Chun Siu-Lei and Zhou Xuan

 
Zhou Xuan                           Chun Siu-Lei
18.5" x 8"                              7.75" x 15.25"
oil on wood, 2010                  oil on wood, 2010

With a second painting of the 'Golden Voice of Mandarin Pop' Zhou Xuan and the second painting of the 'Burlesque Queen of Cantonese Opera' Chun Siu-Lei, I end my overindulgence with the music and images of my Chinese muses from the silver screen from an era long passed. This will be the last from China this year as I feel the need to travel onwards. Delving deeper into the world of Cantonese Opera and Mandarin Pop I will leave to purists and the fans of those genres; I have found it an exasperating experience. It got me buying tapes in Chinatown for 25 cents apiece —judging the music by its covers, listening to hours of Antique Shanghai Pop Music radio, scrolling through the archives of Soft Film, their history of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, and much more not to mention that it left me painting in a for me a-typical manner.
(I haven't used the word Kitsch for ages when it comes to talking about my work, but there it is capitalized and all. Not that the four Chinese songs in the 100 list are Kitsch; they're too real for that, but I did encounter plenty of other related musics that were. But isn't this the case with so much music, isn't 80% of everything we listen to when we turn on the radio, just plain Kitsch? To answer my own question: it probably isn't but it's a just thought I felt like sharing.)

One more thing: Is there anyone out there who could translate for me the names of the performers and titles of the songs from this lovely record below? Thanks

The Golden Voice of Mandarin Pop

Zhou Xuan
16" x 8.5"
oil on wood, 2010

From Hong Kong to Shanghai, from Cantonese Opera to Cantopop to Mandarin Pop, I'm traveling fast and I'm traveling light. Today I went to a lecture by this photographer, Fred Marsh, who spent time in Guangzhou (which is Canton, I didn't know that. It's a city, and a huge one too –I didn't know that either). Afterwards I approached Mr. Marsh and told him I was crazy about Cantonese opera, he told me he was crazy about opera too, just yesterday he went to see a four hour Boris Godounov production and had tears in his eyes. In his lecture he told us that he was not a tourist, his art is not travel photography or documentary or journalism. And I respect him for that, he and his work are too sensitive to be considered as such. Me, on the other hand... I am a tourist, I don't live, feel, think, experience like the people I paint, I hardly interact, I barely get out of my home (save for going to work). Post-Modernism smells like tourism these days, globalization is tourism, and I'm no better, I'm a musical tourist and it is my goal to hear as much as I can from places as remote as possible, and I travel fast, I travel light. 
Zhou Xuan, the name starts where Guangzhou ends, is from Shanghai. She was the biggest star in Mandarin Pop, nicknamed the Golden Voice. The picture suggests an adorable, lovely, and happy person but her life was far from that. Zhou Xuan was born in 1918 as Su Pu, kidnapped by an opium using uncle when she was three, adopted by two sets of parents (the last with the family name Zhou), not enjoying a happy love life, and prone to mental breakdowns, she died at the tender age of 39. Zhou Xuan started working on the stage at age 17, had a major breakthrough two years later with the film Street Angel (1937) from which Song of the Seasons originates that's in this year's 100. Zhou Xuan spent her life searching for her biological parents but, unlike you and me, she never knew she was born as Su Pu.