Shidaiqu literally means "songs of the era", a term used to describe a hybrid musical genre that first began permeating through the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in the late 1920s. Blending western pop, jazz, blues and Hollywood-inspired film soundtracks with traditional Chinese elements, the shidaiqu represented a musical and cultural merging that would go on to shape a golden age of Chinese popular song & film in the pre-communism interwar period. 'Waiting For Your Return' brings together a wide collection of recordings for an anthological overview of the style. Taking in it's early beginnings in the work of the pioneering composer Li Jinhui - whose 1927 song 'Drizzle,' featuring the vocals of his daughter Li Minghui, is often referred to as the first shidaiqu record - through to more polished 1930s & 40s examples, when China's western-influenced popular music & movie industry reached it's golden age with the prevalence of the Seven Great Singing Stars (Bai Hong, Bai Guang, Gong Qiuxia, Li Xianglan, Wu Yingyin, Yao Lee and perhaps most prolific of all, Zhou Xuan). Included in the collection are tracks recorded right up until the music's demise in Shanghai in the early 1950s - during which time the Chinese Communist Party denounced shidaiqu as "yellow music", outlawed nightclubs and pop music production, and destroyed western-style instruments - following which, much of these singers would decamp to Hong Kong where many saw further success throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. TRACKS: 01. Yan Fei - Little Things 02. Bai Lizhu - Tuberose 03. Yao Lee - Send You Off 04. Chen Yumei - Spring Night Song 05. Ying Yin - Pillow Picture 06. Zhou Xuan - Spring Flowers Like Brocade 07. Bai Hong - Falling Flowers And Flowing Water 08. Wu Yingyin - Meet by Chance 09. Zhou Xuan & Yan Hua - The Destination Of Love 10. Li Li-Hua - I Want To Follow You 11. Zhou Xuan - Prayer Under The Moon 12. Wu Yingyin - Spring Breeze Brings Troubles 13. Chen Juanjuan - Window To The Soul 14. Min Yao - Rural Song 15. Bai Guang - Dongshan Green 16. Wu Yingyin - I Want To Forget You 17. Gong Qiuxia & Huang Yuanyin - I Ask You 18. Lu Ming - In The Mood For Love 19. Wang Qinglong - Spring Flowers, When Will You Come Again 20. Li Xianglan - Second Dream