再比如说“你是明日意义”这首歌是“漂洋过海来看你”的粤语版。这篇博文的密码是tomorrow, btw。Another example is this relatively new song 故事的最终粤语版：Cantonese lyricist is 心之洛 and the singer with acoustic guitar cover is Ayen何璟昕 (both links are YT). The mandarin version is sung by Zhang Bichen, 【新歌首發】張碧晨《在故事的最終》溫情上線（電影【哪吒之魔童鬧海】片尾曲）| CC字幕. I like both versions, but I liked the Cantonese versions’ words and singing slightly more 🙂
Actually, yesterday I noticed Ayen is not the only singer does this 国粤双语, Alan Tam 谭咏麟, one of the most famous singers from HK, sung this one at Hunan TV a few years ago – the original songs 突然想愛你 (mandarin) 留低鎖匙(Cantonese) were both originally sung by Valen Hsu or Xu Ru’yun 許茹芸. She is recently performing in the mainland, btw.
Also 执迷不悔 (Live) sung by the singer Sara Liu Xijun whom I also like quite a bit.
When I realized this, I tend to believe they are not the only 3 singers do 国粤双语. This way of singing probably existed before 2021 and 2022.
It seems I should have hold on to my $AXP American Express stocks in last few years, as I just look at the 3 main credit card companies in the US, note Visa and Mastercard are pure credit card networks, while American Express is essentially two companies: one is a bank, another one is also a credit card network (and it’s much smaller than Visa and Mastercard in that aspect). Here is their 5 year stock price comparison chart.
Also, I need to review this at 6 minutes mark more often: Peter Lynch: Why 1% Investors Don’t Fail. The Charlie Rose interview was done in 1993, I believe. Because they talked about Bill Clinton a lot, and some other clues.
I agree with Peter Lynch re: the 2 points that he raised.
ONE – Grass is greener on neighbor’s yard. In a recent blog post, I talked about a mechanical engineer chasing hot dot com or telecom stocks in 1999 here. I am guilty of this too.
TWO – Applicable to me very well: patience, $AXP is a good example of the stocks I owned but I traded it away too quickly. There are many similar examples. In the old days we have to pay transaction fees, and basically, it’s harder to make money with all the fees. Now, even without fees, we miss the upside of a stock if we don’t have patience (or faith, or confidence) on a stock. I agree with Peter this “quick trading” is similar to gambling 🎰. Update 11-14-2025: USA Today – There’s a reason you’re so hooked on soda. It’s not entirely your fault. While I usually don’t buy into the conspiracy theories, I do believe some of the promotional tactics that’s being used in the business (including Coca Cola and Pepsi) went a bit too far. Yeah, Robinhood App is included too.
Something I realized that I was doing a lot recently. The initial reason or one common reason I don’t sell stocks was my long position is under water. But as I think more, I sold the winner instead – although I usually made a little bit of money. This strategy if amplified, would be really bad if the losers keep losing, e.g., $LULU, $WSC and previously $LEG and so on. I really need to re-examine my strategy here. It’s not about the monetary loss, but more about the opportunity cost as well as over-diworsify. I think ideally, I want to own 10 or fewer stocks and have time do research on them. Otherwise, it’s just like gambling: which I want to stay away from, and which is also the one reason I am trying to use less Robinhood App.
The reason I was talking about or reflecting here is because over the time I realized that #discipline is the key to investing success. And I need more of that.
More on discipline: I think it probably means I should reduce the number of stocks I own at one time, as well as the screen time on the stock trading apps.
If you put 2% of your portfolio into something and it became a 10 bagger, I’m not impressed. But if you put 20% in and it became a 10 bagger, that’s real skill. The difference isn’t just in return, it’s in conviction. How much you allocate before the outcome is known says far more about your investment acumen than the result ever will.
