從天堂到地獄·阿炳的賣藝生涯From Heaven into Hell · Abing’s Years as a Street Performer
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician AbingFrom Heaven into Hell · Abing’s Years as a Street Performer
China’s Beethoven · Blind Musician Abing從天堂到地獄·阿炳的賣藝生涯
中國的貝多芬·瞎子阿炳

In the history of modern Chinese music, The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring, the immortal erhu masterpiece left to the world by Blind Abing—Hua Yanjun—is known to virtually everyone. Most people know that he was a musical genius and a master of Chinese folk music. Yet few know that before he shook the world with a single erhu composition, his life had undergone a devastating transformation—from “heaven into hell.”

From the respected head Taoist priest of Leizun Temple to a destitute street performer struggling to survive, his life became more than a story written in blood and tears—a battle against poverty. It was also an arduous struggle against degradation amid darkness and humiliation, an unyielding effort to preserve his dignity even in hell.

Before he reached his thirties, no one could have imagined that his fall would come so swiftly.

He was the head Taoist priest of Leizun Temple, a renowned Taoist sanctuary in the city of Wuxi. In his youth, he was a man of exceptional promise. Under the rigorous training of his master—who was also his father—Hua Qinghe, he became proficient in wind, percussion, plucked-string, and bowed-string instruments. His remarkable musicianship brought him great renown at Taoist rituals throughout Wuxi, and he became widely admired as the “Young Celestial Master” and “Master Hua.”

In those years, he lived in comfort, free from material want and held in high esteem. He often mingled with prominent local figures and led the life of a charming, accomplished young man. Abing seemed to be living in “heaven,” never imagining that the black hole of fate was already waiting silently in his path.

His life took a sudden turn in his thirties. Years of dissipation and the ravages of disease left Abing completely blind. Soon afterward, control of the temple passed into other hands. Stripped of both his livelihood and his social standing, he was transformed almost overnight—from the respected “Young Celestial Master” and “Master Hua” into a blind man with no one to depend upon.

To survive, Abing had no choice but to sling a sanxian across his back, take up his erhu, and make a living performing in the streets. Once, he had sat in an honored place as the presiding Taoist priest, respected and revered by others. Now, he had become a blind musician playing amid the dust of the roadside to earn his next meal. He had fallen from heaven into hell. No one who has not endured such a fate can fully imagine the crushing psychological shock of that descent.

In the history of modern Chinese music, The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring, the immortal erhu masterpiece left to the world by Blind Abing—Hua Yanjun—is known to virtually everyone. Most people know that he was a musical genius and a master of Chinese folk music. Yet few know that before he shook the world with a single erhu composition, his life had undergone a devastating transformation—from “heaven into hell.”

From the respected head Taoist priest of Leizun Temple to a destitute street performer struggling to survive, his life became more than a story written in blood and tears—a battle against poverty. It was also an arduous struggle against degradation amid darkness and humiliation, an unyielding effort to preserve his dignity even in hell.

Before he reached his thirties, no one could have imagined that his fall would come so swiftly.

He was the head Taoist priest of Leizun Temple, a renowned Taoist sanctuary in the city of Wuxi. In his youth, he was a man of exceptional promise. Under the rigorous training of his master—who was also his father—Hua Qinghe, he became proficient in wind, percussion, plucked-string, and bowed-string instruments. His remarkable musicianship brought him great renown at Taoist rituals throughout Wuxi, and he became widely admired as the “Young Celestial Master” and “Master Hua.”

In those years, he lived in comfort, free from material want and held in high esteem. He often mingled with prominent local figures and led the life of a charming, accomplished young man. Abing seemed to be living in “heaven,” never imagining that the black hole of fate was already waiting silently in his path.

His life took a sudden turn in his thirties. Years of dissipation and the ravages of disease left Abing completely blind. Soon afterward, control of the temple passed into other hands. Stripped of both his livelihood and his social standing, he was transformed almost overnight—from the respected “Young Celestial Master” and “Master Hua” into a blind man with no one to depend upon.

To survive, Abing had no choice but to sling a sanxian across his back, take up his erhu, and make a living performing in the streets. Once, he had sat in an honored place as the presiding Taoist priest, respected and revered by others. Now, he had become a blind musician playing amid the dust of the roadside to earn his next meal. He had fallen from heaven into hell. No one who has not endured such a fate can fully imagine the crushing psychological shock of that descent.

