By 2023, I’ve been a hardcore Jay Chou fan for over a decade. I went from being that grade-schooler in the classroom quietly humming “Hair Like Snow” during morning reading, to an office worker with earbuds in all day.
He’s a high-quality idol: that “uninhibited,” cocky aura influenced me quite a bit, even though it never changed the fact that I’m an introverted person.
Under the wolf-fanged moon, my love grows haggard
It should have been around 2006. JJ Lin’s “A Thousand Years Later,” which he sang at the Spring Festival Gala, later became my enlightenment song for pop music. Then I listened to my cousin’s tapes and fell in love with “Frozen.” JJ Lin was probably the first pop singer I ever “stanned.”
Later, one summer vacation, a cousin from the city brought over a few CDs, probably pirated burns. From them I heard “Hair Like Snow” and “East Wind Breaks,” plus “Nocturne,” and from then on I became a Jay Chou “solo stan.”
Because I discovered him “too late,” his earlier albums became my treasure trove. Back then, my MP3 (which I basically seized from my dad) only had Jay Chou’s songs. I organized all his albums, listening to them in rotation, never getting enough. Not exaggerating: in that period, I could name the song as soon as the intro started, and I could rattle off the lyrics non-stop.
Fireworks fade easily, people part easily
This is the first album I remember “keeping up with” in real time. To be precise, it wasn’t the first album released after I started liking Jay Chou, but it was at the age when I’d acquired some basic Internet skills—
in simple terms, I knew how to find resources—
so it really stuck in my memory.
There weren’t apps like Quanmin K Ge (全民K歌) back then. I used some kind of recording software to record myself singing for fun. Honestly, I have zero talent for singing—can’t hit the high notes, can’t settle into the low ones. Looking back, what I enjoyed most was the sense of technical achievement. I remember uploading music to my QQ Zone and you could even search it in QQ Music; that’s probably impossible now (bitter laugh).
At the time it was sports meet season. I’d go to the Internet café at noon with classmates; they played games while I looped “Fireworks Cool Easily.” I have to say, in that era Jay Chou was still absolutely dominant. Although from today’s perspective, his musical style had quietly shifted. As for songs like “Self-Directed and Self-Acted” and “My Tears Become Pieces of Emotion,” let’s just say I have reservations.
Your reflection is a view I can’t return to
As we entered the 2020s, both Jay Chou and society as a whole underwent huge changes.
Jay Chou got married, wrote songs for his daughter, shot MVs with his son. His life is no longer centered on releasing new songs and albums. He’s no longer that kid swinging nunchucks, singing about how he’s “not worthy.” After all, I myself am approaching thirty.
Yet this sense of estrangement isn’t just a matter of “we both grew up.”
The praise of Jay’s Chinese-style songs is frankly redundant:
“From ‘Bride’ to ‘Nunchucks,’ from ‘East Wind Breaks’ to ‘Hair Like Snow,’ all along the way, consistent and true; with a diversity of styles, he loves Chinese style most of all.”
Chinese style is a dream jointly crafted by Jay and Vincent Fang: exquisite lyrics, genius melodies, and meticulously polished arrangements, as if lifting you off the ground and tossing you into the romance of history.
But some of Jay’s other “gritty” and “sincere” songs attract me just as much as the Chinese-style ones. And the number and quality of that type of song seems to have indirectly contributed to this sense of estrangement.
To test this unreliable gut feeling, I did a quick search on the songs for which Jay wrote his own lyrics:
What songs did Jay Chou write lyrics for himself? [2019-10-04]
Here are the songs where I can recall lyrics just from reading the titles
(for a few lines I did double-check the original lyrics):
Sitting on the bus on my way to school,
watching cows outside the window chew grass,
it’s a kind of indescribable freedom.
— “Terraced Fields”
When I listen to this song, I think back on the wheat field across from my house that turned into rows of tall buildings in just over a decade, and the woods full of cicadas in summer.
I will climb up, step by step.
— “Snail”
Even though this song only exists in live versions, every time I hear it, the mental image is of a young man in that era, full of drive and ambition.
What she wants is company, not six hundred yuan.
— “Grandma”
My grandma is now over 90. It’s been almost ten years since I left home for college, and each time I go back, the time I actually get to see her is pitifully short. I once wrote a piece about her: She’s Old. Two more years have passed since I finished that. These last three years have slipped by; my life seems unchanged, but my grandma has aged at a frightening pace.
