‘I’d like to ride the wind to fly home’, by Wu Fei

The Other China

乘風歸去

 

Wu Fei 吳非 is a genre-bending composer, guzheng virtuoso and vocalist from Beijing. She is also a dear friend of China Heritage. We are delighted that she has given us permission to reproduce some of her recent work here.

Previously, we marked the Mid Autumn Festival of September 2021 with Fei’s composition ‘Lunar Maria’月海 (listen to Lunar Maria here). On that occasion, we commemorated Geng Xiaonan 耿瀟男, an imprisoned arts entrepreneur persecuted for supporting downtrodden artists and intellectuals (see Mid Autumn, Geng Xiaonan & National Treasures, 21 September 2021). Xiaonan was also in our thoughts when she was released from prison in shortly before Mid Autumn Festival in September 2023 (see Celebrating Geng Xiaonan, 8 September 2023).

In November 2023, Wu Fei published ‘I’d like to ride the wind to fly home’, a musical composition inspired by a melancholic poem from the Song dynasty about longing.

Wu Fei artistry evokes visions of The Other China, something both unique and universal.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
5 January 2024
癸卯小寒雁北鄉

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The shimmering light of the North Island restores me and I play, eyes closed,
Fingers gliding over the strings, I dream of Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring.

北島艷陽，養心，閉目撫小琴。
手握半箏，赤甲，托夢陶淵明。

— Wu Fei, 4 January 2024

[Note: Fei, her partner, Jeremy Goldkorn, and their two children, live in Nashville Tennessee and regularly visit family on the north island of New Zealand, where these lines were written. Tao Yuanming (陶淵明, 365-427) wrote ‘Record of Peach Blossom Spring’ 桃花源記, a famous idyll in which a fisherman stumbles upon an earthly paradise. The lone 托夢陶淵明 could also be rendered ‘while lost in reverie, Tao Yuanming appears.’]

‘I’d like to ride the wind to fly home’

我欲乘風歸去

Wu Fei

This multitrack guzheng composition was inspired by one of my favorite poems from the Song dynasty, composed to the tune ‘Water Melody’ 水調歌頭 by Su Shi (蘇軾, 1037-1101) on the Moon Festival of the year 1076.

My calligraphic version of the poem (see below) follows the traditional order of Chinese writing, from top to bottom and right to left. The four bigger characters on the right are the title of the poem.

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Translation:

When will the moon be clear and bright? With a cup of wine in my hand, I ask the clear sky. In the heavens on this night, I wonder what season it would be?

I’d like to ride the wind to fly home. Yet I fear the crystal and jade mansions are much too high and cold for me. Dancing with my moonlit shadow, it does not seem like the human world.

The moon rounds the red mansion. Stoops to silk-pad doors, shine upon the sleepless. Bearing no grudge. Why does the moon tend to be full when people are apart?

People experience sorrow, joy, separation and reunion. The moon maybe dim or bright, round or crescent shaped. This imperfection has been going on since the beginning of time. May we all be blessed by longevity.

Though thousands of miles apart, we are still able to share the beauty of the moon together.

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Source:

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See also:

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歸 guī, ‘to return’, in the hand of Su Shi