"Blue and White Porcelain" (青花瓷) is a Chinese style song written by Vincent Fang, arranged by Baby Chung (鍾興民), and composed and sung by Jay Chou. The song uses the main melody of the Chinese pentatonic scale "Palace mode" (宮調式)..^[1] In 2008, Jay Chou sang "Blue and White Porcelain" at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.^[2]

Originally, Vincent Fang wanted to name the song "Bronze", because bronze is not romantic enough to change the Song Dynasty's "Ru ware" for the song title, however, the Ru ware of the word "Ru" would give rise to unflattering associations, and coupled with the romantic elegance of porcelain, Vincent Fang finally decided to use porcelain as the title of the song.^[3][4] At first, the word "porcelain"(青花瓷) was misheard by Jay Chou as "frog pond"(青蛙池).^[4][5]

The song won the 19th Golden Melody Awards for Best Song of the Year,^[6] Best Lyricist of the Year, and Best Composer of the Year, while Jay Chou won the awards for Best Composer and Best Album Producer,^[6] with Vincent Fang receiving the awards on his behalf due to Jay Chou's absence.^[7]

Repercussions

A high school in Wuhan, China, used the lyrics of "Blue and White Porcelain" as a mimeographed topic for a language exam,^[8] and on June 13, 2008, celadon appeared on a basic aptitude test exam question for the Shandong, China college entrance exam.^[9]

In order to create a hazy mood, celadon porcelain omits words with grammatical landmarks.^[10][11] In the Peking University admissions test held in Chengdu,China on New Year's Day 2009, the question asked students to point out "The vegetal embryo outlines a blue and white brush stroke that is thicker than light, and the peony depicted on the bottle is just like your first makeup."(Chinese : 素胚勾勒出青花筆鋒濃轉淡瓶身描繪的牡丹一如妳初妝) Grammatical Errors in the Lyrics of Blue and White Porcelain.^[12]

Collector (马未都) said in the lyrics of the song "in the bottom of the bottle book Han Li imitation of the previous dynasty's ease"(Chinese : 在瓶底書漢隸仿前朝的飄逸) in the "Clerical script" should be changed to "small seal script", The reason is that after the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty, only the small seal script is written on the bottom of the blue and white Porcelain, not the Clerical script, and the lyrics of the song "copying the Sung style of inscription, but thinking of you"(Chinese : 臨摹宋體落款時卻惦記著你) in the word "Sung"(宋) should be replaced by the word "Regular"(Regular Script,楷), because in the history of Chinese ceramics, the Sung style of inscription is t is only found in the enameled porcelains of the three dynasties of the High Qing era, and there is no Sung style of writing on the blue and white porcelain.^[12][13]

Blue and White Porcelain has an unofficial adapted version of the chemistry version,^[14] adapted by Qiu Wei, a teacher at Leshan No. 1 Middle School, to which Jay Chou said, "This chemistry teacher is great!" and invited him to sing the chemistry version of Celadon with him on stage.^[15] There is also a tribute to Steve Jobs^[16]

In addition the song triggered a certain amount of celadon collection fever, in 2008 the celadon collection enthusiasts in Chengdu and Chongqing, China steeply increased to tens of thousands of people from a few hundred in 2007.^[17]

References