Lord Qiao and his Home Life

Qiao Yu is a short old man with a youthful heart. Everyone loves him. His appearance at the neighborhood food market always excites vendors and makes the moment as lovely as a happy family reunion. When I went to interview Qiao Yu the other day and accompanied the old man to the food market, I found vendors greet him excitedly and warmly from afar. He has been known jokingly as Lord Qiao since the 1960s. Among these vendors, he was Lord Qiao, hometown fellow or simply little old man. Some vendors even started happily singing a song whose lyrics are out of his hand. I was impressed. Qiao is an artist, arguably China’s best known song lyrics writer for decades, and chairman of China Song Lyrics writers Association. The song lyrics he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s are part of the musical classics of New China. In the eyes of the people in his neighborhood, however, he is just a dear next-door grandpa.

Qiao attributes his songwriting achievements to the childhood enlightenment. Qiao’s mother, though illiterate, was an unusual ballad singer. To Qiao, she was a wealth of endless folk stories, songs, and riddles, which she spent a lot of time collecting. Qiao grew up with these folk stories and ballads. His writing is greatly influenced by his mother’s wealth of folk arts. Some material comes directly from her mother’s singing.

Qiao describes his wife Tong Qi as a “super girl” in a recent interview. When asked about his wife, he confessed jokingly, “She has a loud soprano voice and is always lecturing me at home.”

In the summer of 1954, when he was writing the would-be famous song “Let Us Row the Boat” for a children’s film, the 27-year-old lyrics writer fell in love with 17-year-old Tong. They were married that year. Is there a secret for such a long marriage? Qiao’s answer is simple. “I don’t believe it’s hard to achieve the jubilee. Time flies and now we’ve celebrated the golden wedding. I’ve learned a simple secret: jubilee would be out of the question if you changed your life partner half way.”

Qiao is from a family of nothing and his wife Tong Qi from a family of noble blood. Her father was a general in the northeast China and her mother a royal relative of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). For all her life, Tong is compulsive for cleanliness; she is honest and she minces no words when it comes to expressing her opinion or standing up for principles on important family issues such as her right to stop her husband from drinking too much. The husband has a lifelong weakness for drink and spends a lot of time reading. The wife loves singing and airing her views on a lot of things. So Qiao compromises with a sense of humor. At a banquet in celebration of their silver wedding, Qiao was asked by a young man how he had managed his marriage so successfully. Toying with the wine cup in his hands, Qiao replied, “Let me be honest. My secret is: I try my best to bear with her.” And his wife added, “My secret is, if I at first fail to tolerate him, I will try again.” Hearing the couple’s confession to the shared secret, all the guests burst into laugh and applause.

Qiao Yu still appears in some CCTV shows now and then. All his old and new friends call him Lord Qiao or simply Lord. The nickname came from “Lord Qiao Steps into Sedan Chair”, a popular movie of the 1960s. Friends found Qiao Yu look and speak like the lord in the movie. So naturally he became Lord Qiao among his friends. In fact, since the movie, many men surnamed Qiao may have been jokingly called Lord Qiao in China and Qiao Yu is probably the most famous Lord Qiao.

The 80-year-old lyrics writer has kept his youthful energy. At 60, he wrote “I Miss You”, a song loved by many young people. At 61, he wrote “Great Windmill”, a song for kids. At 63, he wrote “Red Red Sunset”, a song for golden-age people. Critics comment that the setting sun painted by Qiao is almost as beautiful as the rising sun.

A prolific songwriter, Qiao Yu has penned more than 1,000 songs in his life time and each echoes kindness, sincerity and beauty from his heart. It is his kindness and sincerity and lyrical art that touch the heart chord of the Chinese people.