Help with reading a cursive character

[zixingche]

Can anyone read the first character?

(I can't seem to put a picture in the post, it just shows as a link.)

My guess is shēn 深 (deep).

Which would make the title "shēn gōng yuàn" 深宫怨, so lit. lament deep in the palace.

It's from the cover of a LP of traditional Chinese music: Masterpieces for the Erh-Hu (Lyrichord LLST 7132) by Lǚ Wénchéng 吕文成 (as "Lui Man-Sing and his Group" on the LP).

All the tracks are well known tradtional pieces except for this one, so I can't work out what the chinese title should be. It's called "Yearning in the Palace" in English on the record.

There seems to be a 1960s Hong Kong film with the title of "shēn gōng yuàn" 深宫怨, I don't know if there's any connection.

Edited July 18, 2009 at 03:05 PM by zixingche
typo

[semantic nuance]

My guess is shēn 深 (deep).

You're right. The first character is 深.

[Hofmann]

FYI, this is semi-cursive.

[dingli]

shen 深 means deep, that's right, on one hand ,but, you know, many chinese words has another means inside.

深 means the palace is very big, is hard for the person in it to go out, and it means the heart of the peron is hard to know( such as today you believe he is your lover or good friend, but a few days later, you found that he is your enemy.).It's say that 一入豪门深似海is the same means.( If you know the story of the Queen Marie-Antoinette who is killed in French Revolution, and Princess Diana ，you can understand what the palace means for them)

en ,it this place ,it means the dark of politics, too.

[zixingche]

Thanks everyone.

I'm not sure of the exact definition of "cursive" characters, I'm using it just to mean handwritten. Some of the other characters on the cover looks just like squiggles to me, but I already knew the titles from the music.