The Girl from Dabancheng

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The Girl from Dabancheng (Chinese: 达坂城的姑娘; pinyin: Dá bǎnchéng de gūniáng), also known as "Qemberxan" (Uyghur: قەمبەرخان), is a popular Uyghur folk song about the Uyghur youth's yearning for a beautiful woman named Qemberxan.

In 1938, it was adapted into Mandarin Chinese by Wang Luobin and was sung in Lanzhou under the title "Song of the Coachman" (Chinese: 馬車夫之歌; pinyin: Mǎchē fū zhī gē). It became the first Uyghur folk song translated into Chinese in modern China.^[1] Later, Wang Luobin's lyrics were modified and the work was renamed "The Girl from Dabancheng"; some had renamed it to "The Girl from Hangzhou" with the scenery in the south of the Yangtze River. The song was later adapted in various forms. One performance of the song won an award in Pyongyang, North Korea in 2001.^[2]

One of the early recordings of the song was done by a German ethnomusicologist on the singing of a Turpan Taranchi farmer's 16-year-old daughter. The song was most likely composed by a Uyghur soldier back in the time of Yaqub Beg, when the soldier was posted from southern Xinjiang to the north (Ili) or east (Turpan). Indeed, there are many songs dated back that time associated with a soldier's courtship, such as Havagul (mispronounced and adapted by Wang Luobin as Avargul), which talks about a girl in Ili. However, "Qemberxan" talks about a girl in Dabancheng (or Davanching in the Uyghur language) which lies between Turpan and Urumqi, and is a district of Urumqi. This district is well known as an entrepot on inter-oasis travel. The reputation of the beauty of local girls is partly due to the mixing among the different populations that traveled through it.^{[citation needed]}