Now she’s bedridden most of the time, and due to common age-related illnesses, she no longer recognizes me. It’s painful to think about, and there isn’t much I can do.
That’s not my tone at all,
they just want the audience to see a good show.
— “Besieged From All Sides”
Smile a little; success and fame are not the goal.
— “Rice Aroma”
At first glance or on a close read, the lyrics don’t seem particularly impressive, but they leave a deep impression nonetheless.
Why should you listen to your mama?
When you grow up, you’ll start to understand this line.
— “Listen To Mama”
At my age, I already understand my mother’s strictness and what I once felt was excessive discipline. The ABCs I memorized back then ultimately all found their way into my life.
If you’re afraid of the future,
if everything in front of you looks foggy,
it’s because you haven’t wiped your glasses clean.
— “Red Imitation”
It starts with sarcasm and arrogance, and ends with concern and advice.
How do these songs compare to today’s so-called “Rakshasa Sea Market”?
Then there are others that serve as a first lesson in heartbreak for kids, where the young Jay resonates with the teenage me.
You’ve already gone far, far away,
and I’ll slowly walk away too.
— “Silence”
Flipping through our photos,
missing you, faint and flickering.
— “Excuses”
If I can’t see your smile,
how can I ever fall asleep?
— “Rainbow”
Most of these songs came out before 2008. After that, it’s hard for me to find lines that give me the same feeling.
- 2010 “The Era” – Superman Can’t Fly, Self-Directed and Self-Acted, Long Time No See
- 2011 “Exclamation Mark” – Healing Barbecue Rice Dumplings, Mine Mine, Princess Syndrome
- 2012 “Opus 12” – You Are Everywhere, Ukulele, Big Ben, Sign Language
- 2014 “Aiyo, Not Bad” – Listen to Dad, What Kind of Man, I Want Summer
- 2016 “Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories” – Hero, Love Loser, Turkish Ice Cream
Life is permanent, music will remain
As for Jay, back in his youth he let his imagination run wild and gave it everything he had. He left behind a musical sensibility for the sweetness and bitterness of love and shared it with the world; that alone is an immense kindness, and I’m deeply grateful.
As a young king of pop, his music and film career has had ups and downs but he’s always remained at the top. His privileged life makes it genuinely hard for him to communicate with the majority of society through music on the same frequency.
In his early MVs, his character is an ordinary person pursuing another ordinary person as his partner; a young man breaking free from a cage and challenging authority.
On the level of national sentiment, he’s the Descendant of the Dragon, using Chinese kung fu to reclaim dignity on foreign soil—a spiritual continuation of Bruce Lee—fitting into a kind of national narrative.
Later on, starting from the song mine mine, he used an English title for the first time.
In his MVs, his characters gradually blend seamlessly into foreign settings. On the one hand, that initial awkwardness of being new to a place is gone; on the other, there’s more self-confidence. He goes from being that rookie kid in a strange land to becoming the center of attention, driving a luxury car downtown.
Under these circumstances, the difficulty I have in empathizing lies with me, not with him—it’s a class issue.
And another thing: we’re on different sides of the strait, which inevitably leads to differences in worldview. But these are trivial next to the enormous class gap.
So expecting one person (one idol) to fulfill all your psychological needs—musical, cultural, ideological—is unrealistic. I didn’t understand that when I was young; I was even extremely exclusionary just in terms of music.
Later I started listening to Tang Dynasty, Cui Jian; the atmosphere that permeated the turn of the century infected me all over again. I sometimes genuinely wonder: if Jay Chou had never existed, what would the state of Chinese rock be like now?
As a middle-aged person, I probably won’t live to see a new “Jay Chou of the 2020s” come along to pass me the emotions of breaking out of cages and fighting back. So I can only rummage through corners from twenty years ago.
Not long ago I happened to hear a song, “Personal,” by Yin Wu from the year 2000.
You and I, each take our own cup,
each drink our own tea.
We smile and nod to each other,
very refined, and very hygienic.
You and I, each talk about our own things,
each count our own fingers.
Each of us expresses our own opinion,
and in the end, each of us walks our own way.
This feeling about collectivism (as I understand it) can only be experienced and passed on by those who have lived through it on this land.
Jay Chou belongs to youth, but seems to have remained there as well.