Green Island Serenade
"Green Island Serenade" (Chinese:
Background and meaning
[edit]The song has been caught in a decades-long dispute over authorship and intent. This song has often been associated with a political meaning, for the real Green Island was used as a place of exile for political prisoners from the late 1940s during the single party rule of Taiwan's Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). It was claimed that a prisoner there named Gao Yudang wrote the song with Wang Bo-wen while they were prisoners there. Pan Ying-chieh, a professional musician, also claimed to have written the lyrics with Chow Lan-ping composing the music for a movie soundtrack. He claimed that the Green Island in the title means Taiwan itself, and that the original intent of the song was a description of unrequited romantic love.[1] Pan's daughter later claimed that he wrote the lyrics originally as an expression of love for one of his students whom he later married.[2]
Recordings
[edit]The song was written in 1954 and a recording of the song was made in the late 1950s by Zi Wei (
The song has since been covered by many singers. A cover version of this song appears as a hidden track on Vienna Teng's second album, Warm Strangers (2004). The song was adapted into multiple Cantonese versions, including a notable rendition "The Light of Friendship" (
References
[edit]- ^ "Green Island Serenade remains a romantic mystery". China Daily. 2009-07-21.
- ^ "《
綠 島 小夜曲 》:揭開一 段 被 塵 封 的 "師 生 戀 "". Asia Pacific Daily. Archived from the original on 13 December 2013. - ^
張 夢 瑞 (2003).金 嗓金曲 不 了 情 (in Chinese). Taipei:聯 經 出版 . pp. 111–117. ISBN 9789570826425. OCLC 55010768. - ^ Sha Hu (
沙 壺 ) (20 July 2016).星影 ·初心 (in Chinese). p. 31. ISBN 9789888380886.
External links
[edit]- Buhi, Jason (2009). "Lǜdǎo Xiǎoyèqǔ, The Green Island Serenade: Parsing the Coconut Tree's Shadow". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1406400.