A Traveller's Autumn Lament

Introduction

A classic of Cantonese nanyin whose authorship has long been disputed; its opening lines come from Huang Shaoba

A Traveller's Autumn Lament is a classic of dishui nanyin, the narrative song of Cantonese blind singers, and it is in two parts: in the first a man on a boat in autumn recalls his love for a singing girl, and the second adds two more memories of his devotion and of his helplessness to buy her freedom. Its authorship has been argued over since the 1920s; the common attribution is to Miao Gen, known as Miao Lianxian, but scholars point out that the lyrics misuse his pen-name, and most now favour Ye Ruibo of Nanhai, whose family dates it to the Daoguang reign. The old text runs to more than twelve hundred characters, while the new text adds an opening that introduces Miao Lianxian and the singer Mai Qiujuan and cuts much of the second part. In the 1920s the blind singer Zhong De made the song popular, and Huang Shaoba then turned it into a Cantonese opera with Bai Jurong as Miao Lianxian; the opening sung today comes from that stage version. Bai's records sold out in the Republican years, and later versions by Sun Ma Si-tsang and the blind singer Du Huan also spread widely. The earliest surviving notation is in Qiu Hechou's handbook of 1921.

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