Visiting the Qingshui River

Introduction

A late-Qing Beijing song that tells a story of Landianchang in fifteen verses to the Wuxi Jing tune

Visiting the Qingshui River is a late-Qing popular song of Beijing that tells the sad love story of Dalian, a daughter of the Song family, and Tong Xiaoliu, near the Firearms Battalion at Landianchang in Haidian; the Qingshui River of the song is today's Changhe. The song repeats the Wuxi Jing tune for fifteen verses, and a small pocket edition from a commercial press, kept in the Shanghai Library, is taken as the more standard text. The earliest printings came from late-Qing Beijing block-printing shops such as Eryoutang and Baowentang, and in the Republican years the Xuegutang shop at Damochang in Beijing also printed it. In 1937 the performer Guo Xiaoxia sang a danxian version in Beijing teahouses and theatres, and Pathé recorded it on disc. It was later included in the Beijing volumes of the national folk song anthology in 1994 and of the ballad anthology in 2009, and it has been adapted for errenzhuan, danxian and other forms.