Abing and The Moon Over Erquan: an Erhu Requiem That Moved the World

Erquan Yingyue, known in English as The Moon Over Erquan, is one of the most famous erhu pieces ever written, and the tune carries a story as poignant as its melody. Its composer was the Wuxi folk musician Hua Yanjun, better known as Abing, a blind street performer whose life of hardship was captured on wire tape in 1950.

Figure 1. The only surviving photograph of Abing (Hua Yanjun, left, in dark glasses), with his wife Dong Cuidi

Who Was Abing, the Wuxi Folk Musician?

Abing was born Hua Yanjun in 1893 in the Leizi Hall of the Dongxu Daoist temple in Wuxi, where his father served as the presiding priest. Raised on Daoist ritual music and the silk-and-bamboo traditions of the Jiangnan region, he mastered wind, string and percussion instruments from boyhood.

In middle age he lost his sight and took to the streets, playing with a bamboo staff and round dark glasses, carrying an erhu and a pipa. People came to know him by the nickname Abing rather than his formal name, and Erquan Yingyue grew out of the music he played for those Wuxi listeners.

Erquan Yingyue and the Spring That Gave It Its Name

The title Erquan Yingyue means the moon reflected at the second spring. It takes its name from the Second Spring Under Heaven on Huishan Hill, a Jiangnan spring rated by Lu Yu, the Tang-dynasty Sage of Tea. Abing often played beside this spring.

The melody itself began as a nameless heart tune he improvised for himself; neighbours only knew it as hauntingly sad. China's national intangible heritage archive recalls how the piece was first given its name only during that 1950 recording session.

Figure 2. Abing's former residence at 30 Tushuguan Road, Wuxi — the tiled Qing-era hall of the former Leizi Hall

The 1950 Rescue Recording of Erquan Yingyue

On the evening of 2 September 1950, the music scholars Yang Yinliu and Cao Anhe of the Central Conservatory of Music travelled to Wuxi with an imported wire recorder. At the Three Sages Pavilion in the city they made a rescue recording of Abing.

They captured three erhu pieces and three pipa pieces, including Erquan Yingyue, Listening to the Pines, Cold Spring Wind, The Great Waves Washing the Sand, The Dragon Boat and Wang Zhaojun. China News Service's eyewitness account describes that night. Only three months later, in December 1950, Abing died, and these wire recordings became the only music of his that survives.

How Erquan Yingyue Moved the World

In 1978, after the Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa heard the original erhu version played by the 17-year-old student Jiang Jianhua at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, he wept. He said music like Erquan Yingyue should be listened to on one's knees, that to stand or sit is disrespectful.

People's Daily recalls the moment. Since then Erquan Yingyue has travelled from the lanes of Wuxi to the world, arranged for many instruments and for orchestra, and become a cultural emblem of the East. Wuxi's Liangxi District traces the race to preserve it.

Figure 3. The “Second Spring Under Heaven” on Huishan Hill, Wuxi — the spring that gave Erquan Yingyue its name

Visiting Abing's Former Residence in Wuxi

Today, Abing's former residence at 30 Tushuguan Road in Wuxi, the very Leizi Hall where he was born, composed and died, is protected as a major national historical site, near the busy Chong'an Temple quarter. A small museum inside exhibits his erhu, photographs and the story of the piece.

Pair the visit with a morning at Huishan Old Town and the Second Spring that named it, then end beside the water at dusk. The tune is best heard after dark, and in Wuxi the connection between the melody, the spring and the blind musician who made it is still deeply felt.

In barely five minutes of music, Erquan Yingyue distils a lifetime of Wuxi into sound. It is the rare folk melody that crosses borders without losing its hometown, and a moving reason to visit the city that gave the world both the piece and the Spring it was named for.