Currently reading Heidi Netz Rupke and Grant Blank's "'Country Roads' to globalization: sociological models for understanding American popular music in China" (The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2009, . 126-146) which drawing on the English teaching experience of Rupke in Chinese higher educational institutes argues that Chinese students are overwhelmingly attracted to easy listening, country, romance, and soft oldies music which have been generally considered to be associated with low levels of education and status, such as Country Roads and Yesterday Once More rather than the current hits on American charts because of "their [easy listening, country, romance, and oldies music] high cultural capital [apparently, the medium of English], resonant themes [folk themes], easy retrievability [pirated CDs], and political suitability [, importation, and consumption of American popular culture controlled by the government]". (p. 143)
It reminds me of the century-old English folk song Greensleeves, which had been used in the English listening examinations in HKCEE and HKALE for a decade as a prelude to entertain, if not bore, the candidates and relieve, if not intensify, their nerve. The good old days has gone because students is no longer familiar with this super oldies anymore and listen to this song only because of the examinations.
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