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Written and composed by Wang Fei herself, Nothing Remains may just be the best song to come out of the Beijing rock scene in the first half of this decade. So if by Gods you have not yet heard it we order you to drop everything and listen. In turns plaintive and heartbreakingly lovely, Nothing Remains tells the feelings of a woman torn between two lovers. Pushing far beyond the limited emotional range of most contemporary pop, this song will make you glad you're learning mandarin:What can we say about this that isn't better communicated by repeat listening? Since a lot of intermediate students have trouble with the proper use of 把, the obvious thing is pointing out the 把...给 structure that frames almost every single line in the song. This allows us to put the object before the verb, as with the English sentence, "I took the song and listened (to it)." If you're having trouble picking this up by ear, become a premium subscriber for full access to our manually annotated online transcripts.
orbital
said on November 4, 2009
Great song. Wang Fei is really amazing. Head and heels above her contemporaries.
f.dimmling
said on November 5, 2009
If you are in Germany you have to use the Youku link, the YouTube video refuses to play due to copyright restrictions. Friedrich, Berlin, Germany
trevelyan
said on November 5, 2009
@f.dimmling - thanks for the heads up. we default to Youtube out of concerns over speed for people not in China. Perhaps we should reconsider this if there are going to be access issues though. Best, --dave
Echo
said on November 5, 2009
@f.dimmling,
Welcome to Popup Chinese ! 欢迎你！
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
mat
said on November 5, 2009
Spooky, this is actually my favorite Chinese song :)Pretty happy you did this! Quite curious the vocab and your definitions for one of the terms.牵挂 - which I didn't know, but my dictionaries simply state worry and you have it translated as the rather more complex and ambivalent "to be distracted by thoughts of". And the actual lyric is 没有什么牵挂 which you've translated as "nothing left to haunt me" which is rather the same as nothing left to worry about?
Echo
said on November 5, 2009
@mat,
牵挂's meaning is a bit complicated. I don't think there is a way to translate it into English directly. For example, because you love/like someone, so you can't stop worrying about them or thinking about them when they are not around. This can exist between lovers, families, friends, or just people who care about each other. For example, 好久没接到你的电话了，我很牵挂你。
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
scott
said on November 6, 2009
这首歌我喜欢。因为中文不是我母语，听音乐真难。她唱的话没什么困难，但是她的比较话对我来说还是很不妙悟。 听这种歌一定会帮助发展一个比较自然的说法。
Gail天堂的声音
said on November 6, 2009
@scott,
我也喜欢这首歌，就是刚刚开始的时候觉得歌词有点儿快，但是看了transcript以后就觉得简单了。。。
我特别喜欢王菲的视频，看起来觉得很爽。。。
李
said on November 6, 2009
我是中国人，第一次访问这个网站，我觉得很好，原来这么多外国人也在学汉语啊，我感到非常自豪！
外国朋友们，如果要和我交流的话，请和我联系。我的E-mail:lihongzhang2009@126.com
wherenxt
said on November 10, 2009
I have to agree the haunting melancholy of her song and voice is captivating. Who is making these selections? My compliments.
thekey
said on January 28, 2011
woooow, this is just... thanks for sharing.
richard
said on January 17, 2012
trevelyan, wang fei'nothing remains' is not in itunes store. is it from an album?how can i download song or videoto to my iphone?
trevelyan
said on January 18, 2012
@richard,It's from the album 将爱。You'll probably have better luck searching on the Chinese title for the song too, which is 不留. I think we made up this title since there didn't seem to be a good english translation.Another option for all of this is to check out the Chinese filesharing/earch sites. I'm partial to Baidu (http://mp3.baidu.com), although I'm not sure if they let users outside China access the service.
lazer85
said on March 12, 2012
!!! I've heard a lot of her old stuff and wasn't incredibly impressed but this is what pop music should sound like.
trevelyan
said on March 13, 2012
@lazer85,Try picking up her album 将爱. Her covers of more traditional/popular Chinese songs don't really do much for me either, but her original recordings are great. See also:http://popupchinese.com/lessons/ktv-wednesday/wang-fei-passenger--david
Brendan
said on March 13, 2012
Some of Faye Wong's poppy stuff is merely inoffensive (which is still saying a lot for Chinese pop music, if you ask me), but quite a lot of it rises well above the crowd -- particularly when she collaborates with the lyricist 林夕 -- and even though it's almost unbearably cheesy and overplayed, I submit that 红豆 is still a great song. Her whole career, especially from the late 90s/early oughties, has been sort of a mix of interesting, less conventional stuff like 浮躁 and Di-Dar and 将爱, with stuff that is at its best merely a better grade of mainstream Sinopop. Her covers of old Theresa Teng (邓丽君) songs mostly fail to spin my wheels, but her version of Teng's 但愿人长久 (which is based on the Su Dongpo poem entitled 水调歌头) gets me every time -- though then again I knew the poem before I heard the song. And her settings of Buddhist sutras are fantastic.
睹善
said on September 9, 2012
Divine....Reminds me of Cocteau Twins...Brendan, could you please post a link to "...her settings of Buddhist sutras... "
Brendan
said on September 10, 2012
@dusan.arsenijevic - Faye Wong has actually worked with the Cocteau Twins, I believe. Re: settings of Buddhist sutras -- my favorite Buddhist piece of hers is the Maitreya Buddha Mantra she recorded for the Maitreya Project. Her version of the Heart Sutra is also lovely.
睹善
said on September 10, 2012
Thanks Brendan.They really did (1) (2) collaborate quite a lot.I am reposting links to mantras: Heart Sutra; Maitreya Buddha Mantra
n.o.s.
said on April 27, 2013
That what you said ...“Pushing far beyond the limited emotional range of most contemporary pop, this song will make you glad you're learning mandarin” ...is so true!thank you for the music!
Fontingy
said on August 23, 2013
So that's where the Pop-up Chinese intro song comes from! Always loved it. Thanks for sharing!
