For the past several months from Autumn, the Grade 11 CAS students and one Grade 10 student have been very busy during their Day A lunch rehearsals. They’ve been preparing for their group rendition of a Chinese battlefield song from the 1950s during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) called the Yellow River Cantata, or 《黄河大合唱》 in Chinese. They were also joined by a number of teachers (Mr. Lawson, Mr. Naik, Mr. Csonka, Mr. Han, Ms. Zhou) singing the song in Chinese.

To summarize, the title translates to “the Song of the Yellow River”. As the Yellow River, or Huang He, is an important river that serves as a water source in China, it holds an important symbolic meaning. TO clarify, the Yellow River is the second longest river in China, only seconded by the Yangtze River. Symbolically, it represents the livelihood of the Chinese people. Traveling back to the 1940s, this chorus expresses the fighters’ joy at re-taking the River from their enemies, and their first steps in reclaiming China.

Their performance, originally scheduled to be on Thursday the 20th, was pulled a day forward due to the cancellation of Thursday’s events. Despite this, the 10th and 11th grade students still got to perform on stage on Wednesday. Their thunderous voices and the fiery melody of the chorus surely was significant in the eyes of the audiences.