. Of all this, she says, "Japan definitely lost the war, but because of that, it is all the more important to leave behind good art films. When the American army occupied Japan, it can be proved that Japan did not only make war films, but also good art films no less than the business cards of Europe and the United States ......"
Love and friendship
At a natatorium party for the Magazine, a literary journal supported by the Japanese , Li Xianglan and Zhang Eiling had this conversation. Zhang Eileen said, "You just must still be as lively as a little girl when you reach 30!" She
said: "That's right, it's not much fun to play shallow, innocent love scenes all these years, I'd like to play some extraordinary passionate scenes!" So, Zhang Eileen later said, "She did not want that kind of too ordinary, formulaic love, but 'passionate'."
Chen Ge Xin's son, Chen Gang, recalled that she and his father may have had an unspoken, passionate love affair in Shanghai. Chen Gexin composed a large number of songs for her, such as "Night," "Dawn," "Little Stream," "On the Lake," "The Fisherman's Daughter," "Hate to Be Married," "Forgetfulness of Grass," and "Sea Haiyan," a florid soprano solo piece written especially for her. At that time, when Mr. Yoshio Kusakari, the head of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and a Japanese TV station visited Shanghai, she told the TV station's reporter that she almost married Chen Gexin back then. And when the reporter asked her why she didn't mention a word about it in her published autobiography, she laughed: "The most important things can't be written in a book."
When she came to Shanghai again in 1992, Chen Gexin had already died. As soon as she met Chen Gang's face, she eagerly inquired about Chen Gaoxin when he was alive, reminiscing about their deep affection 47 years ago. When she was saying goodbye, she choked up at Chen Gang and said, "Your father and I were very good ......" Later, when she met Chen Gang again in Tokyo, she also said to him, "Your father was a beautiful man, and if it weren't for your mother and you guys, I would have If it weren't for your mom and you, I would have married him. ......" She hummed softly over and over again the song "Forgetfulness" written for her by Chen Gexin: "My love, the sky is sparsely starry, with you by my side, I don't know loneliness. My love, the world has gone to sleep, with you by my side, I don't feel empty. I am in the mud in the silent recitation of your name, to forget the days of worry. Lover yo, though that watery years are relentless, with you in my dreams my leaves will be evergreen."
However, born in pseudo-Manchukuo, a country rife with Japan's aggressive ambitions, and showing deference to Japan as a Chinese actress, she could never have become an aria of love.Upon her return to Japan in 1952, she married an American sculptor, Noguchi, who was 15 years her senior, and broke up four years later. Speaking of the reason for the breakup, she said, "It was neither the problem of a third party nor financial problems, it was just the old time not being able to get together that led to differences in personality." In fact, they agreed before the marriage of the so-called "divorce conditions": mutual respect for each other, do not affect each other's work, once the contradiction occurs, like friends to break up amicably. And the four years of marriage, they actually live together less than a year.
After divorcing Noguchi, she was invited to New York to perform in the opera Shangri-La. During the performance, she met Hiroshi Otaka, a young Japanese diplomat assigned to the United Nations. This 28-year-old Japanese youth sent her a bouquet of brightly colored roses every day, but also came backstage to visit her several times in succession. With such a bold and passionate courtship, they soon both fell in love and eventually became a couple. In order to cherish this rare relationship, after marrying Hiroshi Ohtaka, she changed her name to Shuko Ohtaka. Soon after, with her husband's support, she retired from the movie industry and became a member of the Japanese Diet (a senator of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)), where she was re-elected for 18 years.
