Remembering Mrs. Pian, My Mentor and Friend

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Notes

1 It was the custom for Harvard students to address faculty members by their surname prefaced by Mr., Miss, or Mrs. Hence, she was always “Mrs. Pian” to me and her other students. After I received my degree, she said I should address her as Iris, which was what her family and close friends called her (professional colleagues addressed her as Rulan). I was unable to make the switch, despite her repeated requests that I do so.

2 Rulan Chao Pian, “Autobiographical Sketches,” ACMR Reports: Journal of the Association for Chinese Music Research 8·1 (Spring 1995): 1–20.

3 In theory, each discipline claims to include all music; but in practice, this division is clear.

4 http://www.ethnomusicology.org/?page = WhatisEthnomusicol, accessed September 14, 2014.

5 While in the title of her dissertation the name of the dynasty was romanized according to the conventions of the Wade-Giles system (i.e., “Sung”), for the book title Gwoyeu Romatzyh 國語羅馬字 (GR), the system developed by her father, was used. She continued to use the GR system in her writing, as can be seen in some of the quotes from her writing in this essay.

6 In the last twenty years, there has been an increasing number of graduate students interested in the study of Chinese music. Feeling very strongly that Mrs. Pian’s book is a must-read for anyone in the field, I arranged for it to be reprinted by The Chinese University Press in 2003.

7 CHINOPERL honored her by making her “Honorary President for Life” and ACMR by establishing an annual prize in her name.

8 She continued, however, to be very filial and to invest a lot of time toward making sure that her father’s work was well-known and available. Her own research and writing basically came to a stop when she took on the task of editing her father’s work on music, his personal papers, letters, and other material, in order to assist in the publication of Zhao Yuanren quanji 趙元任全集 (The complete writings of Yuen Ren Chao), 20 vols. (Beijing: Commercial Press, 2002– ). The reader will remember that when I cited her “Autobiographical Sketches” above, I characterized it as “unfinished.” In the Chinese headnote and at the end of the piece, what was published at that time was described as only the first installment (it covers only through 1969, shortly before she began visiting China). This is just one of the projects she did not have time to finish.

9 https://u.osu.edu/chinoperlnotes/2013/12/10/rulan-chao-pian/, accessed September 14, 2014. Some very minor modifications have been made to the original.

10 See the 1982 photo taken in Shanghai of her wearing such a skirt while standing with Chinese colleagues posted on the CHINOPERL website (see the dedication to this issue for details).

11 Dajia 大家 is here translated as “great home,” but its other meanings include “everyone” and “an expert in their field,” as the translation tries to reflect.

12 The English translation, by Bell Yung with input from Loh Wai Fong, hardly does justice to the original Chinese, here reproduced with slashes instead of line-breaks, preserving the traditional characters of the original: 十八如蘭的年華, 惠風賀如蘭八十壽, 二〇〇二年四月十九日. 你的家是大家的家 / 牆壁上有詩有畫 / 桌子上有餅有茶 / 沙發里的客人好談話 / 常辜負院子里的月和花 / 你的家是大家的家 / 這家裡的事 / 有點像神話 / 這才叫大家 / 是寬廣的心靈 / 容得下許多人吵架 / 我的話左衝右突 / 他的論飛揚上下 / 有時候連笑帶罵 / 來不及喝粥喫茶 / 這時候學鐄雄辯的沈默里 / 常有你精采的插話 / 都像是無舵的船 / 總在你溫厚的笑容中蕩漾 / 許我在你長春的微笑里 / 掬一杯消失中的舊式的溫厚 / 感謝你, 百季如春的友情 / 祝賀你, 十八如蘭的年華.

13 On Tsar, see Bell Yung, The Last of China’s Literati: The Music, Poetry and Life of Tsar Teh-yun (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008).

14 Pian, “Autobiographical Sketches,” p. 17. She later donated this instrument to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and it was later proven by a team of experts to be indeed from the late Ming dynasty.

15 See Yung, The Last of China’s Literati, p. 9.

16 For her own account of some of her early exposures to European classical music, see Pian, “Autobiographical Sketches,” especially pp. 3–4.

17 A comprehensive bibliography of Mrs. Pian’s works is available at http://rulanchaopian.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/byrulan.htm, accessed September 14, 2014. See also Siuwah Yu, “Bibliography of Works by Rulan Chao Pian,” in Bell Yung and Joseph S. C. Lam, eds., Themes and Variations: Writings on Music in Honor of Rulan Chao Pian (Cambridge and Hong Kong: Department of Music, Harvard University and The Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994), pp. 352–57.

18 For an example, see Joseph S. C. Lam’s article on a masterwork of Kunqu elsewhere in this issue.

19 Here “theory” refers to “cultural theory,” not “musical theory.”

20 Bell Yung, “The Sixteenth (1985) Meeting of CHINOPERL,” CHINOPERL Papers 13 (1984–1985): 164. These three songs can be found in Zhao Rulan 趙如蘭, comp., Zhao Yuanren yinyue zuopin quanji 趙元任音樂作品全集 (Complete Musical Works of Yuen Ren Chao, Shanghai: Shanghai yinyue, 1987).

21 See the photos from 1988 and 1991 from the Frolics or preparation for them, posted on the CHINOPERL website.

22 See Bell Yung, “Voices of Hong Kong: The Reconstruction of a Performance in a Teahouse,” Critical Zone 3 (2008): 37–57. On the CDs that had been produced from this project by 2012, see Chuen-Fong Wong’s review in CHINOPERL Papers 31 (2012): 251–56. See also Yu Siu Wah’s article in this volume.

23 See the 1975 photo of her in Fu Lung Teahouse posted on the CHINOPERL website. Unfortunately, the early generation of portable video equipment had many problems. Only after a few short years the half-inch magnetic tape started disintegrating, and we lost most of the images.

24 See the 1975 photo of her and Nishimura posted on the CHINOPERL website.

25 I borrow this concise description from the title of Joseph S. C. Lam’s dissertation, “Creativity Within Bounds: State Sacrificial Songs from the Ming Dynasty (AD 1368–1644),” Harvard University, 1987.

26 Two earlier publications that attracted some attention are John Hazedel Levis, Foundations of Chinese Musical Art (Peiping: H. Vetch, 1936); and Bliss Wiant, The Music of China (Hong Kong: Chung Chi Publications, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1965).