Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang: Where Will I Be Next Year?
Grandevity Studio presents a complete musical setting of Wang Yucheng’s Northern Song prose masterpiece Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang. Using 100% of the original Classical Chinese text with no modern expansion, rewriting, added lyrics or repeated lines, the work blends Song-dynasty literati Mandopop Soul, refined Chinese-inspired R&B, guqin, xiao, Fender Rhodes, nylon guitar, neo-soul bass, brushed drums, bamboo percussion, pipa and chamber strings. What begins with rain, snow and the acoustics of a humble bamboo tower ultimately becomes a meditation on exile, impermanence and the question: 'Not knowing where I shall be next year, why should I fear that the bamboo tower may decay?'
How long can a bamboo tower last?
The craftsman tells Wang Yucheng:
竹之為瓦，僅十稔；若重複之，得二十稔。
Bamboo used as roofing lasts only ten years; if another layer is added, it may last twenty.
Ten years.
Twenty years.
For a small tower roofed with bamboo, its physical lifetime can be counted.
But Wang Yucheng does not respond by asking how to preserve the building forever.
He thinks instead about himself:
四年之間，奔走不暇； 未知明年又在何處， 豈懼竹樓之易朽乎？
For four years I have been constantly on the move. I do not know where I shall be next year. Why should I fear that the bamboo tower may decay?
On the surface, Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang is an essay about a building.
At its deepest level, it is about how a person living through political disappointment, displacement and uncertainty can still create a place in which the mind remains ordered and free.
Grandevity Studio’s Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang sets Wang Yucheng’s complete original text to newly composed music.
There are no newly written modern lyrics.
No vernacular rewrite.
No added chorus.
No inserted lines.
No repetition of the original text merely to extend the song.
From:
黃岡之地多竹，大者如椽。
to:
咸平二年八月十五日記。
the composition follows Wang Yucheng’s original prose in sequence.
The purpose is not to give him a modern answer.
It is to allow his own words to become music again, more than a thousand years later.
Watch the MV: 🎬 Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang | Official Music Video
Headphones recommended. The film begins in Huangzhou during the Xianping era of the Northern Song dynasty: river water, sandbanks, bamboo groves, low city walls and a neglected northwestern corner of a modest provincial town. A small two-room bamboo tower gradually becomes a world of rain, snow, qin music, Go stones, incense, tea smoke, sunset and moonlight. When the essay reaches “I do not know where I shall be next year,” the lifespan of the building becomes inseparable from the instability of the man who built it.
Wang Yucheng: a Northern Song writer shaped by repeated political setbacks
Wang Yucheng lived from 954 to 1001.
His courtesy name was Yuanzhi.
He was a native of Juye in Jizhou, roughly today’s Juye County in Heze, Shandong Province.
He entered official life through the civil service examination system and served in posts including Right Reminder, Drafter of Proclamations and Hanlin Academician.
Known for speaking directly on political matters, his official career repeatedly rose and fell.
Huangzhou became one of the important places in this unsettled life.
Near the end of the essay he reviews the sequence himself:
吾以至道乙未歲，自翰林出滁上，丙申，移廣陵；丁酉，又入西掖；戊戌歲除日，有齊安之命；己亥閏三月到郡。
The yiwei year of the Zhidao era corresponds to 995 CE.
Over the following years Wang moved between Chuzhou, Guangling and the central administration.
At the end of 998 he received the appointment to Qi’an.
In the intercalary third month of 999 he arrived in Huangzhou.
On the fifteenth day of the eighth month that year, he completed this essay.
Huangzhou and Huanggang: where did the tower stand?
In the Northern Song, Huangzhou was a regional prefecture.
Huanggang lay within the historical administrative centre of the area, broadly corresponding to today’s Huanggang region in Hubei Province.
When Wang writes:
予城西北隅
he is not describing a luxurious retreat in a famous scenic district.
The site lay at the northwestern corner of the prefectural town.
