17th Apr 2012 (天梯 – C AllStar)

Today’s song is “天梯” by C AllStar. This is a beautiful song for a very touching story in China. The direct English translation of the song is call “Sky ladder”.

Instead of talking about the lyrics of the song today, I am going to talk about the true story that the song talks about. (I found that it is very difficult to get an English version of this story, so hopefully this will give you some idea of the story.) This story is about a couple, the male called Lau Kwok Kwong (劉國江) and the female called Chui Chiu Ching (徐朝清) (I am going to refer to their surname in the following, so Lau as the husband, Chui as wife). In 1942, when Lau was 6, he meets Chui when Chui first moved into his village. At that time, Chui was 16, 10 years older than Lau. 10 years later, Chui husband passed away, leaving her by herself with 4 kids, eldest is 9 years old and the youngest is 1. At that time, people look down at widows, saying that Chui bring bad luck to her husband. Chui was living in poverty, she can only afford to eat mushroom that she found from the mountain. The only thing that she can do was to make grass sandals, which she can sell for 5 dollars.  Lau wanted to help her out, but he was worried that he would get rejected (as Chui was being discriminated, it is not hard to believe that she would reject others help to prevent others being discriminated as well) or that others will laugh at him for helping Chui. Until one day, Lau heard that Chui fallen into a river with her youngest son, he quickly get there and saved them both. This was the first time that Lau looks straight to Chui eyes. Since then, Lau helped Chui’s daily life, helping her to cut woods for fire, bring water back to her house. The news spread through the village fast, many people start talking about Lau, some approach him to tell him stop helping Chui. Lau’s mother was very unhappy that his son’s action, and most people were worried that this would make life hard for Lau as well. A day in 1958, Chui told Lau to stop helping her out as it is not good to stick around with a widow. That night, Lau sneak into Chui’s house and told her that he wanted to marry Chui. Chui looked at Lau then to her four kids, tears came out from her eyes but she shook her head. Lau said “I am serious”. The next day the 6 of them disappeared from the village. They move to the mountain to avoid gossips. Their life were hard, they grow their own food, but got stolen by animals. One year the flood came and washed away their house. Later on, the youngest kid die when he was five, but after that they have 4 more kids. When they live in the mountain, they sometimes go down the mountain to buy some food and transported their kids to school. But the road down the mountain is very narrow and it is full of thorns. Lau was worried that his partner would trip over, so he started to build a love stair. Lau spent over half a century to build a stair of over 6000 steps only with the most basic tools that he got. All their kids now have move away from the mountain to get work in the city, only their third son is living in a town close by. His son have asked the couple to move down with him, but they are too used to the life in the mountain. They promised each other whoever pass away first, the other will buried the dead one in the mountain and move with their son. In 2007, Lau passed away. Breaking her promise, Chui still lives in the mountain as she misses the time that she spent with her husband. This story was discovered by a group of mountaineers, when they saw this stairs that lead to the top of the mountain in 2006. Hope you will enjoy this song. I have linked to a non-official version of the songs that displace footages of the couple.

Related posts:
14th May 2016 (時日如飛 – C AllStar)
17th Jul 2015 (家書 – C AllStar)
25th Feb 2015 (陪你到世界終結 – C AllStar)
6th July 2014 (下靶 – C AllStar)
2nd Apr 2014 (我們的電車上 – C AllStar)
30th Jan 2014 (放下 – C AllStar)
13th Jun 2013 (時間囊 – C AllStar)

天梯 – C AllStar