The Chinese theater of World War 2 is called the Second Sino Japanese War, often considered to be the beginning of WW2 in Asia, lasting from 1937 to 1945. During the war in 1939, Xian Xinghai, a Chinese composer educated in Western-style classical music, created the Yellow River Cantata, a cantata of war songs. These feature an orchestra with a mix of traditional Chinese and western instruments and musical narration in several movements relating to the war. One such movement is movement V: conversation in the banks of the yellow river, which narrates a conversation between two villagers, one from Japanese-occupied Manchuria and one from Shanxi. They lament about their situation before resolving to fight for China to return to their hometowns together. I would recommend listening to this piece, it’s actually quite an interesting work of art and I can see why Xian’s music was well received. It features a dramatic shift in tempo and tone and the creative use of different styles of instruments. Anyway, in the song, the villagers lament about the state of their homes: the villager from Shanxi talks about how his family was destroyed and the villager from Manchuria talking about how he hasn’t gotten news from his family in eight years. I wonder if this fictional villager would feel similarly angry and upset at the fact there’s been no fucking KH4 news in three years.