Songs and Folk Tunes · Mountain Songs (Shan'ge) · SE10110

The Flowing Stream

Known as the serenade of the East

Introduction

Adapted by Yin Yigong from the Midu folk song Shepherd's Tune and published in 1947

The Flowing Stream is a hill song of Midu in Yunnan, often called the serenade of the East. By Yin Yigong's own account, he wrote it in the spring of 1947 from the Midu folk song Shepherd's Tune, and it appeared that year in a folk song issue of the magazine Jiaoxuechang under the name Zhao Hua, though his account of how it was made is disputed. Yin was born on Wensheng Street in Mizhi, Midu County, and died in Kunming in 2005. From the 1950s the song spread at home and abroad together with other Midu songs such as Ten Sisters and Embroidering a Purse, and Midu folk song became one of the best-known kinds of folk song in China. Midu folk song, with The Flowing Stream as its best-known piece, entered the third national intangible heritage list in 2011 as item II-145.