Yang Ying (right) and Li Bin (left) accompany Wu Mei before the coffin, 2011.

A popular dep in Li Manshan’s band is Yang Ying, who studied briefly with Li Qing not long before his stroke in 1996, but as boss of a busy shawm band has to juggle his ritual work (my book pp.319–21).

Since household Daoists like this are known here as yinyang, and since (like the “non-national” Euripides, to cite Myles yet again) Yang is partial to “smoking substances”, one day while we were all relaxing in the scripture hall I composed a suitable epithet for him, on a par with my headline for Švejk and Saint-Saëns:

阴阳杨英饮洋烟
Yinyang Yang Ying yin yangyan

The yinyang Yang Ying smokes foreign tobacco with a water-pipe.

Note: 饮 “drinks” is a little obscure (“eats” chi 吃 is more idiomatic, but that doesn’t work, of course), but evidently refers to a water-pipe. We’re always joking about “foreign tobacco“, which has long suggested opium.

For some excellent German tongue-twisters, click here.