Its battlements had collapsed.
The ground was overgrown.
Using abundant local bamboo, Wang built two small rooms there and connected them with the Moon-Wave Tower.
The beauty of the essay therefore does not arise from expensive architecture.
It comes from local material, simple construction, natural sound and the deliberate habits of literati life.
Bamboo roofing: the material origin of the essay
The work begins:
黃岡之地多竹，大者如椽。
Huanggang is a land rich in bamboo, the largest stalks as thick as rafters.
Local craftsmen split the bamboo, hollowed out its joints and used it in place of ceramic roofing tiles.
House after house did the same:
以其價廉而工省也。
because bamboo was inexpensive and economical in labour.
Wang does not turn the material into a rare luxury.
Its ordinariness is essential.
An everyday local material becomes, through attention, an entire aesthetic world.
“Summer is best in sudden rain; winter is best in dense snow”
One of the most remarkable features of the essay is how naturally it can be heard.
夏宜急雨，有瀑布聲； 冬宜密雪，有碎玉聲。
Summer is best in sudden rain, with the sound of a waterfall.
Winter is best in dense snow, with the sound of shattered jade.
Then:
宜鼓琴，琴調和暢； 宜詠詩，詩韻清絕； 宜圍棋，子聲丁丁然； 宜投壺，矢聲錚錚然。
Qin strings.
Recited poetry.
Go stones striking the board.
Pitch-pot arrows ringing against the vessel.
The building itself becomes part of the acoustic instrument.
This is one of the central ideas behind the musical production.
After official duties: exile is not only loss
When official work is finished, Wang puts on his crane-feather cloak and Huayang headwear, takes a volume of the Book of Changes, burns incense and sits silently.
Beyond the landscape he sees only:
風帆沙鳥，煙雲竹樹而已。
Sails.
Sandbank birds.
Mist.
Clouds.
Bamboo.
Trees.
Then:
待其酒力醒，茶煙歇， 送夕陽，迎素月， 亦謫居之勝概也。
When the strength of the wine has faded and the tea smoke dispersed, he sees off the setting sun and welcomes the pale moon.
This too, he says, is one of the finest aspects of life in exile.
Wang does not deny political disappointment.
He discovers instead that even inside a situation he did not choose, part of life can still belong to him.
A sunset can still be seen off.
A moon can still be welcomed.
A book can still be held.
A quiet room can still exist.
This is not denial.
It is self-possession.
Splendid towers, and a different choice
The essay turns toward famous and ornate towers:
彼齊雲、落星，高則高矣； 井幹、麗譙，華則華矣。
Qiyun and Luoxing are certainly high.
Jinggan and Liqiao are certainly magnificent.
Wang does not deny their grandeur.
But he continues:
止於貯妓女，藏歌舞， 非騷人之事， 吾所不取。
Such buildings, he says, are used to house courtesans and contain song and dance.
They are not what he wants.
The point is not that splendour itself is morally wrong.
It is a statement of values.
One kind of tower contains performance and luxury.
Wang wants a tower for rain, snow, qin music, poetry, Go, incense, books and landscape.
External magnificence stands on one side.
Inner order stands on the other.
He knows which one he chooses.
“I do not know where I shall be next year”
The bamboo craftsman explains that the roof may last ten years, or twenty if another layer is added.
At first this appears to be a practical note about maintenance.
Then comes:
噫！
Ah.
The essay turns.
The lifespan of the building becomes a mirror for human instability.
Wang remembers the previous four years:
Chuzhou.
Guangling.
The Western Secretariat.
Qi’an.
Constant movement.
Then:
未知明年又在何處， 豈懼竹樓之易朽乎？
I do not know where I shall be next year.
Why should I fear that the bamboo tower may decay?
Many people still know this uncertainty.
Which job?
Which city?
Which home?
Which familiar part of life will still remain next year?
Wang is not given permanence.
