Word: yun
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...assorted whistlers, fiddlers, ladybug plunkers whanged away at heart strings beyond the walls. But the tune that dampened the eyes of Warden Herbert ("Cap") Smith and beefy Deputy Tom Meikrantz was a Chinese prisoner's song, written and sung in quavery, North China dialect by Canton-born William Yun. (Yun was jailed six weeks ago for working the badger game on a wealthy countryman named...
...title: in Chinese, Pai jih p'o ching chih yuan;* in Tin Pan Alleyese, When I Get Out, Beloved. Inmate Yun, 27, based his song on a 2,000-year-old Cantonese legend of a separated bride & groom, joined again in old age with the aid of matching halves of a little round mirror each had treasured through the years...
Warden Smith and Deputy Meikrantz were proud of Prisoner Yun's lament.They themselves had inspired Yun to his effort, for they set great store by the lyric abilities of the Chinese. A few years back, a hatchetman inmate had composed an unforgettable Christmas carol entitled: I'd Rather Be in Pekin, Than in Here Peekin...
...Literally, "After the mirror having been broken 100 days, [I am] coming to the family homestead." The term "100 days" is used figuratively, to indicate a long time. Inmate Yun's sentence is two to four years...
Last week Nanking's Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek got a telegram from Inner Mongolia that cheered him. It purported to be from one Yun Chih-hsien, who claimed that he was leading a great rebellion against Prince Te. "My men are patriots," Yun trumpeted, "and absolutely opposed to Prince Te's pro-Japanese policy." This might have meant much or nothing, but one thing Premier Chiang read plainly between the lines of the telegram: There would be no Inner Mongol rebellion unless Nanking forked out some cash for Yun...