Cantonese opera - pathos on disability used for charity collection

One of my all time favourite Cantonese pop stars is Anita Mui. She died in 2003 of  cervical cancer, much to the loss to Chinese music and film scene. I love her husky voice and her versatile ability to  change - from  pop song to cantonese opera for example..


Anita Mui singing "Sins" for a charity function 1987/88

I was listening o this clip and it stuck me that this aria has been often used to get the pathos for charity events and for fund raising. The term Anita use is to beg...the begging song she sings is from an aria from 

萬惡淫為首

The story: A scholar chanced to see his step-mother commit adultery. She blinded him and kicked him out of the house while his father was away. He was betrothed to a girl but the girl’s father would not allow her to marry him. The scholar was forced to beg for food. He sang this song while begging on the street.
Source from frannxis'blog

This aria is extremely well known and all the elements are there - the blind person as a helpless cripple, blindness as being an object of pity, to be given scraps of food, homeless, downtrodden, despised. The instrument often used by the blind beggar is the er hu, a two stringed instrument, which has a really plaintive sound. If there is a blind man, there will be an erhu. Thats the stereotype. (Although in recent Chinese films, there hasnt been too much of the erhu, come to think of it, the blind girl in Stephen Chow's Kungfu Hustle which also has two scarey blind pipa players. Zhang Ziyi in the House of Flying Daggers only pretends to be blind shes not actually blind.
ps apparently there is a film by Chen Kaige Life on a String (Bian zou bian chang) with 2 blind characters and a banjo)

Thinking all this marr my enjoyment of the piece. The Chinese inherited the concept of karma from India with the Budhist teachings. Disability is seen as some form of karmic destiny.