What he discovers instead is another kind of freedom:
if impermanence already belongs to life,
fear of disappearance should not prevent us from living fully in the present.
“May this tower not perish”
The essay closes:
幸後之人，與我同志， 嗣而葺之， 庶斯樓之不朽也！
If those who come after me share my mind, may they continue to repair it, so that perhaps the tower will not perish.
Physically, such a wish is almost impossible.
Bamboo ages.
Wood decays.
Buildings disappear.
Yet more than a thousand years later, we still know this tower.
We can still imagine its rain.
Its snow.
Its qin.
Its Go stones.
Its sunset.
Its moonlight.
The original materials did not survive.
The essay created another kind of preservation.
Architecture decays.
Language and spirit do not necessarily do so.
Music: making the bamboo tower itself part of the instrument
The musical direction is:
Premium Song-dynasty Literati Mandopop Soul / Refined Chinese-inspired R&B / Cinematic Chinese Fusion
Tempo: 70 BPM.
Meter: 6/8.
Form: through-composed.
There is no fixed pop chorus.
No original sentence is repeated.
The vocal remains warm, cultured, restrained and clear, using Standard Mandarin with careful Classical Chinese diction.
The arrangement includes:
- guqin
- xiao
- Fender Rhodes
- nylon-string guitar
- neo-soul bass
- brushed drums
- bamboo percussion
- pipa
- chamber strings
- bamboo wind and distant rain ambience
At:
夏宜急雨，有瀑布聲
rain on the bamboo roof becomes part of the rhythmic image.
At:
冬宜密雪，有碎玉聲
the sound becomes finer and more crystalline.
The qin, Go and pitch-pot passages connect directly with sounds already embedded in Wang’s prose.
At:
公退之暇
the arrangement becomes intimate.
At:
送夕陽，迎素月
the harmony opens into one of the most luminous sections of the song.
From:
噫！
the music gradually deepens.
The emotional summit remains dignified rather than shouted:
未知明年又在何處， 豈懼竹樓之易朽乎？
After the date line, the music does not stop immediately.
Moonlit bamboo ambience and a long instrumental tail remain.
The person has gone.
The tower stays in the wind.
The MV: from a small building to a human choice
The visual world is set in Huangzhou during the Northern Song Xianping era.
It deliberately avoids the scale of a magnificent capital.
Huangzhou remains a modest provincial town:
low walls,
riverbanks,
sandbars,
bamboo groves,
simple homes,
and a small two-room bamboo tower at the northwestern corner of the city.
Wang Yucheng is portrayed as lean, composed and scholarly.
The first half of the MV builds the tower through concrete details:
craftsmen splitting bamboo,
bamboo roofing,
summer rain,
winter snow,
guqin,
Go,
pitch-pot,
the Book of Changes,
tea smoke,
sails,
sandbank birds,
sunset,
and moonrise.
When the text reaches the ornate towers, the imagery briefly enters a brighter world of architecture, music and dance.
The purpose is not spectacle for its own sake.
It creates a visible contrast for:
吾所不取。
I do not choose it.
The second half becomes a journey through memory:
Chuzhou.
Guangling.
The Western Secretariat.
The New Year’s Eve appointment.
Arrival in Huangzhou.
Post roads.
River travel.
Official documents.
The city gate.
Finally, all movement returns to the bamboo tower.
At:
庶斯樓之不朽也
the MV refuses a heroic finale.
It simply leaves the bamboo tower beneath moonlight, with the river, sandbanks, bamboo and distant mountains.
People move on.
Buildings decay.
Some forms of clarity remain.
📜 Complete Sung Text / Original Chinese with English Translation
Wang Yucheng, Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang
100% original Classical Chinese text・No modern expansion・No rewriting・No added lyrics・No repeated original lines
【Bamboo in Huanggang・Bamboo Roofing】
黃岡之地多竹，大者如椽。竹工破之，刳去其節，用代陶瓦。比屋皆然，以其價廉而工省也。
Huanggang is a land rich in bamboo, the largest stalks as thick as rafters. Bamboo craftsmen split them open, hollow out the joints, and use them in place of ceramic tiles. House after house is made this way, because the material is inexpensive and the labour economical.
