An Untranslatable Kind of Music

I found a webpage playing my favorite Jay Chou song Qing Hua Ci (Blue & White Porcelain) with lyrics translated into English. A commenter from Hawaii responded: Nice, but I'll stick to Rihanna, Chris Brown, Cold Play, and whatever else in on my iPod...

Having grown up in China, I often have difficulty answering the question "What music do you listen to?" The fact is among my favorite songs from the Western music world, a large majority fall under pop, folk, and country. However, they count for only about one third of all music I listen to, if not less. The rest are mostly Chinese songs. This is where the problem gets complicated, because I find it difficult to describe the Chinese music I listen to with one proper word. The concept of Chinese music is confusing. Do I mean the music played on traditional Chinese instruments like guzheng and erhu, or my grandparents' Peking Operas? NO.

The broad Chinese-speaking regions, including Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese-speaking population living elsewhere, generally share the same popular music industry. Recently I've found a word C-pop (Chinese-pop) to refer to this genre as a whole. Hong Kong used to be dominated by Cantonese music, and Taiwan was mixed with Mandarin and Taiwanese local dialect Hokkien before the late 1990s. As the entertainment industry in Chinese Mainland caught up and emerged as a huge market, most albums released in the whole region today are in Mandarin. Because of shared language (Mandarin), contemporary artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore are heard and chased by millions of young Chinese fans throughout the dozens of major cities in China.

On today's amazingly connected planet, the news of a soccer-player trade in Barcelona, or that of an NBA star in L.A., can easily blow a buzz among sport fans in China in just a few hours' time. Similarly, millions of Chinese youngsters are crazy about Greenday, Avril Lavigne and Eminem. However, such influence goes usually one way only. Scholars refer to the benefits brought to a country (U.S.A. is the most used example) by such exposure as "soft power", because one country can spread its values and ideologies through exporting intellectual and cultural products. USA publishes the most books every year in the world; Hollywood movies are watched by hundreds of millions of people from Japan to Brazil; an increasing number of many countries' elites are graduates from American universities. Such soft power helps the US triumph today's world, together with its gigantic political and economic power.

Why do Asian children watch western sports and listen to western music way more than how much their western counterparts greet what's from the East? Two obvious explanations can be easily raised. First, it could be simply because the products themselves are better, or more likable. Few people can deny basketball itself is an attractive game. Therefore fanatics have no reason not to watch the highest-level games of NBA broadcasted in their own countries. Second, the entertainment and sport industries in western countries enjoyed an early start under well-established market environments. They clearly had more resource and stronger desire to expand elsewhere.

Besides the two mentioned above, I think a third reason is highly relevant: language. Let's come back to the topic of music listened to by Chinese. Three hundred million people in China, equivalent to the entire US population, learn English. Listening to English songs is not only trendy, but also easy – 100 times easier than a Chinese song for an American to understand. Paradoxically, while music is labelled as a universal language to bring people together, it is practically impossible to completely understand and appreciate a song when the language fault line is not bridged. In other words, as long as lyrics go along with it, all music is untranslatable. When it comes to Chinese music, the gap is even more unbridgeable.

Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jay Chou is undoubtedly the king of Chinese pop music. Without the handsome looking of a typical superstar, he established himself as the idol of millions with unmatchable music talent. The most popular songs found in all his ten albums belong to what is called “Zhong Guo Feng (Chinese Wind)” style. This unique style is created and popularized by Jay Chou and his partner Vincent Wang, whose lyrics typically tell romantic stories inspired by classical Chinese literature. It was the beautiful ballad-like melody, magic combination of various rhythms, sophisticated Chinese rhetoric, and other classical elements (such as traditional Chinese instruments) that made Zhong Guo Feng music particularly appealing to listeners. Personally, the first such song that enchanted me was Dong Feng Po (East Wind Breaks) released in 2003. Since then, Jay Chou has been taking my breath away with one or more Zhong Guo Feng songs in each of his albums. Some of the most representative ones include Ju Hua Tai (“Chrysanthemum Flower Bed”), Qing Hua Ci (“Blue and White Porcelain”), Fa Ru Xue (“Hair Like Snow”), Qian Li Zhi Wai (“Far Away”) and Lan Ting Xu (“Preface to the Orchid Pavilion”). Typical Chinese elements such as martial arts, calligraphy and porcelain, are embedded in these lyrics to depict ancient romance.

Some believe that Jay and Vincent’s popularity reflects a renaissance of traditional Chinese influence among young people. For example, a Chinese descendant in South East Asia said Jay’s songs motivated him to learn Chinese harder so he could understand the text. In the meanwhile, these songs are even accepted by Chinese of older generations. My 50-year-old uncle can sing some of them.

Now think about the chance Zhong Guo Feng music can be comprehended by a non-Chinese speaking person, especially a westerner. Given the complicated nature of Chinese language and the far cultural distance between the east and the west, the chance is apparently bleak. To an extent, I think it is meaningless to try to translate such works, because no other language can express the same artistic conception conveyed in Zhong Guo Feng songs. While trying to westernize my thinking in many ways, music is one thing I’m resistant about. Being able to appreciate the gorgeousness of Zhong Guo Feng music is a joy in my life, and I am proud to be a Chinese who can understand these songs. They will always stay rooted in my mind.

If you want to explore the beautiful Zhong Guo Feng, learn Chinese!

Reference:

http://pam.posterous.com/qing-hua-ci-by-jay-chou

http://www.culture.tw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1007&Itemid=157