"Graduation Song"—Youthful battle hymn resounds across China

In the autumn of 1934, in east China's Shanghai, as the chill wind blew, a young composer sat in a cramped room, lost in creation. On the paper before him, under the lamplight, gleamed the lyrics: "Fellow students! Fellow students! Quickly summon your strength, and shoulder the rise and fall of our nation!"

That 22-year-old was Nie Er, composing an interlude for the soon-to-be-released film The Graduates' Fate. Outside the window, the soft neon lights of the French Concession contrasted sharply with the stirring notes flowing from his pen.

This work was Graduation Song. How did it transform from a mere film interlude into a nationwide anthem of youth?

Rewind to 1932. The smoke of the "Battle of Shanghai" had yet to dissipate, while popular tunes like Li Jinhui's Drizzle floated through the concessions. At the time, Tian Han was already engaged in the left-wing cultural movement. In 1933, he introduced Nie Er, who had traveled from Yunnan to Shanghai, to the Communist Party, bearing witness to his joining. The two men shared a conviction: music must serve as a weapon for revolution. In the spring of 1934, while Tian Han was writing the new opera Storm on the Yangtze River at Lianhua Film Company, he declared that "art should be a weapon to awaken the masses." Meanwhile, Nie Er, then a violinist at the Mingyue Song and Dance Troupe, though performing commercial pop daily, had already published A Brief Discussion on Chinese Song and Dance, sharply criticizing such "decadent tunes" as being detached from the people and calling instead to "compose battle songs to awaken the national soul." By the time his Song of the Newsboy was being sung in the streets in 1934, the two comrades—14 years apart in age—were already conceiving a more powerful work: Graduation Song.

The creation of Graduation Song faced a dual pressure: on the one hand, to infuse the film score with strong anti-Japanese invasion sentiment; on the other, to evade increasingly harsh Kuomintang censorship of left-wing art. Tian Han's lyrics posed the piercing question, "Shall we choose to fight, or to yield?"—at once in line with the film's theme of youth awakening, and cleverly metaphorical enough to slip past censors. Nie Er reinforced this interrogation musically. To heighten its impact, he borrowed the rhythm of dockworkers' chants and used a march style to create urgency. The repeated refrain "Great waves, great waves, endlessly surging" simulated the roaring tide, symbolizing the rising anti-Japanese salvation movement and turning it into a bugle call to battle.

Even before the film's release, Graduation Song was attracting media attention. On October 6, 1934, Shen Bao included The Graduates' Fate and its interlude in its annual film music review, despite the film not yet being screened. The Dentsu Company sensed the song's potential and began distributing free sheet music as promotion, sparking a sensation. On December 9, The China Times advertised that reader requests for the sheet music were "pouring in like snowflakes." Five days later, Dentsu announced donations of sheet music to all middle and primary schools in Shanghai, with unregistered schools invited to apply with an official seal, elevating promotion of the song from into a social musical movement.

On December 16, 1934, The Graduates' Fate premiered at the Jincheng Grand Theatre in Shanghai. It was the first film of the leftist Dentsu Film Company under communist leadership, and among China’s earliest sound films with synchronized audio. Its dialogues, effects, and music flowed seamlessly with the visuals. When the on-screen graduates sang Graduation Song, the audience burst into thunderous applause. Later, as the protagonist Tao Jianping repeatedly lost jobs for upholding justice, and his wife, Li Lilin, died from exhaustion after childbirth, sobs filled the theater. At the tragic finale—Tao's death in poverty and illness—the song returned: "Today we are blossoming like peach and plum, tomorrow we will be the pillars of society…" The bright song against the bleak ending struck deep, leaving the audience in tears.

As the reels circulated through the flames of war, the spread of Graduation Song far exceeded expectations. Each time audiences saw students singing "Fellow students, summon your strength, and shoulder the rise and fall of our nation!" some would rise and join in. By September 1935, newspapers reported that nearly all students in Shanghai's schools were singing it. In June 1936, Tiebao noted it had swept the nation—"even six- and seven-year-olds can hum it." Stores played it over radios; schools included it in their music curricula.

The song's significance extended far beyond the screen. It was both an intellectuals' declaration of resistance and a youthful anthem. Yu Jianting, then student of Yenching University, recalled that on the eve of the "December 9 Movement", students sang Graduation Song by the Weiming Lake to rally courage. On December 9, 1935, marchers linked arms and sang it. At China Girls' High School in Shanghai, student Zhong Shichuan led joint rallies across schools, using the song as a trumpet call. On December 25, 1935, students at Jiaozuo Institute of Technology in Henan united peers in Zhengzhou by singing it, their voices carrying cries of “Save the nation!” across north and south. Tens of thousands of youth took to the battlefield singing Graduation Song.

Tragically, Nie Er did not live to see this. He died suddenly in Japan in July 1935. Qingqing Dianying (literally Green Cinema, a Shanghai film magazine), published a tribute by actress Chen Bo'er titled "In Memory of the Composer of Graduation Song", calling Nie Er a pioneer who "blazed a new path for the nation's songs."

After the full-scale War of Resistance broke out in 1937, Graduation Song broke through concession censorship and spread beyond campuses into society at large. In 1938, the authoritative collection Songs That Stirred the Storm listed it as a "mass battle song." At a 1939 wartime charity sale in Guilin City, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the lyrics were slightly revised to cry out: "Fellow countrymen, summon your strength!" As the editors of Songs That Stirred the Storm wrote, these notes had long since become "spears that pierced the darkness," resounding endlessly through the blood-stained years.

After the founding of the People's Republic, the song remained popular. It was included in Selected Songs of the Chinese Student Movement (1955), Selected Songs from Films Since May Fourth (1957), Songs of College Students (1957), Selected Songs for Radio Broadcast (1957), and Selected Songs of the War of Resistance (1958), among other major anthologies. In recent years, it has been featured in music textbooks such as the People's Education Press editions, and in 2015 was named one of the "Top 10 Favorite Songs of the War of Resistance" by the former State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

Notably, in 1984, Yuxi Normal College in Nie Er's hometown of southwest China's Yunnan Province adopted Graduation Song as its school anthem to honor his spirit and encourage teachers and students alike.

This battle hymn of youth, born in a time of national peril, embodies the themes of "youth responsibility" and "national awakening." Even today, it inspires new generations to reflect on the bond between the individual and the nation. Graduation Song is not only a witness to history but also a legacy of spirit—whenever we again sing "Shoulder the rise and fall of our nation," we seem to hear those stirring notes by the Huangpu River and see the magnificent chapters of youth written in blood and fire.

Find the original article at https://news.gmw.cn/2025-07/20/content_38162540.htm

Written by Chen Qian, Associate Researcher at the Music Research Institute, Chinese National Academy of Arts

Translated by Wang Xinyuan