While her love life had its ups and downs, it is remarkable that she always had a precious friendship. at the age of 10, when she was in the third grade at Fushun Elementary School, she was on a train to Shenyang for an autumn trip when she made the acquaintance of a young girl of Russian-Jewish descent who was the same age as she was, and who lived in Shenyang, called Lyuba. She attached great importance to this friend, she said: "Liuba is my most precious friend. I became the singing Li Xianglan because of Liuba; I became the living Li Xianglan because of Liuba. Liuba is like a talisman arranged by God in my life, sometimes like the sun, sometimes like the moon, she is always with me." With Liuba's help, she began to learn the florid soprano from Madame Podolessov, a famous opera singer at the Soviet Bolshoi Theater and a friend of Liuba's family. It was because of Mrs. Podolesov's solo concerts at the Yamato Hotel in the fall of each year that Dong Keizan, the head of the Fengtian Radio Station, discovered her and hired her as a full-time singer for the station's new program, which put her on the road to acting. Looking back on all this, she said with great emotion, "Isn't that right? Without Liuba, I wouldn't have learned to sing, and there would be no singing Li Xianglan!" Not only that, Liuba also saved her life. After learning that Li Xianglan was imprisoned and about to be shot, Liuba went back to her home in Peking and got her a certificate of Japanese domicile belonging to the Yamaguchi family, which saved her from the crime of being a traitor.
An imperfect love coupled with a perfect career and a perfect friendship brought the first half of her life to a poor conclusion.
Returning
History is often an embarrassment, a pain that tears at the body and mind. After the Battle of Midway, Japan was losing ground. With the advent of Japan's defeat, the 13-year illusory history of the "pseudo-Manchukuo" manipulated by the Japanese Empire also came to an end.
With the demise of the "pseudo-Manchukuo", a nationwide crusade against the traitors sprang up at a moment's notice. Li Xianglan, a movie star and singer, was also put on trial.
In February 1946, as the main actress of the pseudo-Manchurian Film Association, she was found guilty of assisting the Japanese invaders in their propaganda efforts. Prosecutors finally sentenced her to death by firing squad on charges of "betraying China by making movies pretending to be Chinese and assisting Japan's mainland policy by working with the Japanese as a Chinese ****" and "spying by using the languages of China and Japan and by using the relationship of a friend". However, she knew in her heart that she had never engaged in espionage, let alone assisted Japan's mainland policy. In order to prove her innocence, she presented documents proving her Japanese identity in court, and the judge acquitted her. This surprising fact enraged the people in the courtroom. In the face of everyone's anger, she sang in tears, expressing her deep love for China, where she was raised, and at the same time making a deep repentance for the crimes she committed in the first half of her life. The song caused a ****ing chorus, and all the people also told her in song, "Let's repay our grudges with virtue."
Tracking her life, it is difficult to understand why she came so close to being sentenced to death simply for singing and performing unconsciously. She herself was simple and kind-hearted, hoping for Sino-Japanese friendship, but she was used and fooled to become a tool of Japan's policy of invading China and was hated by the Chinese people. From this point of view, she was just a victim of history, and all her subsequent sufferings were due to the times. "A person who was fooled by the times, by a false policy, would be happy to wake up from the nightmare and have a chance to reflect on or explain her behavior at that time." Her words to Lieutenant General Yoshioka, the pseudo-Manchurian "court hanging" and chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, could also serve as an illustration of what she said about the first half of her life.
On February 29, 1946, she tearfully waved goodbye to Shanghai and returned to Japan by ship. Upon her return to Japan, she began her career as a Japanese actress, Yamaguchi Shuko, and gave herself the name "Shannon Yamaguchi". She called the name a "Sino-Japanese mixture", a "spiritual hybrid" of Japan and China. During this period, under the direction of director Akira Kurosawa, she reached new heights in her theater career, playing several roles in films and musicals in the U.S. In 1974, she was elected to the Japanese Senate and became active in society as a politician. At the same time, she co-wrote "Days in China - Li Xianglan: The First Half of My Life" with newswriter Sakaya Fujiwara***. Through this autobiography, she bravely exposed the great disasters brought by the Japanese militarist war of aggression against China to the Chinese people, and expressed her sincere wish for peace, "Japan and China will never fight again, we have the same black hair and eyes". As a victim of history and a witness to history, she also educated Japanese youth to remember: "This is all true!" In 1989, Fuji TV released a TV series based on this story, "Goodbye, Li Xianglan". Subsequently, Mr. Asari Keita successfully adapted the musical "Li Xianglan". Since its premiere at the Aoyama Theater in Tokyo in January 1991, the musical has been performed 184 times with an audience of over 180,000 people. A 17-year-old Japanese high school student, Masahiro Takahashi, wrote to Mr. Asari: "The musical Li Xianglan not only tells me about historical events and the background of the times, but also about the facts of the war and how to open up the future with our neighbor, China. "
Lee was elected to the Diet from 1974 to 1992 to help Japan reconnect with China. The Chinese government welcomed her with open arms after the late idea of the "Open Door Policy". And with the publication of her autobiography and the reissue of her classic albums, she has regained favor with a new generation of Chinese.
