Thirties in the Eighties
By madamemao, Jan 28 2019 04:00AM
My last post for now on records in early 1980's China is about 1930's Shanghai .... Zhou Xuan is probably China's most famous songstress. She rose from very humble beginnings to stardom as a young teenager in the nascent film industry of Shanghai. Her voice is essentially the soundtrack for that period in Shanghai and, as the Hong Kong community of Shanghainese swelled, it became the soundtrack of nostalgia for our city. Recognised by Wong Kar-wai in his movie In the Mood for Love, her voice signified all of the glitz and wonder of modern Shanghai in the Republican period. This disc, published with a cover that reflects one of her most famous songs, The Four Seasons, contains songs from Street Angel, Malu Tianshi, the 1937 film that launched her career. The songs were written by 'leftist' composer Tian Han and the film itself had a strong message about the exploitative social conditions in the city and a call to revolution. All of this neatly contained in a cover with a rather classical graphic design of flowers of the four seasons (meihua, zhu, juhua, and lanhua) arranged in a geometric style for the 1980's.


Web feed
