Listening To Mum Telling The Past 听妈妈讲那过去的事情 – Chinese Songs

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Excellent work that has inspired generations of children

Overview

Chinese Name: 听妈妈讲那过去的事情

English Name: Listening To Mum Telling The Past, Ting Ma Ma Jiang Na Guo Qu De Shi Qing

Composer: Qu Xixian 瞿希贤

Lyricist: Guan Hua 管桦

Release Date: 1958

Listening To Mum Telling The Past is a narrative children’s song written by Guan Hua 管桦, composed by Qu Xixian 瞿希贤, and first sung by the Children’s Choir of the Central People’s Broadcasting Station 中央少年广播合唱团.

Story Of Listening To Mum Telling The Past

Released in 1958, Listening To Mum Telling The Past is a lyrical children’s narrative song and excellent work that has been sung by generations for a long time. The lyrics are beautiful, with poetic language, and the description of the scene blending, giving people a beautiful influence. The whole song is delicate and sincere, showing that the mother, as a working person at the bottom, has gone through hardships in the old society before looking forward to the new society.

After the founding of the PRC, the new China would have the task of rebuilding. To let the children who will devote themselves to socialist construction in the future understand the hard-won new life, the editorial department of the soon-to-be-launched “Children’s Music” has released a call for proposals.

Guan Hua’s family and himself fought to change the suffering of farmers in the old society. He applied for the creation of Listening To Mum Telling The Past, full of prose rhythm and artistic conception.

Guan Hua is a famous writer. His mother is just an ordinary rural woman, but she is Guan Hua’s literary enlightenment teacher. She used to tell many stories to Guan Hua.

After Guan Hua returned to Beijing, he called Qu Xixian and said he had written a song for the children. Qu Xixian felt that this was less like a lyric and more like a narrative prose poem. She had to read it over and over again, looking for inspiration. Gradually, she was moved by the sincere emotion between the lines, and finally composed the melody for this song that has been sung to this day.

The theme of the song is about mothers who have experienced the old times. When the peaceful times come, to the children of the next generation, they recall the days when they were persecuted by the landlords, and they could not eat enough or wear warm clothes, and use this to make their own lives better. Children know the hard-won of a better life in New China, in order to instill a correct and upward outlook on life.

But times are changing. Most of the Listening To Mum Telling The Past we hear now only has the first four lines of lyrics. In the quiet night after the harvest, the fields and people rested after the autumn harvest, and the fear of the crops for the whole year can finally be put down. This is the most leisurely and relaxing time for the farmers. The children, tired of playing on the farm, were snuggling quietly beside the heap of grain, listening to their mother’s stories from the past.

Now, when people sang it, they spontaneously played down the color of class struggle and emphasized the nostalgic and lyrical presentation of this song. We have weakened the blood and hatred that were unique to that era, but what cannot be eliminated is the memory and yearning for our hometown and childhood.

In 1980, the song won the first prize of the second national children’s song selection.

Lyrics of Listening To Mum Telling The Past

Chinese Lyrics

English Translation

The moon walks through the white lotus-like clouds
The evening wind blows a burst of happy singing
We sit by the high heap of grain
Listen to mom talk about the past
We sit by the high heap of grain
Listen to mom talk about the past

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