Warren Buffett’s 2 approaches to diversification:
“Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea, but a lot of people have gotten rich on their best idea…”
Different topic, but same idea. I recall the pre mobile phone days, the life is much simpler, and we don’t have to deal with deleting someone from our WeChat contacts, or text messages and so on. Similar for stock trading too – we only have access to the computer at the brokerage firm, and a lot of people have to share that computer. Unless you really have a lot of money and you will have access to the VIP room at the brokerage firm.
Strategy shift over the years
(Update 11-13-2015) I believe that’s how Warren Buffett did over the years. For example, he did “cigar butt” style of investing, and eventually switched over to Coca Cola, Gillette and American Express “blue chip” types of companies. The recent example is Apple.
I think I need to similar switches for some of my accounts, e.g. the original Robinhood App account.
Plan of attack: I have 27 shares of $V now, and my initial plan is to hold both meaningful number of shares of $V (30?) and $MA (20?), for longer term. That means I will sell some smaller stock positions.
It seems to me the stock market is also K shaped, in the sense that big tech and AI/semiconductors companies were doing very well in last few years, while the rest of the market, including the rest of the S&P 500 companies were just doing so-so. Per Google AI Overview “how much stock market gain is due to ai”:
Artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks have been a highly concentrated force in the recent stock market rally, accounting for approximately 75% of the S&P 500’s total returns since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. (Source: Fortune; moneycontrol)
我就有。比如说 – 这里是故事的英文版2007年三月初这一次美联航芝加哥途经北京到上海；中文版在这里。途经北京的原因是因为那天圣村下大雪，飞机航班延误，我到了芝加哥从芝加哥飞上海的航班已经起飞。我就恳求机场和飞北京航班的工作人员让我在北京转一次，芝加哥直飞北京，再坐国航航班到上海虹桥机场。国航和美联航是合作伙伴。我应该告诉她们我是到上海 see my girl friend (who is my wife now). 她们最后开了恩：重新打开机舱，放我进去。
我感觉这是一首比较小众的歌，但是同时我个人感觉很好听。我最早是听Ayen何璟昕翻唱的。我在国内淘宝网上让朋友买了她的翻唱U盘: it works on my Toyota Camry 2020, and I can listen to it via my iPod Nano I bought in Nov 2012, and this swimming headset。
我记得在我读大学的时候黎姿至少是小有名气的。好像是她后来有不少变故，没有继续唱歌。I did notice on herWikipedia page, she had a rough time growing up.
This is very unfortunate. Ideally we don’t want overly complicated love life, I am saying it from my personal experience and observations. And as a dad.
我刚才突然想到，这歌如果学会了可以唱给我的孩子们听（this is a BIG IF though)。我知道一是我不会唱，她们现在听粤语应该是不可能的。但是语言这东西，越小的时候学，就越容易。前几天跟我读高二的大女儿在车上聊，她说读写方面，她的西班牙语已强于汉语。现在她的汉语听说比西班牙语还是好一点。有时候在商店里她会故意跟我讲汉语而不是英语，这样一般人就听不懂我们的话😂
I haven’t made any public announcement yet, but I started to take private music lessons recently, in particularly on Guitar (August) and Piano (September). As of 10-31-2025 I had 10 guitar lessons and 8 piano lessons.
Learning music is not easy, that’s my 1st impression from last few months. For example, I didn’t anticipate the pain on my fingers (left hand) when doing the chords. Also, for piano, it seems my two hands don’t work well together 🙁
(Update 11-1-2025) not to complain, the fourth finger 无名指 can get a bit tender by playing the 1st string too much as well.
My goal
I don’t think I am musically talented now but when I was a kid probably at 9 or 10 years old, I thought I might be. Obviously at the time there was no piano 🎹 or piano lessons: it was 1980, 1981. I am guessing probably very few people in big cities such as Shanghai may have access to a piano. I saw real piano when I started attending Zhenhai Middle School in fall 1983, in the music classroom there. But debating whether I was talented musically or not is irrelevant now.
My real goal is two folds: learn some music; and hopefully help me age as I am seeing unpleasant aging experience from people I am very close to – I speculate “not having a good hobby and exercise one’s brain and hands” is one factor. That’s something I can make a change.
