Dan1 Yuan4 Ren2 Chang2 Jiu3 - May We Live Long Enough

Yea, heard of this one? According to this website http://www.geocities.com/chiheng.geo/deca.htm :

Translation: Dexter Tay
"The lyrics come from an ancient poem by a famous Chinese poet, Su Shi. The
poet is sad, anguished, and drinking, because he is separated from his lover.
He contemplates the moon, asking when it is ever clear and round, symbolizing
happiness and the reunion of lovers; he consoles himself with the thought that
his lover is gazing at the same moon. Ancient Chinese(w�nyan) is really a
separate language, and not easy to translate. Here is the ending of the poem,
in a very literal and then a free translation. "

People have sadness/cheerful parting/meeting
The moon has dark cloudless circle lacking
This matter strange difficult wholly
Only wish person long time
A thousand miles share beautiful abandonment

Life is about parting and coming together
The moon has times when it is not round
Nothing is perfect [It is an entirely difficult thing]
Only wishing for eternity
No matter how far apart, it is happiness to see the same moon


So dat's the rough idea of what the lyrics mean. I can't translate the song because i dun have the hanyu pinyin version and my chinese is really bad. I have the full chinese lyrics but i cant understand some words so i'm not gonna try and make a fool outta myself~ :)

wat i will do is transcribe the song instead~ This song was made popular first by the late theresa teng, a really awesome singer :) i really like her stuff~ and also later by Faye Wong. Both the songs are played in the same key of concert E. The transposed key to be played on alto saxophone will be Db with 5 flats or C# with 7 sharps, of which either way is the same no matter how u look at it.

I'll transcribe both piano and sax versions in another entry.