Illustration:
ill. 1.10
Date:
1973
Genre:
comic, comic strip
Material:
scan, paper, colour; original source: print on paper, colour
Source:
Quanguo lianhuanhua Zhongguo huazhanlan (guohua zhuanji) 全国连环画中国画展览(国画专辑). (An exhibition of Chinese comics, with a special section on comics in national style). Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1974:51.
Inscription:
江水英用白求恩同志毫不利己专门利人的光辉事例，激励大家。
Keywords:
countryside, instrumental arrangement, Western classical music, reading, model work, model opera, heroine, Lao sanpian, Three Constantly Read Articles, Norman Bethune, Mao Zedong, Mao´s words, Sino-Japanese War, music, peasants

Reading the Three Old Articles in Song of the Dragon River (Longjiangsong: Kan Lao Sanpian 龙江颂：看老三篇)

Certain instrumental groups conventionally used in Western classical music to mark particular moods or situations are employed frequently in the model works (horns for scenes in the woods, for example, or high woodwinds for idyllic scenes, as well as the glockenspiel for spheric and transcendent atmospheres, reminiscent of the magic powers of the glockenspiel in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, among others). In Song of the Dragon River, woodwinds are used in scene 5 when Panshuima’s narration no longer dwells on her sufferings before liberation but talks about her newfound happiness ever since then (Longjiangsong 1975, 125). They also appear after the storm in On the Docks (scene 4) when running sixteenth notes, leftovers from the passing thunderstorm, are substituted with a slow and stately passage in harp, flute, and clarinet (i.e., high woodwinds), with Chinese-style trills sounding while a rainbow appears over the scene.

A similar instrumental arrangement is found in scene 6, when Jiang Shuiying suggests that everybody should read one of Mao’s so-called Three Constantly Read Articles (老三篇 Lao sanpian) all of which epitomize Maoist moral tenets and the values of altruism and selflessness. The story they read together in the scene depicted here is that of Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, who helped the Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War (scene 6, Longjiangsong 1975, 235).