(11-1-2025) As I was playing piano just now (about 7:56 pm) I realized I need to read the music notes before deciding which finger to hit which key – my response time is not very good. This is similar to learning a language say English, and try to convert my thoughts from Chinese to English, and then say it out. I joked with my friend that our brain was wired in Chinese language and we do translation on the fly – thus slowing us down. But at the same time, as we learn, we can think read the music notes faster, or think in English instead of Chinese, and we will be faster playing piano or speak English too.
Rythm or pace
Now, about 10 years later, I also started to appreciate why my old daughter’s piano teacher Ms Mary Anderson always says “count, count” to my daughter, in the early days of her piano lesson (2015). Now Mr. Donald Petz my piano teacher would politely say the similar thing, or help me to count. Now I also recall Ms Anderson did the counting too, as my old daughter didn’t like to count out loud 🙂
For improvement on pace, I am taking advice from my guitar teacher: try to use metronome if possible. There are many metronome app in the App stores. Tempo (Tempo iOS App; Tempo Android App) is the one I use. I believe google has the metronome in its web site too: but an app or an actual device is nicer. Something worth to spend a little money on it.
Also, my piano teacher told me to slow down – make sure the strokes/keys, pace everything is correct first. This is applicable to guitar and any other musical instruments too. I saw my old daughter my older daughter uses metronome quite frequently when she practice on the Marimba: her main instrument for her percussion lessons. And now I know why :-). She takes the private lesson, as well as participating in the school band (again percussion section). One thing not as obvious, is she was reluctantly to play the drum set. We bought the drum set last school year, she played a bit, not a lot, and I speculate that she tries to avoid “playing the drum set in a concert” because potentially it has more pressure (because the audience will look at her). This is somewhat related to something I wrote earlier – Step out of comfort zone. But I don’t have a good way to push her that direction. Once I tried talking to her percussion teacher at the HS, re: this topic. It back fired a bit: because I told the teacher to keep it a secret and later the teacher told my daughter about it 🙁 Sorry somewhat off the original topic. I imagine if I was put in similar spot, I would be nervous too – I meant the drum set.
Anyway, back to my own music journey. I had a little music education when I was in elementary and middle school, as I recall. But not a lot. I forgot much of it too. I know the 简谱 and “Do re mi fa so la si do” (google search).
Instruments
We have bought an used piano for our older daughter about 10 years ago. And I bought Yamaha FG-830 guitar recently (made in China of course).
What I have learned so far (working in progress)
Guitar
Basics, 简谱 numbered musical notation 和吉他谱 guitar notes, “twinkle twinkle little star” (just learned there is a Chinese version of it), C scale, some chords (in progress, main sticking point is avoiding finger accidentally touching other strings, and left hand switching).
Piano
Basics, 五线谱 aka music notes (google, YT How to Read Notes The EASY Way You Weren’t Taught). I just started, mainly identify middle C 🙂 prep exercises, canon, lower elementary. Trying to coordinate both hands for some of the things are hard for me, will likely take a while because my left hand is not as flexible as right hand.
Overall, I felt my pace of learning is okay. Obviously, I can do more but at this stage of my life, I think I also start to appreciate the end results as well as the journey (the learning process). I don’t want to overwork (like I said it here and here),
Last but not least, borrow a slogan from Math Fact Scholars which I used to volunteer for: practice, practice, practice.
Some odds and ends
I recall when I was in elementary school, we used to have some sort of show time (dance etc.) and once I was a part of the show. They require white shirt and white tennis shoes (it’s somewhat like the Converse shoes here in the US nowadays, but without the high walls). I have the white shirt, but didn’t have white tennis shoes. My mom borrowed new white shoes from a girl student in my class, and the shoes were brand new. When we are done, my mom washed it and put white powders on it. So that it won’t look yellowish, I think. I am fortunate to say nowadays I can pay for those kind of shoes for my kids, if needed. But at the time, more than 40 years ago, in China relatively developed (or well-to-do?) rural area, we just didn’t have nice shoes all the time.
