A lost soul in a time of turmoil

The most celebrated musician to come out of Wuxi is a street musician. Hua Yanjun died shortly after playing four of his hundreds of tunes to a visiting musicologist with a recording machine.

It was a rare piece of equipment in 1950 and thankfully it chronicled arguably the most elegiac tune in Chinese history.

The Moon Reflected in the Second Spring brings out the sorrow of erhu, the Chinese two-stringed fiddle that has a natural timbre of mournfulness. The melody never fails to make me teary-eyed, even before I learned of the wretched life of its composer.