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5 Chinese songs for cold CNYs

by Joyce Remo

PUBLISHED ON January 17, 2023

CHINESE New Year is often celebrated by family and friends to welcome the beginning of the new lunar calendar.

However, there are those who don’t get to spend the first day of the Year of the Rabbit with someone beside them. Some may be away from home. While others are yet to mend their broken hearts.

Whether you recently went through a harsh break up or got ghosted by someone you really liked, relationship experts suggested that the best response is to face the emotions head on and to honor your grief.

Although limited by cultural boundaries and language barriers, Chinese breakup ballads have this way of soothing grief-stricken hearts due to its comforting melodies and solemn rhythms.

Here are five Chinese break up songs to help you get through the cold and lonely Chinese New Year.

等你下课 (Waiting For You) by Jay Chou ft. Gary Yang

To be secretly in love is not painful at all

What’s painful is that you didn’t even look at me

Released in 2018, this Mandarin pop-ballad Waiting For You by one of China’s most popular artists Jay Chou is for those people who never got past the friendzone level.

This song recounts the story of an individual who never grew tired of waiting for their love interest even when years had already passed.

你不屬於我 (You Don’t Belong to Me) by Eric Chou

I shouldn’t have left you to be alone

Will you be strong enough to make through all the times when I am gone?

I promise that I’d never leave you

till the end of love, but I failed

Contrary to popular belief, leaving someone you value the most is as painful as being left alone. You Don’t Belong To Me (2021) is a song that reveals the hardship that people experience upon departing the lives of the people they love.

予你星光 (Give You Starlight) by 菲利丝PHY

If I become a meteor that falls behind your eyes

Every light releases my vision for you

You said you hoped it would be a good day tomorrow

I won’t let the rain fall to the ground

The mandarin pop 予你星光 or Give You Starlight in English translation is a soft ballad released in Christmas of 2021 the Chinese artist 菲利丝PHY’s first single.

Give You Starlight is a melancholic declaration of an intense longing for someone that the persona values the most. The song depicts a scene of an individual who started thinking about what ifs as it looked upon a photograph of her beloved.

Letting Go by Tanya Chua

My heart hurts when I love you

But you don’t understand

I’m letting go

Originally released more than a decade ago, Letting Go by Tanya Chua is a declaration of finally bidding goodbye to a lover who kept giving the persona mixed signals, causing her to doubt if her lover’s feelings were genuine or not.

云与海 (Cloud and Sea) by 阿YueYue

I am fated to be unable to approach you6

So I treat loving you as a secret

The soft ballad 云与海, translated in English as Cloud and Sea, is another song that depicts a story of an untold adoration towards the persona’s love interest.

In its metaphorical lyrics, 阿YueYue compares love into cloud and sea, that if people can cross boundaries for love, they can complete the clouds and see with no regard of how dangerous it may seem from the shoreline.

At the end of the song, the artist reminds her listener that although people can love and take care of each other, there are instances where they still can’t be together.