【The Northwestern Corner・Two Small Rooms】
予城西北隅，雉堞圮毀，蓁莽荒穢，因作小樓二間，與月波樓通。遠吞山光，平挹江瀨，幽闃遼夐，不可具狀。
At the northwestern corner of the city, the battlements were damaged and collapsed, and the ground was overgrown with tangled weeds. I therefore built two small rooms there, connecting them with the Moon-Wave Tower. From afar they seem to swallow the light of the mountains; at level height they gather in the river rapids. Quiet and far-reaching, the scene cannot be fully described.
【Sudden Rain and Dense Snow・Qin, Go and Pitch-Pot】
夏宜急雨，有瀑布聲；冬宜密雪，有碎玉聲。宜鼓琴，琴調和暢；宜詠詩，詩韻清絕；宜圍棋，子聲丁丁然；宜投壺，矢聲錚錚然；皆竹樓之所助也。
Summer is best in sudden rain, for there comes the sound of a waterfall; winter is best in dense snow, for there comes the sound of shattered jade. It is good for playing the qin, whose tones become harmonious and free; good for chanting poetry, whose resonance becomes pure and remote; good for playing Go, whose stones sound ding-ding; good for pitch-pot, whose arrows ring zheng-zheng. All these pleasures are enhanced by the bamboo tower.
【After Official Duties・Sunset and Pale Moon】
公退之暇，被鶴氅衣，戴華陽巾，手執《周易》一卷，焚香默坐，消遣世慮。江山之外，第見風帆沙鳥，煙雲竹樹而已。待其酒力醒，茶煙歇，送夕陽，迎素月，亦謫居之勝概也。
In the leisure after official duties, I put on a crane-feather cloak and a Huayang headcloth, hold a volume of the Book of Changes in my hand, burn incense and sit in silence, dispersing worldly concerns. Beyond the rivers and mountains, I see only sails and sandbank birds, mist, clouds, bamboo and trees. When the strength of the wine has faded and the tea smoke has dispersed, I see off the setting sun and welcome the pale moon. This too is one of the finest aspects of life in exile.
【Qiyun and Luoxing・What I Do Not Choose】
彼齊雲、落星，高則高矣；井幹、麗譙，華則華矣；止於貯妓女，藏歌舞，非騷人之事，吾所不取。
As for Qiyun and Luoxing, they are certainly high; Jinggan and Liqiao are certainly magnificent. Yet they serve only to house courtesans and contain song and dance. Such things are not the affairs of a poet, and I do not choose them.
【Ten Years of Bamboo Roofing・Four Years of Wandering】
吾聞竹工云：「竹之為瓦，僅十稔；若重複之，得二十稔。」
I heard the bamboo craftsman say: “Bamboo used as roofing lasts only ten years; if another layer is added, it may last twenty.”
噫！吾以至道乙未歲，自翰林出滁上，丙申，移廣陵；丁酉，又入西掖；戊戌歲除日，有齊安之命；己亥閏三月到郡。四年之間，奔走不暇；未知明年又在何處，豈懼竹樓之易朽乎？
Ah! In the yiwei year of the Zhidao era I left the Hanlin Academy for Chuzhou. In bing-shen I was transferred to Guangling. In ding-you I again entered the Western Secretariat. On New Year’s Eve of the wuxu year I received the order for Qi’an. In the intercalary third month of jihai I arrived at the prefecture. For four years I have been constantly on the move. I do not know where I shall be next year. Why should I fear that the bamboo tower may decay?
【Kindred Spirits・May the Tower Not Perish】
幸後之人，與我同志，嗣而葺之，庶斯樓之不朽也！
If those who come after me are of the same mind, may they continue to repair it, so that perhaps this tower will not perish.
