A Story Of The Red-Crowned Crane

After a lot of searches, I finally got hold of a rare CD "Xin Le Fu" (I suppose the translation would be "New Music Academy"?) - it's a live CD of Dadawa (Zhu Zhe Qin), whose Tibetan-inspired debut album "Sister Drum" back in the early 1990's made an impact across the global music world.

This CD was a real discovery - it's the recording of the concert that took place in Beijing on 1 April 2004, and the voice of Dadawa was just amazing in this concert. One song that stuck in my mind was "A Story of The Red-Crowned Crane". I didn't know this song before I got this CD, but after some research, I found that this was actually Dadawa's debut hit back in 1990 (she was the first runner-up in a singing competition). And to make this song even more special, it was based on a true story, on a girl called Xu Xiujuan. The narrative at the start of the song summarised the story very well:

"There was a girl, who loved the red-crowned cranes since she was very young. After she graduated from university, she went back to the place where she kept the cranes. However, one day when she tried to save an injured red-crowned crane, she fell into the wetland marshes in an accident, and never returned."

I have not found Dadawa's video of this song, but I have managed to hunt down a cover version.

The girl in the true story was called Xu Xiujuan, who was born in October 1964 in the city of Qiqihar in Heilongjiang Province. She was from the Manchu ethnic minority in China. In August 1981, at the age of 17 she followed her father Xu Tielin (an expert in cranes) to the Zhalong Nature Reserve, and she took up a temperory job there.

Her father didn't really want her to work in cranes preservation, as he knew how tough the job would be. However, Xu Xiujuan insisted on working there, and with her dedication and hard work, she managed to remember all the details about every crane in the nature reserve within 3 days of working there.

In May 1986, Xu Xiujuan completed her 2-year study at the Northeast Forestry University Wildlife Department, left home, went to the Jiangsu Yancheng Nature Reserve that covered large areas of the wetlands, grown over with reeds, salt marshes, making this a perfect habitat for the cranes. Xu Xiujuan's knowledge and expertise came in handy here, and it's here that she successfully talent be brought into full play. With her pioneering knowledge and application of the technology, she managed to breed and raise three red-crowned cranes in harsh conditions. With this success, she earned a lot of respect from other experts in the country.

On 15 September 1987, one of the cranes went missing, and despite the best effort from everyone, the crane couldn't be found that day. Xu Xiujuan insisted on looking for the crane that night, and also the next day. Somehow that day she fell into the wetlands and perished - no one knew exactly how the accident happened; whether she fell off the bike while searching for the crane, or she got off the bike and tried to swim to save the crane in the wetland.

Because of her dedication, she is now passionately known as the Goddess of Cranes.

There's a more complete story in simplified Chinese, but I hope this story has moved you as much as it has moved me.