Track #12 on Warm Strangers is an old Taiwanese song called “Lüdao Xiaoyequ,” or “Green Island Serenade.” My parents sang it to us as a lullaby; pretty much all Taiwanese people of their generation know it. I started singing the song because I was playing a show where the organizer had requested that I do something in Mandarin. Then it became a habit of sorts, something thrown in for variety on the setlist. Eventually I found myself adding it to the show as a kind of thank-you to my parents, and to the Chinese-American community at large, for supporting me in the unusual and risky endeavor of making music my career. For an immigrant group that’s built its foundation on math-and-science academics, this is no small gesture.
There have been many meanings attributed to the song, including political ones, and I have my own interpretations. But here are the actual lyrics in Pinyin (as I sing them), and an English translation, adapted with kind permission from http://ingeb.org/songs/zheludao.html. Much is lost in the conversion, of course. There always is.
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Lüdao Xiaoyequ zhe lü dao xiang yi zhi chuan, |
Green Island Serenade
This green island is like a boat, |