The most banned song -- 何日君再來

[Ian_Lee]

I guess everyone has listened to Teresa Teng's 何日君再來. But probably nobody is aware that it is the most banned song in Chinese history.

何日君再來 is actually a song written for Tango dance by Shanghaiese 劉雪庵 in 1930s. In 1938, the song was sung by famous female singer 周璇 as theme song for the movie 三星伴月.

However, when the song became popular in cities like Beijing, Tientsin and Shanghai, the Japanese occupation authority banned the song because Japanese thought that 君 referred to the ousted Chinese Army.

During the Cultural Revolution, composer Liu was tortured owing to this song. Because this song had been sung in both Chinese and Japanese by 李香蘭, so the Red Guards implied that 君 must mean the Japanese Imperial Army. Both Liu and his wife 喬景雲 were severely beaten. His wife later died from the wounds and Liu was sent to the labor camp for years merely because of this song.

Only after Cultural Revolution did Liu restore his name and released back to the city. However, in 1980, Beijing again said that 君 implied the KMT army in Taiwan and the song was banned again in Mainland.

[zackzhou]

I just agree with you to some extent, after the cultrual revolution, this song hasn't been banned anymore. on the contrary, it has become very popular

[Asami]

if it's banned, then how come teng sang it during her life time?

[Ian_Lee]

Because Teng did not live in PRC. In fact, Teng never stepped foot on Mainland China even though she was repeatedly invited.

[Gary Soup]

The original Zhou Xuan version of the song can be found on this web page:

http://shanghaisoup.com/zhouxuan/zhouxuan.html

The third and fourth songs down are Parts 1 and 2, respectively (it was apparently originally issued on two sides of a 78 RPM record).

When I was in HK in 1997, the Zhou Xuan version of the song was often one of the top ten requested songs on one of the radio call-in shows. And I can confirm that it was not banned in China as of 2002.

The Zhou Xuan page, incidentally, resides on my own hobby website (not that I'm here to promote it). I'm still looking for good translations of some of the titles, by the way. My wife can translate them literally, but she has no sense of the poetic nuances.