The terror of blindness, the cruelty of the streets, the coldness of human society, and the indifferent stares of passersby shattered the pride he had once possessed. Many of his former “friends” abandoned him as well, avoiding him as though his misfortune were something contagious.

Even after Abing swallowed his pride and took to the streets out of sheer necessity, the brutality of reality exceeded anything he had anticipated. Life in true “hell” was even harsher than he had imagined.

The streets of Wuxi in those days were not places where anyone could simply perform at will. Many streets and alleyways were controlled by local guilds and underworld factions, including organized groups of beggars.

A story is still told in Wuxi about a confrontation between Abing and the Beggars’ Gang when he first became a street performer. The precise details can no longer be fully verified. Yet the story reflects the harsh conditions under which street musicians struggled to survive in those years.

According to local lore, when Abing first ventured into the streets to perform, he knew nothing of these unwritten rules. He had barely begun playing his erhu when the underlings of a Beggars’ Gang leader came to intimidate him. They told him that if he wanted to beg on that street, he would first have to become a disciple of their chief and pay regular protection fees. Otherwise, he must leave their territory at once.

Surrounded and threatened by these local thugs, the blind Abing stood his ground. He insisted that he was not begging: he was earning his living through his musicianship. He was a Taoist priest and had once been the head of Leizun Temple. How could he possibly bow to the leader of a beggars’ gang and accept him as his master?

But the gang members who had come to cause trouble had no intention of listening. Knowing that Abing was blind and unable to defend himself, they beat him savagely and smashed his pipa and erhu.

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News that Blind Abing had been attacked before he could even earn a living soon spread throughout Wuxi. Some mocked him and claimed that he had brought the humiliation upon himself. Others sympathized with him and believed that the Beggars’ Gang had gone far beyond the limits of decency.

Fortunately, although Abing had fallen into destitution, his extraordinary musicianship and his former position as the presiding Taoist priest of Leizun Temple still moved some people to come to his aid.

According to this local account, an influential acquaintance named Xue Furui eventually stepped forward to mediate. Xue Furui was said to have connections with both the Green Gang and the local police, and to have been a prominent figure in Wuxi at the time.

He made his position clear to the leader of the Beggars’ Gang: Abing was his friend. Though he had fallen upon hard times, he was still “earning his living through his own skill.” He was not an ordinary beggar soliciting alms from door to door, and the Beggars’ Gang had no right to bully him.

Other underworld factions also became involved, helping to negotiate a settlement. Only then did the Beggars’ Gang relent and allow Abing to perform in the area around Chong’an Temple in Wuxi.

This confrontation with the Beggars’ Gang stirred the fierce pride and defiance rooted deep within Abing’s character. Determined to distinguish himself from ordinary beggars, he continued to assert his identity as a Taoist priest throughout the nearly twenty years he spent performing in the streets. Whenever he went out to play, he wore his hair in a Taoist topknot and dressed in a Taoist robe. It was his way of declaring that although he had fallen into poverty, he was not a beggar pleading for alms.

Abing believed that he was not begging—he was performing. For that reason, he refused to extend his hand and directly accept charity from his listeners. Instead, he hung a small gong from his instrument or placed a bamboo basket beside him, allowing members of the audience to drop their copper coins into it.

To him, it was a fair exchange:
I perform. You pay.

He never begged for anyone’s pity. He was not asking for charity; he was using his musicianship and labor to earn the compensation he deserved. Even in hell, even when left with no other choice, he struggled to preserve the last remnants of his dignity.

The streets of Wuxi became his stage—and also his battlefield.

It was amid the wind and rain around Chong’an Temple, through long years of poverty, humiliation, abuse, and the contemptuous stares of passersby, that Abing poured all the indignation, defiance, and sorrow of his life into his battered erhu—and into every note drawn from its strings.

The Moon Reflected on the Second Spring, the composition that would one day shake the world, was not nurtured by a life of comfort within the refined halls of music. It was gradually conceived, tempered, and brought into its final form during Abing’s long years as a street performer—years in which he had fallen from heaven into hell and struggled to survive amid poverty and humiliation.

The suppressed anguish and impassioned resistance within its music were Hua Yanjun’s answer to a life of suffering—and his most profound indictment of a cruel and merciless world.

(To be continued)