Two homelands, two mothers
Li Xianglan called Japan her homeland and China her hometown. She says she has two mothers - one in Japan and one in China; she has one heart - half in Japan and half in China. Life, history, including the memory of the Sino-Japanese relationship
memory, not because it is "unfortunate", "unpleasant" and become nothing. China had nurtured her, and Japanese nationality was an indisputable fact of life for her. This special identity has kept her heart in a state of conflict all her life.
In 1937, she went to Zhongnanhai as a Chinese to attend a silent prayer meeting in honor of her compatriots who died on January 29th. At the meeting, everyone voted: some wanted to go to Nanjing to look for the national government, some wanted to go to Shaanxi to join the Red Army, and others said they wanted to stay and fight until their last breath. When asked, "What should I do if a Japanese army invades Beijing?", she didn't know how to answer, so she said, "Me, standing on the walls of Beijing." For her, who loved both her motherland and her homeland, this was a difficult choice, and "standing on the walls of Beijing" was perhaps the best choice, as she wrote in her autobiography, "I can only say this". Standing on the city walls, with Japanese artillery coming from outside and Chinese lead bullets coming from inside, no matter which side was hit, bullets from both sides "could hit me, and I could be the first to die. I instinctively thought that this was the best way out for me."
This emotion haunted her for a long time, and in her autobiography she described her powerlessness and overwhelming pain in the face of this paradox: "The Chinese didn't know that I was Japanese, that I had deceived the Chinese. A sense of guilt haunted me, as if I had walked into a dead end and was in a desperate situation." She herself resolved several times to publicize the fact that she was Japanese, but did not have the courage to do so. Nonetheless, having lived in China since childhood, her feelings for China were very real. She was a witness to the war of Japanese militarism against China. She experienced the "September 18th Incident", "Lugou Bridge Incident", witnessed the "Pingdingshan Incident", and dared to make a solemn statement under the heavy pressure of the right-wing in Japan, when some Japanese were denying this evil history. When some Japanese people denied this evil history, she dared to declare solemnly and sorrowfully under the heavy pressure of the Japanese right wing that Japan should apologize to the Chinese people! In her autobiography, her words are often "I'm going to Japan" and "I'm going back to China".
In 1987, she finally got her wish and returned to Shanghai as a politician and a friendly person in search of her night-scented Chinese heart and her soulful homeland, native land and people, and in November 1992, she was invited to China to participate in the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival held in Guilin. Although she was already in her old age and living in Japan, she still spoke a mouthful of Peking dialect. During her stay in Beijing, she visited her former residence, which she could still recognize clearly, although it had long since changed its appearance. She also tasted Beijing's snacks, which satisfied her homesickness. Afterwards, she returned to Shanghai and met Lai Kam Kwong again at the Garden Hotel. Recounting their old friendship, the two old men were in tears. After the meeting, she carefully helped Mr. Lai step by step out of the hotel. This was the last time they met, and Mr. Lai passed away the following year.
In the same year, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Mr. Keita Asari, the director of the Four Seasons Theater Company, led the company to visit China again with the musical "Li Xianglan," following his first visit in 1988. The musical "Li Xianglan" was performed 15 times in Beijing, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian, where the story of "Li Xianglan" took place. This performance activity invited by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China was highly valued by the senior leaders of China and Japan. Former Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita traveled to Dalian to attend the premiere of Li Xianglan. The Four Seasons Theater Company also sent its best cast to return "Li Xianglan" to her native country 47 years after the end of the war.
The play, which depicted the ups and downs of her life and vividly reproduced the history of Japan's invasion of China to remind people not to forget the war, drew a very big response in China. The troupe has been highly praised by the audience for each performance and has performed nearly 500 shows.