Recollections of Nanyin and Yue'ou in Hong Kong

“Today, we are far apart, and meeting has become difficult; thus I drift alone under the cool evening sky on a silent boat.” These lines, from the classic Cantonese Nanyin “A Wanderer’s Autumn Grief”, are performed time and again by actors appearing in Hong Kong films. Whenever the tunes pop up, they stir a collective memory of Nanyin among Hong Kong people. From the movie “Rouge” more than thirty years ago to the more recent “The Last Dance”, the haunting melody of Nanyin seems like a secret code that always quietly plays on the heartstrings of the Cantonese community. This enduring resonance is no coincidence, probably because Nanyin has been performed by gushi (blind male singers) and Cantonese opera singers in Hong Kong for generations. In contrast, another form of narrative singing Yue’ou, which was presented in the Cantonese vernacular by shiniang (blind female artists) in Hong Kong half a century ago, has been almost completely forgotten. Both Nanyin and Yue’ou belong to the same tradition of narrative song art, with the former being remembered while the latter slipping into oblivion. Remembrance and forgetting are two sides of the same coin. When we speak of “Hong Kong memories”, one may ask, “What exactly have we forgotten?”