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.
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.
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.
(Original March 18, 2025) 她的音乐是治愈的 her music is curing – Yours Truly. This is one example: her original Cantonese song Moonlight – 何璟昕 Ayen《月光 Moonlight 》官方高畫質 Official HD MV, note the link is YouTube 油管. Here is Bilibili link: standaloneor official, good sound quality; live performance video. I encourage you buy her music from either Apple Music (iTunes store) or her Taobao store. Musicians need to eat and have other daily needs: we don’t want to be free loaders. Or if I can quote one of my favorite people in the world: if you are lucky, please make sure someone else in the world is lucky too. This person is Warren Buffett. Back to topic.
Lyrics for the song Moonlight 月光 can be seen here at jspinyin.net (this one has Pin’yin annotation) or 酷歌词 kugeci.com (this one has links to a singer’s other popular songs).
Another comment on YT: “When the world is moving to fast just listen to Ayen, and everything will be alright.” –Daniel Vache (very well said – yours truly)
She actually sing in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Her Chinese name is 何璟昕 or He Jing’xin in Pin’yin. In Cantonese, 阿昕 sounds a bit like 阿音 or Ayen in English. Both her parents are teachers when she grew up. In fact I saw her mom on this YT video (lovely mom/daughter pair, to say the least).
Here is her wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English). Full Disclosure: I made some contributions to her Wiki pages recently. It’s a somewhat fun experience for someone who likes to edit, write and knows basics of html.
Some social media and music platforms for Ayen 何璟昕
This is probably one of the most popular video platforms in China. I think Douyin is similar: the main difference is Douyin only has short videos. Note you will need to log into the website in order to have full experience with website or app. She did quite a few live show in 2020 on Bilibili, here is one – Ayen何璟昕 x bilibili直播 (纯享剪辑版) [2020.04.08] You may need to register at the website in order to watch, I did, mostly via my gmail and WeChat. Their system is pretty rigorous, I would say, at this time I still cannot upload video there. I think they need to verify my ID or something.
Douyin 抖音
(Update 05-24-2025) Now I realized Douyin 抖音 is much bigger compared to Bilibli 哔哩哔哩, as I said in my other blog post. Here is her Douyin: I think ByteDance (Douyin and TikTok parent co) longer video platform inside China is 西瓜视频。
In order to have full experience with Douyin, one will need to install the mobile app. Note the app is only available inside China. So for instance, if I want the app, I need to to try a different geolocation (China instead of the USA).
One can still watch videos without creating an account. To do it, one needs to pass a captcha – basically slide a shape.
She has quite a few songs on her Weibo, but this one (not music, about how to stay away from online fraud) caught my attention today – 我这么谨慎的人，居然也差点被骗20万… (personally I felt bad for her, but it seems like just something happens quite often nowadays, and I will talk about it sometime in the near future).
She is on WeChat (Wei Xing) and Red Note (Xiao Hong Shu) too – you should be able to search her name 何璟昕 and find her there.
I noticed her subscriber steadily increased from 47.9 k (03-11-25?) to 49.5 k today 05-01-25. It appears her YT channel is gaining about 1k subscribers per month. At this rate I am fairly confident that her channel will have 50k subscribers by the end of this month (I think 50.5 k subscriber count is within reach at 05/31/25). I hope my small contributions on the Wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English) helped 🙂
Some of her original work(compose, lyrics or both)
何璟昕 Ayen【向光性 Phototropism】原創音樂 官方高畫質 Official HD MV: she actually wrote this song when she was about 17 (year 2011) – 独立音乐人何璟昕：向光飞舞的风筝. She made an album with the same tile in year 2016: the album actually has more than 3 songs as shown in this YT playlist. I will update if/when I find the complete playlist.
If you like her music, you can purchase in a few ways. Apple Music store (iTunes Store, search “Ayen何璟昕“) and Taobao 淘宝网。Below is how you would find her music on iTunes store.
Apple iTunes Store (Note: this is available on iPhone as well)
On Taobao, you would search Ayen的店：she sells both her music and her Donna brand guitar there. Last but not least, she sells 吉他谱 Guitar Music online.
