Yi Jian Mei (一剪梅) originally means a bough of wintersweet flower, also known as the genus Chimonanthus ,or winter flower, a glorious, fragrant flower native to China. Most of the templates have beautiful names, but they gradually lose their initial meaning and become simply memory aids for a particular form of poetry. The poetic template, one of many, was most popular in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The title of the song is Yi Jian Mei, which used to be simply the name of a poetic template (词牌) that determines the number of lines in a poem, the number of characters in each line and the rhyming scheme, among other things, something like iambic pentameter, the heroic couplet or the format of a sonnet. The song is the theme music for its namesake television drama as well as a defining piece for Yuqing Fei, who retired from his singing career in 2019. Exactly how it made its way to West Texas is a mystery to me, but I am glad. That was one of the most popular songs in my childhood, as well as a karaoke favorite. When driving my son and two of his friends home from a fishing trip, I heard the three teenagers, two of them not Chinese speakers, break out singing " xue hua piao piao, bei feng xiao xiao". File photo: Fei Yu-ching, the singer of the song
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