一剪寒梅，又吐芬芳

河北任丘市第一中學南院 趙倩楠

30多年前，費玉清的歌曲《一剪梅》紅遍了大江南北；30多年后，張愛欽的演唱讓這首歌紅到了海外

題材生活體裁記敘文文章詞數 難度 建議用時488 ★★★ 8 分鐘

難詞探意

1. twirl /twз?l/ v. （使）旋轉；轉動

2. ambiguous /?m?b?ɡju?s/ adj. 含糊不清的；模棱兩可的；不明確的

Track 02

A Chinese song titled Yi Jian Mei, or A Spray of Plum Blossoms, entered the Viral 500 of Spotify, an overseas mainstream music platform indicating popularity on social media platforms. The music video of the song released in 2016 on YouTube has been watched for 1.65 million times.

The song, sung by Chinese singer Fei Yu-ching,was released 37 years ago. It has become a classic pop song among the middle-aged people. The popularity of the song began with a hit TikTok video in January, where a Chinese man named Zhang Aiqin performed the song twirling in the snow. His unique appearance with an egg-like head caught the eye of Tik-Tok users. Foreign viewers regard Zhang as the Chinese version of Humpty Dumpty in DreamWorks' animation Shrek or Dr. Eggman. By June 16, the number of TikTok videos related to the song had exceeded 20,000.

The lyric, “Xue Hua Piao Piao, Bei Feng Xiao Xiao”, which literally means “the snow falls and the northern wind blows”, has developed into an international meme. Those who could only say Xiexie (thank you) or Nihao (hello) in Chinese have shown great enthusiasm for learning the Chinese sentence.

According to Urban Dictionary, an online dictionary for slang words and phrases, the lyric, “Xue Hua Piao Piao, Bei Feng Xiao Xiao”, is an ambiguous expression that can mean anything in a sentence. Generally, it is being used to illustrate a situation that becomes worse than ever and cannot be turned around.For instance, Bruh Bruh, a netizen, wrote, “My parents are talking about getting a divorce. Me in my room:“Xue Hua Piao Piao, Bei Feng Xiao Xiao.” Many foreigners have posted their covered songs on TikTok and Twitter. Different from the original song, the current version has been adapted to different music style, including hip-hop.

Another popular activity related to the song is to ask parents to read out the written lyrics. Interestingly, most parents can sing this melody directly as part of their memory of the 1980s. Fei is my mum's idol back in her time, a Youtuber named Dinnie said. “It was extremely funny how this was taking over my Tik-Tok when my mum used to sing it to me when I was a kid.”

Launching his music career in 1973, Fei announced to retire in 2019 after releasing over 100 albums.“You will never hear the sound of breathing in his song. His voice and ability are perfect,” YouTube user Cilla Qiu wrote.

Although the song and lyrics became a funny meme on the Internet, some still think that this is an unexpected opportunity for foreigners to understand Chinese music and culture. Some foreign Web users say that they felt inner peace and the beauty of Mandarin listening to the song.

“Social media builds a platform fostering cultural exchanges in the international community,putting aside different backgrounds and gaps of languages,”a Weibo user named Pangzaishusheng said.

Reading Check

What contributes to the current popularity of Yi Jian Mei as an international meme according to the text?

Language Study

Difficult sentence

Social media builds a platform fostering cultural exchanges in the international community, putting aside different backgrounds and gaps of languages.

【翻譯】_____________________________________________________________________________

【點石成金】fostering cultural exchanges in the international community為現在分詞短語作后置定語；putting aside different backgrounds and gaps of languages為現在分詞作伴隨狀語。