"Thank you / for letting me in this ordinary world / discover myself." The first song was "Lover." Before the first note, the moment the first drumbeat reached my ears, I broke down crying, as though decades of grievances demanded release in that instant. Even before entering, when I saw the banner reading "Post-90s Dao Lang fans wish the 'Mountain Songs from Where They Echo' tour a resounding success," I had already felt the dam behind my eyes begin to tremble.
Shanxi Sports Center, hundreds of thousands of people. My wife, Xiao Yuan, and I—three among those hundreds of thousands. As Dao Lang himself said at the end of the concert, all the "big and little ones" have their own lives and work. In our shared ordinary lives, we project the dreams and emotions in our hearts onto such a symbol. We gather in one place, like a revolution—the numbers and passion sufficient for one—just to see that those voices come from nothing more than flesh and blood.
The concert was held in a basketball arena, a small venue, tickets nearly impossible to get. My wife gave me her ticket, sent me in, and said "have fun." The walk in was rather long, each step feeling like treading upon life's pain and hardship. Walking that path felt like a person walking toward fate, like those departures of old when one bade farewell to family and friends. At the time I thought of nothing on that path. Now I recall the journey during Chinese New Year 2019—a violent collision on a snow-covered highway. I survived. Later I wrote an article on my WeChat public account, quoting Dao Lang's song "Thank You":
Thank you, you held my pain and embraced my wounded heart
In this chaotic world you never once said give up
You held my hand and walked into tomorrow's wind and rain
No matter how rugged the road, you were always steadfast
Thank you for letting me in this ordinary world discover myself
Whether or not the sun shines on me, I am still beautiful
You made me understand that loving you is loving myself
You taught me to cherish every little bit of life
Inside the basketball arena, I sat among some balding Dao Lang fans. They wore button-down shirts tucked into their pants, holding up Huawei foldable phones to take photos and videos. On their phone screens: a magnificent formation of bald heads.
Like me, they choked up from the first lyric, tears streaming down their faces. In that moment, we occupied the same space, thinking of different sorrows and joys, wiping tears alike, feeling the same release. And outside in the stadium, fans who couldn't get tickets sang at the top of their lungs on makeshift stages, weeping uncontrollably—this I heard from my wife and daughter.
On stage sang a similarly bald, pot-bellied Dao Lang, looking as though drawn from a cartoon, a middle-aged to elderly man who kept bowing in gratitude. He sang many "mountain songs" from his new album Mountain Songs Abound, and thoughtfully interspersed the classic hits throughout.
During those quieter moments when he sang the "mountain songs," stage and audience understood and tolerated each other: the audience granted their idol-artist the privilege of performing songs they didn't necessarily appreciate; the artist granted the audience their privilege, understanding that they didn't understand (but financially supported) his brave exploration of inner truth and art.
I've posted about Dao Lang on my social media several times. In those posts, I said:
"I deeply admire Dao Lang. Dao Lang brings earthiness (that is, the common, the vulgar) into the realm of art, thereby authentically representing twenty-first century life—derived from life, elevated above life. His love songs, through their directness and sincerity, changed the weakness, pretension, and affectation that pervaded Chinese popular music and even the culture of an era."
"Let me talk about Dao Lang. Dao Lang is popular again. I haven't actually listened to his new songs. I've seen some takes saying Dao Lang is actually very refined, citing 'Love Song of the Western Sea' and his recent work as examples. This is understandable, and perhaps not wrong. But I believe what makes Dao Lang truly great is the directness of 'Punishment for Impulse' and 'Lover'—a kind of cultural toughness. Our popular culture is too weak, too precious and affected. It even takes preciousness as the standard, declaring this writing 'elegant,' that lyric 'exquisite.'
The truth is: 'good' is not good. 'Elegant writing' is poor. 'Exquisite' is bad. What is truly good is precision. Precision is power—it is the stripping away of the superfluous. It is 'spring breeze with great refinement, autumn water without stain.' And this is not what people usually call 'good writing.' Think of Hemingway, or Yang Zhenning—you wouldn't exactly say their writing is 'elegant,' would you? This is what's called 'the gentleman is not a vessel.' It isn't even simplicity—it is nothing other than what it should be.
Dao Lang's 'Lover' excels precisely here. A woman like a rose, who makes me endlessly enchanted at midnight. Perhaps in other works there may be other kinds of lovers, but isn't what Dao Lang wrote exactly how it should be? Neither deliberately vulgar nor deliberately refined, for the sake of precision—that is the true man of style, naturally graceful."
"Listened to Dao Lang's concert. I admire his directness and toughness, piercing through the pretension and artifice of an era's popular culture. I also admire his ceaseless, free, self-directed exploration. And I admire Dao Lang's fans for granting him the artist's privilege of appreciating performances they may not themselves appreciate. To witness an artist become himself, transcend himself, rather than being ground down and consumed by society—that is a deeply gratifying thing."
The last song was "The First Snow of 2002"—the first snow of 2002 came later than usual. Walking out of the arena, buses organized by the Taiyuan city government lined the road, each one bearing the words "The Number 2 Bus Parked on the Eighth Floor."
I didn't get on those buses. How I wished I could board one and ride it back to 2003, when strange and distant songs drifted through every street and alley. Ah, the first snow of 2002, it came later than usual. The Number 2 bus parked on the eighth floor carried away the last falling yellow leaf…
Back then I had just started high school. Directly in front of me sat a girl—she had short hair, maybe—and sometimes she'd turn around to chat. I could never have imagined that a woman would grow from inside her body, and that woman would become my wife.