Figure 2. Xu Peidong in Damucang salon (copyright: Liu Weiren,
used by permission)
Meng and Xu also took efforts in the song to adopt the overall shape of
Socialist Realist artworks, where, as noted, a negative opening could be
deployed if it was followed by a more positive presentation of
mainstream ideology. Thus, in Part II of the song, and after a slow and
sentimental salute, “O, hometown, hometown”, the feeling shifts to the
expression of deep sentiments for the hometown: “I kiss and kiss the
soil of my hometown never too much, I love and love the water of my
hometown never too much”. This transition was then followed by a
slogan-like expression: “I will use my sincerity and perspiration, to
change you into a fertile land and beautiful water”. The music suggests
the same contradiction. The main arrangement uses a happy,
disco-oriented rhythm throughout, although the start seems to express a
worrying and sad feeling.29 Overall, this song
suggests that the listener can expect a happy and promising future if
they apply love and faith to any current worrying realities, and thus
identifies itself as mainstream culture, albeit a new way of working
with those values and symbols.
These features of “My Beloved Hometown” are typical of the other
Northwest wind songs: two-part lyrics with a large-scale former part
expressing worry and sadness and the final part positively embracing the
future, and a combination of a sad and nostalgic melodic tone and
contemporaneous, happy rhythmic mode and instrumentation. For instance,
“The Moon of the Fifteenth Is Rounder than That of the Sixteenth”
(Shiwude yueliang shiliu yuan ) and
“Yellow Plateau” (Huangtu
gaopo ) both echo these same general social concepts of universal love
and revolutionary faith.