咸平二年八月十五日記。
Recorded on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, in the second year of Xianping.
The Tower Will Decay. The Words May Not.
Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang does not promise permanence.
The building will age.
The official will move.
Appointments will change.
Next year is unknown.
Yet Wang still chooses to:
build,
read,
burn incense,
listen to rain,
watch snow,
play the qin,
play Go,
see off the sunset,
and welcome the moon.
The strength of the essay does not come from defeating impermanence.
It comes from living clearly inside it.
💿 Credits
- Song Title: Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang
- Chinese Title: 黃岡竹樓記
- Classical Source: Wang Yucheng, Huanggang Zhulou Ji
- Author: Wang Yucheng
- Period: Northern Song Dynasty
- Literary Form: Ji prose
- Original Text / Complete Sung Words: Wang Yucheng
- Lyrics Format: 100% original Classical Chinese text, with no modern expansion, rewriting, added lyrics or repeated original lines
- Text Order: Strictly follows the project-established original text
- Music Style: Premium Song-dynasty Literati Mandopop Soul / Refined Chinese-inspired R&B / Cinematic Chinese Fusion
- Tempo / Meter: 70 BPM / 6/8
- Composition / Arrangement: Suno AI / Grandevity Studio
- Vocals: Suno AI Mandarin male vocal
- Music Production: Grandevity Studio
- AI-Assisted Visuals: ChatGPT Images
- Video Editing / Art Direction / Creative Production: Grandevity Studio
- Released by: Grandevity Limited
- Production Year: 2026
- Official MV: https://youtu.be/VNCEcwa9t1w
Music Style and Mood:
Premium Song-dynasty Literati Mandopop Soul / Refined Chinese-inspired R&B / Cinematic Chinese Fusion at 70 BPM in 6/8, built as a through-composed setting of Wang Yucheng’s complete prose. Bamboo wind, distant rain, guqin and xiao establish the tower; Fender Rhodes, nylon-string guitar, neo-soul bass, brushed drums, bamboo percussion, pipa and chamber strings gradually enter. Sudden rain and dense snow become part of the musical sound design; “see off the setting sun and welcome the pale moon” opens the most luminous space; and the exclamation “Ah!” begins the final inward rise toward “I do not know where I shall be next year. Why should I fear that the bamboo tower may decay?” The song closes with a long moonlit instrumental tail rather than a triumphant ending.
⚖️ Copyright Notice
Wang Yucheng’s Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang is a public-domain classical literary work.
This musical production uses 100% of the project-established original Classical Chinese text adopted for the finished song. No modern lyrical expansion, vernacular rewriting, newly added lyrics or other newly written lyric sections have been introduced, and no original sentence is repeated merely to extend the work.
The music production, recorded master, arrangement, mix, master, MV visuals, cover artwork, video editing, subtitles, shot design, art direction, promotional writing and overall creative production were produced by or lawfully licensed to Grandevity Limited / Grandevity Studio. Relevant rights are retained and administered subject to applicable law and the terms of the platforms and production tools used.
Unauthorized re-uploading, redistribution, reproduction, editing, sampling, commercial use, platform distribution, AI training, dataset use, remixing, or incorporation into another audiovisual work is prohibited except where otherwise permitted by applicable law or license.
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About This Project
Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang is part of Grandevity Studio’s Classical Literature Reimagined in Music series.
The goal is not to keep classical literature locked inside textbooks.
Nor is it to modernize a work so aggressively that the original writer’s voice disappears.
Some works invite adaptation.
Others need only to be heard again in their own words.
Record of the Bamboo Tower in Huanggang belongs to the latter.
The original bamboo tower is gone.
But the rain,
the snow,
the qin,
the Go stones,
the sunset,
the moonlight,
and the question:
未知明年又在何處
Where will I be next year?
can still be heard today.