Publicized as an official song, this piece was first performed at the 1987 Chinese Spring Festival Party. Xu Liang, the male singer, was a surviving hero from the China/Vietnam war. In this performance Xu wore an army uniform and sat in a wheelchair, prominently displaying the fact that he had lost a leg. Although Xu’s singing was consistent with the well-trained official song style, which he had been trained in as a student at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, his facial expressions were unlike those of these professional musicians, whose actions are normally somewhat exaggerated onstage. Plain and restrained, his eyes shining with tears, Xu’s performance reminded the audiences that they were encountering a real story with real emotions. Meanwhile, the female singer Wang Hong, who had just won the 1986 National Young Singers TV Competition (Quanguo qingnian geshou dianshi dajiangsai ), wore a sober dark suit rather than her usual stage costumes, and her singing style and stage movement also showed an attempt to imitate the official song style. Behind them, seven men in white clothes, holding and swinging red Chinese national flags, danced and circled around the stage. The whole performance emanated a strong state-sponsored flavor.
Musically speaking, “Blood-Stained Dignity” has an origin in the lyrical songs of the 1950s, appearing as an example of a de-localized Chinese folk song style in which specific local origins are hard to distinguish.11 It meanwhile adds characteristics of pop song in its composition technique, vocal style, and arrangement, which altogether suggest a sorrowful mood. This is achieved in the melodic line in the first part, which remains simple, moving by small intervals. The phrases are short and neat, using a rhythmic mode (Ex 4) and its variants (refers to vocal part of Ex 5); and repeating the 2+2+4 phrase mode of measures 9-16 as the music for measures 17-24. In bars 9-10 and 13-14, the melody outlines minor triads. The melodic progression mainly keeps stable, avoiding big leaps. Exceptions appear only in posing the questions “Can you understand?” and “Will you expect me forever?” (Ex 5, measures 13-14, 21-22) where octave leaps are used to suggest restrained sorrow. The Chinese two stringed fiddleerhu always appears at the ends of phrases varying the melody of the phrase (Ex 6). The sorrowful timbre of the erhu enhances the sad feeling between the couple. Besides the clear melodic line, it is hard to hear an accompanying texture of harmony, which strengthens the narrative and lyrical function of the song.