My kids music practice. My 2 kids are quite different in terms of their at home practice for their instruments. My younger daughter can be called the model student, also she benefits from a teacher who is very well organized. The teacher has a spreadsheet for daily practice. Everyday my daughter practices her violin, then color fill the paper spreadsheet. My older daughter is more a free spirit: she practices when she felt it’s necessary, before a class or an audition. And sometimes she would put her thumb up when I practice guitar. But in a few occasions, I noticed she practice her marimba on her own now. So this may be a side benefit of my taking class or practicing instead of doom scrolling. Kids or more precisely we all learn from examples. I need to be the good example 🙂
I probably noticed her 1st from YouTube. YouTube sometimes tries to mix in one or two new singer(s) in its suggested playlist. Understandable from the point of view of expanding the viewer/listener’s horizon, also potentially promoting another singer or song.
曾經你說 (KKbox, YouTube) is probably one of her most famous song as original singer. You can find the song at the Apple Music: 曾經你說 and Spotify: 曾經你說
Other notable song 匆匆那年[HD] Covered by Seammy 趙乃吉 If you attended college in China, this is very familiar scene and feeling. Naiji was 26 then:
“（这是高考时录制的歌曲） 马上高考了，祝各位考生一切顺利！不枉这些年经过的喜悦与悲伤，憧憬与难忘致我们最难以忘怀的青春…（ps：本人已26岁，真的没有要高考）” (I believe it was recorded in June or July 2016, so Naiji was probably born in 1990)
It appears she didn’t kept her social media or video channels up to date, for some reason. I am not sure if she is active singing now. But her songs and MV left impressions on me.
I came across this song on iTunes store when I was searching Ayen何璟昕 ‘s song there. It’s available on Spotify too. Note iTunes store is a part of Apple Music. The music world is going to streaming, but I am old fashioned and I like my old iPod Nano (bought in November 2012, kind fit the theme of the old leather shoes here 🙂
You can watch it on YouTube (刘美君 on KKBox, YT Channel) for 原唱。Ayen’s singing is soft as her usual style. And the album cover design (featuring the old white leather shoes) looks like Ayen’s work or style. 一对而不是一双应该是粤语的原因。在英语里面我们也说 a pair (对) of shoes.
I recall my maternal grandma used to make 棉鞋 for us. Also, when I was a teen and in middle school (equivalent to both middle school and high school in the US), and it was a common practice to have a 鞋匠 (shoemaker, cobbler) to attach a piece of metal to the bottom of leather shoes – similar to what we have in the tap shoes bottom here in the USA nowadays. Last time I saw 鞋匠, or cobbler, it was in Shanghai Xu’jia’hui, in 2011, and I was having cobbler fixing my luggage (bag). Yes they fix the bags or luggages too, via their sewing machines or other tools and materials.
Father’s love, or elder generations love towards the kids:
I recall when I was going to college in Wuhan, while we stop by Shanghai, it was hot summer, and my dad and I walked on Shanghai street. He bought me Sprite, and he didn’t get any. Now I think about it, I may do the same.
I also recall once, recently, my younger daughter was throwing a fit after I picked up her and her sister, I decided to do a bit Uber driving after that – sort of my way of dealing with my internal frustration with my younger daughter. But there is downside of driving Uber, for one – because I was thinking about something else while driving, in couple instances I made small driving mistakes. I think safety is probably still the most important, so I stopped driving for Uber recently.
Sometimes comparison (or put things in perspective) is necessary, as I just read from a friend, that her dad drove her car from Rolla to Boston 3 times after she crashed her car 3 times. That’s more than 1,000 miles one way.
