Lao Lang is one of our favorite Chinese singers, so we're delighted to have finally found a copy of this song clear enough to share with everyone. Dating back to the turn of the decade and the incipient folk rock scene in the Beijing university circuit, this song captures the romantic sentimentality of the period.

In our opinion this song is as good as Pu Shu's fantastic Those Flowers. Whereas Pu Shu has always flirted with more commercial pop hooks, Lao Lang veers more strongly towards poetry. And one of the particularly tricky things about this song (beyond its preference for 书面语) is the way it dances around tense with the sort of ambiguity only Chinese can manage. The first and second verses are told as a story of a long-ago romance between students forced apart as they moved out into the wider world. The third verse brings us into the present with nostalgia and regret.