Li Jinhui, the Chinese musician considered to be the father of shidaiqu (or Chinese popular song) was born in 1891 in Hunan to a well-educated family, one of eight sons. He received a progressive and Confucian education and took a strong interest in music from a young age. Li began to compose children’s musicals in the early 1920s in Mandarin Chinese. He aimed to instill the humanist, anti-feudalist, and nationalist values of his compositions in younger generations. He began publishing these children’s musicals in 1923 via a children’s weekly magazine and continued to create and direct musical training programs for youth (Chen, 2007). Due to financial difficulty and lack of commercial success, he began to compose love songs such as “The River of Peach Blossom” (Taohua jiang) and “The Express Train” (Tebie kuaiche), both of which became extremely popular.

Upon his return to Shanghai in 1930, he established the Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe, a training program that produced numerous female performers who went on to careers in film acting and singing. The troupe also contained composers who dedicated themselves to this popular song genre, including Yan Hua, Li Jinguang (his younger brother), and Chen Gexin. This concentration of trained performers and composers led to a proliferation of “songs of the times” which dominated Shanghai’s entertainment industry during the 1930s and 40s. His daughter Li Minghui was a notable singer in the troupe, as well as his adopted daughter Li Lili, who went on to a successful career in acting (Jones, 2001).

Li Jinhui and his troupe were often criticized by leftists who believed their music exemplified the effects of Western imperialism and capitalism that, the Leftists felt, corrupted and weakened China. A former student of Li Jinhui, Nie Er, spoke out against Li and his popular music and began to write music “inspired by Soviet-style mass music and military marches” (Chen, 2007). During the Cultural Revolution, Li Jinhui faced political persecution and eventually execution for his integral role in popularizing this “yellow music,” a genre antithetical to the Chinese Communist Party’s ideals (Jones, 2001). Li’s legacy lives on in his famous compositions, in the stars (both singers and composers) he nurtured through his troupe, and in the music that developed from shidaiqu, such as Mandopop and Cantopop.

Chen, Szu-Wei. “The Music Industry and Popular Song in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai: A Historical and Stylistic Analysis.” PhD diss., University of Stirling, 2007.

Jones, Andrew F. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.