At the same time, I don’t see or hear many songs singing about dads 🙂 我印象中好像没有多少关于父爱的歌。Personally I think both mom and dad’s love are important. If I can use an example, I saw a neighbor who appears doesn’t know we were not supposed to drive a car when the tire is flat, and the neighbor just did. My speculation when the neighbor grew up, the neighbor didn’t have a dad taking about that.
PS:
As the Wikipedia maintainer for 何璟昕’s wiki page, I updated all her singles. Go to 单曲 section and you will see all of them.
This is the link to the video Ayen何璟昕「向光性」live performance on Bilibili 哔哩哔哩。I believe the actual date is 04-08-2023 at Rizhao, Shandong province, China 2023.04.8 山東日照櫻谷彈唱會。
I created this link because Wikipedia rejects the bilibili link: in “https://b23.tv/1234567” format. I don’t know why.
I started to learn Cantonese about 3 months ago, via Duolingo. I am still there (in terms of using Duolingo), but I think I should start to learn Cantonese beyond Duolingo.
I wrote about Cantonese songs as well (5 minutes read). People especially my friends could wonder: why learn Cantonese, especially now?
That’s a legit question.
For me, I think preserving the Chinese culture is a fun and rewarding endeavor. One fairly common consensus is Cantonese preserves the traditional Chinese the best: this is partially due to a decent size of Cantonese speaking people. Some stats on the English, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking population, from my blog post here. And I am pasting some stats below.
Google estimates there are 1.18 billion mandarin speakers in the world, vs 120 million cantonese speakers (refer to my blog post here 全球将近有1.2亿人口使用粤语 ). For comparison google search indicates there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world.
My listand Playlist
Janice-卫兰: I started this list from Ayen何璟昕, who btw, is an excellent singer. Ayen何璟昕 was born in Guandong Province, and she sings in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. She is also a very good content creator, and last but not least, a pop music curator. This is something I realized as I saw she sung quite a few 副歌（英语：Refrain，惯称Chorus）and shared the short video on Douyin, WeChat and RedNote.
Last but not least, not 100% Cantonese (there are some Mandarin songs), nonetheless, I like to listen to them as background music at work (I work from home), or when I drive.
Ayen何璟昕 He Jing’xin (earlier she used Ayen Ho for her English name) is very special and quite talented artist, musician and social media influencer (自媒体作者 zi mei ti zuo zhe). She was born in Guangdong Province and she lives in Beijing metro area now.
Sometimes people used the term “北漂(Baike, Wikipedia) bei’piao”。From what I observe, Bei’piao is quite common for musicians and some other artists, because Beijing is also China’s No. 1 culture center, in addition to be the capital of the country (the political center, and many good universities including the 2 leading ones). Here is an example of Shanghai singer who is also 北漂ing.
Live Performance
2025.10.18 CCTV 15 《15号音乐房子》 20251018 大概不到五分钟左右：漫步人生路；25分钟不到一点：祝福（粤语版）；44分钟左右：人生何处不相逢（粤语），中间有一小段国语版 最真的梦。这里有粉丝团的剪辑版（微博）。Technically speaking, CCTV show is recorded not live. But I will categorize it as live as I think it still has a lot of pressure.
(Update 08-01-2025) I found an old video of Ayen何璟昕 on Bilibili – 56红人馆 第204期 南方姑娘何璟昕北上追音乐 小清新曲风书写心情. You may need a Bilibili account in order to watch. Personally, I have a Bilibili account which is tied to my WeChat account.
(Original June 2025) Here is my earlier post on her. The article was probably too long for a person who heard about Ayen何璟昕 the very first time. Below is an updated and a shorter version.
Also Bilibili: 南 屏 海 滩 it’s a combination of 南屏晚钟 (YT) and 上海滩。There are some similarities between those two song’s melodies.
Most of the video links go to Douyin 抖音. How to watch Douyin without an account? Basically, you need to complete the Chinese version of captcha (slide the shape/the object into its place). Also, you dismiss the phone number pop up after that. Btw, this is her Douyin live URL/address. Note I haven’t watched her live show yet, because before today 07-30-2025 I was under impression that we need a Douyin account in order to watch any live show. My assumption could be wrong.
