Lin Yilian: Wildflowers is a gentle book of wildness

◎ Sword burn

Today, would it be too risky to write a book about Lin Yilian? More precisely, to write a book with Lin Yilian's album "Wildflowers" as the focus of radiation divergence, can it already be described as "desperate and risky"? When it comes to Lin Yilian, it may be well known to the public that Li Zongsheng wrote for her such classic love songs as "When Love Has Become a Thing of the Past", and "Wildflower" must be confused for many people. In addition, as the premier female singer in the Chinese music scene, Lin Yilian has faded from the public eye for some time. The story about her is scattered in the air, or has been said a lot, or has said that there is no new meaning, how to pick up scattered memories from the long river of time, with a new perspective to write a book "half gentle, half wild", is a great test for the author.

Dark incense floats for 30 years

Music critic Cai Zhexuan's new book "Lin Yilian: Wildflowers" is one such book. As a veteran of the music industry, his writing has a kind of emotional and concise beauty. As a music fan with many years of experience in listening to pop music, starting from buying "Wildflower" in the alley next to the Shengli Cinema on Haining Road in Shanghai in early 1992, he spent 30 years listening to "Wildflower" and Lin Yilian, and the rhapsody of memory mixed with years and writing fermented into aging.

Follow Ink's perspective and pull back the time to the very beginning of the 1990s. For the Hong Kong music scene, this period is extremely special, Tam Wing Lin, Mui Yanfang faded out, the "Four Heavenly Kings" will not be born until a few years later, and there is a vacuum in the music world. According to normal market logic, Lin Yilian should seize this opportunity and continue to launch an explosive urban love song like "Falling in Love with a Person Who Doesn't Go Home". But she transformed into a "rootless and wandering modern urban woman", "Wildflower" went to the B side of the market, and its sales plummeted while climbing to the peak of art.

"Too avant-garde" and "too difficult to understand", this was the mainstream evaluation of the market at that time. In the eyes of many listeners, Lin Yilian, who is in the ascendancy of her career, has produced a strange album. Frankly speaking, using flowers to sing women is not a new creation, but using flowers to make a concept album, using different flowers to sing different women and different emotional states, should be the first time in Chinese pop music. Now looking at the record copy, "like a modern woman who dares to love and dare to hate, walking through the cold and warm of the world", "dreaming, crazy, tired heart, there is another kind of wild beauty", there is a sense of trance.

The urban women of Hong Kong 30 years ago seem to resonate with the urban women of the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou today. Cantonese pop songs have been introduced to the mainland as a fresh trend, and at the moment when they are fermented through time and space, they can more deeply experience the lyrics sung at this moment, rather than just as a simple novelty. There is the wonder of time in between, we spent twenty or thirty years walking the path that Lin Yilian walked 30 years ago. Nowadays, the popular culture of the mainland is also exported to Hong Kong in reverse, and more Hong Kong artists come to the mainland to develop, and the flow of these musicians must have mixed feelings for you and me who are traveling in the time and space machine.

The flow of nocturnal incense

In "WildFlower", Lin Yilian sang Li Xianglan's classic era song "Night Incense", and a legend began. Ink began to write from the Adventures of the Frenchman Le Bangsheng in Shanghai, from setting up a stall to establishing a EMI record company, the pen suddenly shifted to Li Jinhui, a Hunan man under the same parallel universe. Li Jinhui, who came from the normal school, later became the godfather of modern Chinese pop music, and is now establishing a music club in Changsha, Hunan Province, with the rise of the "New Culture Movement", through the ripples of the times, in 1922, the music club moved to Shanghai and changed its name to "Mingyue Concert". By composing songs for the record labels dominated by EMI Records and the film industry represented by Lianhua Pictures, Lai Jinhui achieved his own career and created the prototype of modern Chinese pop music.

The story continues, and Lai Kam-kwong, the younger brother of Lai Kam-kwong, subsequently joins the creative team. On a summer night in 1944, at No. 811 Hengshan Road, Xujiahui, Shanghai, today, the ruins of the XiaohongLou of THE EMI Records Company, he accidentally opened the window and the fragrance of flowers outside the window came, inspiring him to write "Night Fragrance". From the time "Night Fragrance" was created, she did not find a suitable singer until she met Li Xianglan, who was trained in orthodox vocal music and interpreted the song perfectly. After that, "Evening Fragrance" became a big hit, from Shanghai to all over China and swept through Japan and Southeast Asia. After the surrender of Japan, Li Xianglan was repatriated for her Japanese descent, and the song was banned.

After the founding of new China, part of the Shanghai record industry moved south to Hong Kong. By 1953, with the Shanghai EMI Records Company as the prototype, the British EMI Company established the Hong Kong EMI EMI EMI Records Company, and the Era Song resounded again in the newly released records, and naturally "Evening Fragrance" was indispensable. After the resurrection, "Night Fragrance" ushered in a cover song, and Teresa Teng, Cai Qin, Fei Yuqing and other well-known musicians have covered it. When Lin Yilian is confronted with "Night Fragrance", she wants to try to get rid of the "male gaze" and sing the independence of modern women in this song. Zhou Yaohui refilled the lyrics, with chill out electronic style, Lin Yilian sang out "the fragrance of flowers sneaks into him", you will feel the feeling of subverting the original song. In this way, the past life of a song, the circulation of a song in the tide of the times, and how it is interpreted by different singers in different styles are all presented one by one in the text of ink and ink.

Wildflowers are like icebergs

Lin Yilian continued to bloom wildflowers, and also continued to drift without roots. From Hong Kong to Taipei to Shanghai, from Warner Records to Rolling Stone Records to EMI EMI Records, so that in the small universe intertwined with Lin Yilian's series of experiences, those stirred personal life histories, mixed with career and love, have become entangled and legendary. Ink has fulfilled our wishes over the years through music writing, and we have been able to go from simply listening to songs to knowing how an album goes from planning to creation to production and final release, and everything behind the scenes of the record industry has become vivid.

Many of the moments I read this book, like a time machine, from the day of the album's release in December 1991, across the two sides of the strait and three places, came a time and space journey spanning 30 years, the scenery on the way is so rich and charming. The small book "Lin Yilian: WildFlower" has become larger and larger, like the book of sand in Borges's story, constantly unfolding, extending to a situation I did not expect, "Wildflower" has become the tip of the iceberg of the historical narrative of the Chinese music scene, and from this corner, we see the entire iceberg under the water.

Regarding the writing of this book, what impressed me the most was that Mo Mo wrote at the end that "I dare not interview Lin Yilian." This is not because of timidity, but because he feels that "the distance between her and her is the best way to keep the distance between idols and fans in the last century." It's a very subtle sense of distance. As a fan of Lin Yilian and a music writer, writing this book was his double dream, and now these two dreams overlap perfectly in this book. Standing in the parallel universe of "Wildflower", Mo Mo looked at himself and those music and people encountered in the course of his life, where dreams and years intertwined, and finally became this gentle book of wildness.