Music is very important to Chinese. They have a whole TV channel, CCTV 3, devoted to music and musical contestant challenges, such as the Voice, China. These shows are incredibly popular. Also their main form of bar are the KTVs or karaokes, where friends will go and sing together. Another thing I found interesting is that people will go to the town square to dance and sing during the evenings. It's no surprise that some of the songs you hear get stuck in your head while you're there! Here's a list of my favourites:
一瞬间 - 小倩 : The Lijiang Drummer's song. Everywhere we went in Lijiang, Yunnan, China there were shops of bongo players drumming along to this song, so it got to be stuck in your head. Actually at the time it was quite annoying since they have a drum shop in Lijiang on every corner and we couldn't escape it... They would listen to this same song on repeat through the entire day, trying to bang along with it, mostly unsuccessfully... Anyways now we kind of like it.... oh no, I'm drumming along now!
Ready for Love by Olivia Ong. This is a cute one, by Olivia Ong. My wife and I even used it in the video we played at our wedding.
Zhong guo mei (Beautiful China) - You've got to love that strong ZHONGGUO MEI, ZHONGGUO MEI! in this one:
You exist in my song by Wanting Qu. Wanting Qu actually has an interesting story since she had emigrated to Canada at the age of 16, and originally recorded most of her songs in English. She had a few songs in Chinese, two of which were featured in a popular Chinese movie, so she became famous in China.
小苹果 - Little Apple - by the Chopstick Brothers. A super popular Chinese song right now so we heard it everywhere. It's kind of a comedy video too.
The best part is they made a Kim Jong-Un parody video of this one:
The next song by Phoenix Legend is a super catchy song, although my wife thinks it has ridiculous lyrics. Being a foreigner, I have the benefit of not understanding what they are singing ;P
The next song is played everywhere, with a catchy Hi ee oh oh oh repeating over and over. And it sounds like they are saying "Feel Burst!" but it's really Feel Bei Shuang , or Feel "Be cool," but the Beijing dialect always add the er sound everywhere...
The last and final one is something that has become a cue to tell people that it's close to going home time. At malls this song is played on a loop for an hour or so before the mall closes, just to let people know it's time to go home.
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