Update 10-26-2025: also recently I happened to find another tip that get to DY on the mobile browser on the phone. That is the so.douyin.com DY’s own search engine. It only works on the phone though. It seems DY uses some “innovative” tricks on the front end.
(Original) I think this Douyin short video showed her skills very well. The song is 抖音《素顏》許嵩、何曼婷【動態歌詞Lyrics】Ayen was doing a cover, but it’s not a very straightforward cover. She puts efforts and creative thoughts into it. She has two versions of herself in the video.
And she did dance too. Ayen used to joke she didn’t know how to dance. I don’t know. But I know she learned dance in last few years. Personally I felt her dance move is good. Note dance is not her strong suite.
Top songs Ayen covered, many covered with acoustic guitar. This is a tough task, because I like many of her covered songs. I have created many playlists on YT or YT Music. Here is one example.
I noticed a QQ Music playlist created by a friend is also very popular – much more popular than my list – understandable from the point that in mainland China there are a lot more listeners for both Cantonese and mandarin songs, compared to the listeners outside CHN.
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Lullabies 催眠曲
Btw, for lullabies, my recommendation is to listen to them from a MP3 player, not from the phone. Because ideally, we don’t want to look at phone extensively before bed, and also, we want to keep the phone outside bedroom – for less distractions and better sleep. I learned this trick back in 2012, from the CEO of Arch Coal my employer at the time. But I had to admit I failed many times and recently I am more serious following this best practice. A related thing I started to do is to use Apple Watch to track my sleep.
That being said: here is my YT playlist for lullabies. I have a similar PL on my iPod Nano I use for sleep or before sleep (we are talking about lullabies or songs during sleep, right 🙂 I got the songs from Ayen’s Cover songs on the U drive.
This is my favorite lullaby right now 11-25-2025
A related thing I started to do recently is to use Apple Watch to track my sleep – after the suggestion of my 15-year-old. Previously I used Fitbit sleeping tracking for a while, but I haven’t used the Apple Watch sleep tracking since its debut in 2020 (I switched from Fitbit to Apple Watch a few years before that), mainly due to the fear to facing the reality of looking at my sleep data. Oh well, not a really good excuse and also let me back to the topic.
Similar singers
I saw some people commented on YT that that Hong Kong based 王菀之和陈洁丽的风格有点像Ayen何璟昕。我觉得读者可以自己去做判断。
PS:后记
How to show your support? Here is Ayen的店 at Taobao淘宝。She has her own branded guitar and other peripherals (附件，周边）in addition to her top selling Ayen翻唱經典歌曲集.
Or put it in another way, why some singers break out (to become superstars), while others don’t? I am just asking a legit question. Note I am not music major. But I watched quite a bit music videos recently, and sometimes I wonder this question in the title.
I think one important factor is famous lyricist/singer.
For example, this one, 當時的月亮 (KKBOX), personally I like Ayen何璟昕當時的月亮 – 王菲 Acoustic cover a lot. I noticed the lyricist is Lin Xi 林夕。 But honestly I still don’t understand much about the song. This is even after reading the explanation at Baidu. Quote some:
Also by 叨叨冯:【会员专享】第72期：如果音乐行业存在金字塔，塔底的人是如何生存的？(member only, membership starts at $2.99 a month)
A related question is why some singers got famous while other good singers didn’t get famous: assume their singing skills are comparable.
PS: actually, today I talked to my 15-year-old daughter about “why some pop music stars or singers” break out and become famous. And her comment is both interesting and to the point: basically, she mentioned luck. This seems to be the case for singer such as Sandy Lam.
Unlike hard science or engineering, arts or music could be subjective sometimes. Pop music is even more subjected to consumer taste and social trend, both are more fickle. Or subject to some sort of manipulation. SingChina 中国好声音 is a good example of all this – go to 争议 – 李玟现场质疑赛制不公被羞辱事件 and you will know.
