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.