Shidaiqu

Shidaiqu, literally "songs of the era", is a genre of Mandarin popular song that flourished in Shanghai from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. Created by composer *Li Jinhui*, it fused Chinese folk melody with jazz, foxtrot and Latin dance rhythms drawn from the city's cabarets, sung by star vocalists including *Zhou Xuan*, *Bai Hong* and *Yao Lee*. Suppressed in mainland China after 1949 as decadent "yellow music", shidaiqu survived in Hong Kong and Taiwan and stands as the first modern Chinese popular music, the root of both Mandopop and Cantopop.