Sung by: He Shengliang
The lyrics are as follows:
It's New Year in the first month of the lunar calendar
The gongs and drums in and out of the villages are loud and clear
The little girl is dressed up in her room
Fashionable to wear a gold hairpin on the head
Melon face with powdered doughnuts
Ruby rouge on the lips
The body wears a small flowery shirt
When you say that you are watching the rice-planting song, you are actually meeting your lover
Yes, I'll say it.
They say it's to see the rice-planting songs
In fact, it's to meet their lovers
Wang, Wang Haishan, ah, ah, ah, ah
How slim they are dressed up
Joyful and crowded they are
The rice-planting songs are really lively
Juggling the lanterns and running the boat
The rice-planting songs that The Dragon Lanterns on Stilts
The Dragon Lanterns on Jade Pillars and the Boat on Stilts Don't Float
The Rice-planting Songs on Garlic Braids and Stilts
The Lion on the Other Side Shakes Its Feathers
The Trumpet Blows and the Drums Bang
Adults and Children Clap Their Hands and Laugh
Why Hasn't My Lovers Come Yet
It is a great pleasure to be here, and I'm very grateful to you.
I couldn't see it even with my feet up
I was looking at the back of his head
I had to cough
I was complaining that I wasn't tall enough
I saw him waving his hand and calling me out
I was so happy that my heart was pounding and my face was burning
I wanted to call out to him but I was afraid that someone would hear me
Why is it that you are not here yet
He Shengliang was born in 1963 in Hejiawan Village, Linxian County, Luliang City, Shanxi Province. The area around Zhaoxian is one of the townships with the most flourishing umbrella-head rice-planting activities, and many famous umbrella-heads were born here (e.g., Gao Chonglai in the early Qing Dynasty, Gao Yougui and Dui Zhuxi in the 1940s, and Xue Chuanbian and He Jiwen in the 1950s and 1960s).
He Shengliang was nurtured and infected by this folk art since he was a child, which made his ingenuity and improvisation of rice-planting songs burst into artistic sparks. He began to sing rice-planting songs in the village at the age of thirteen, and at the age of sixteen, he picked an umbrella and performed in the village for many people to see. A few years of practice made him famous in Zhaoxiangou.
In 1982, he participated in the Linxian County Spring Festival during the cultural performances, boldly put into the county organs of the rice-planting team in the umbrella row street singing, a sensation in the county. 1983 in Linxian County, the first umbrella singer competition won the county party committee, the government awarded the "famous rice-planting singer" title. In the following ten years, He Shengliang all the way to triumph invincible.