1936, Guangzhou.
Song Wen is the last pipa master of Qinghe Class. The team broke up, half of the costumes were pawned, and half a box of costumes was left under the bed. The musty smell grew stronger day by day. Every day he went to the old stage next to Tianzi Pier to sit for a while. A piece of the stage was torn off by a typhoon and no one repaired it.
Ji Huai came back from San Francisco with a saxophone, covered in ashes, and a debt that was enough to make him die three times. When he walked into the stage, Song Wen was tuning strings, and the sound of the pipa penetrated the holed stage and sank into the mud of the Pearl River.
No one can tell what happened next. All I know is that a band of five people did something not too big or too small in this sinking city. They played a kind of music that no one had ever heard before - the suona was mixed with jazz, the brass was entwined with southern music, and the saxophone was panting like a drowning person flopping on the river. There sat under the stage a comprador from the thirteenth generation, a coolie carrying bags at the dock, and a young man with a sallow complexion. Later, the man wrote a line in the newspaper: "The soul of the old era is brought to life by Western iron pipes."
What he didn't write about was that the saxophone player was in debt and could end up dead on the street at any time. He didn't write that the pipa player would sit by the riverside after finishing work every night, with the pipa across his knees and not move for a long, long time.
Intention: How to live without money?