Some of her recent workand other songs I like
放手以后 via YT (网易云音乐, 2024) – lyrics available at boomplay; Author/Composer: Carlos’ Instagram. Also a short chip (similar to YT Shorts) on Douyin. Note for Douyin: I don’t have account with them for now – it still allows me to watch the video, if I click “dismiss” when it prompts me to put in my mobile phone or password, and turn on the volume.
I started listened to her a lot in last week or so, partially because we had 3 days power outage, and I didn’t have much else to do. I know you can argue I can listen to someone else’s music too 🙂 If my memory is correct, this time around I came across this new song 【哪吒2】片尾曲《在故事的最終》粵語版｜港風填詞翻唱｜唱哭每個成長的孩子 Acoustic cover｜Ayen何璟昕. Since then it’s been a black hole 🙂
New song《時間不等你》Time doesn’t wait for you: I listened to her new song 时间不等你 (2024) #粤语歌 many times. I really liked the music, the lyrics and Ayen’s singing.
作詞：陳鈺海 作曲：石羽函 編曲：梁雨森 (the link goes to Douyin, note you can still visit Douyin even without an account, you just need to complete the Captcha and also dismiss the dialog about phone number). Below is quoted from his Douyin profile. 棉花佬就是梁雨森🎸在此！职业吉他手，作曲/编曲 “棉花乐队”成立二年啦～ 以棉花乐队的形式致敬BEYOND乐队～ 不教学，不卖谱～
YT: 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你｜火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕｜想見你劇集主題曲 (Update 04-02-2025) I liked this song very much. There are a few variations (Mandarin, Cantonese as well as different lyrics). I came across it at QQ Music first and noticed Ayen sang a few variations there. Then I did search on google and WeChat and noticed other versions, as well as the TV series that featured this song.
I don’t know about you, but to me this song reminds me 粤语更接近文言文.
Live Performance
何璟昕碩士作曲專場音樂會 (2021). Note she created all the below songs (compose and lyrics) over the years. She graduated in Dec 2021.
Also note, she pretty much managed all her creative activities by herself, this is from composing, lyrics, graphic design, photography, videography, editing, sound, and managing her social media and music platforms. She explained it here – 一個人就是一個團隊？/揭秘：我平時是如何一個人製作視頻的！
Slightly older videos (I believe that’s when Ayen created and uploaded videos to the Internet). Between 2014 and 2017, she debuted or sang quite a few Cantonese, Mandarin and English songs, mainly using her own acoustic guitar or ukulele as accompanying instruments and posted some of the videos on Sohu.com, and more specialized website such as yueqixuexi.com too. Some of the songs are also available on QQ Music (QQ 音乐）too.
(She took the video in Summer 2014, uploaded it to YT on Jan 30, 2020) 梁靜茹 – 暖暖 cover（吉他 + ukulele ）| Ayen 何璟昕 || On YT, if you want to look at her old videos, you can go to her channel, click on videos, and then click “Oldest”. This approach works across the YT too.
(Update 04-3-2025) I just created a YT playlist Ayen何璟昕-early: I believe those are songs/MVs she made between 2014 and 2019.
From the Sohu.com videos, the playlist above, to her more recent videos/songs such as 时间不等你, we can see her growth in many aspects. But I think she kept her 温柔女生 style, for the most part, through the years. That’s probably one reason I liked her singing.
She talked about her video creation and how she pursued her music career from a hobby in middle school. She actually made two videos because she wanted to keep her video under certain length. Below are two videos.
Some fun videos: having a sense of humor (despite all kinds of obstacles in life) is important. I created a playlist in which she has some fun elements in the music videos.
翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover) and Playlists
Since this is getting a bit long, I moved the content here to another post here – Playlist.
One thing I may add is: in many ways 翻唱, or cover, or acoustic cover, is creative and sometimes hard work. For example, in this video, 謝安琪【喜帖街】Kay Tse 鋼琴+吉他彈唱 這是一首關於懷舊的粵語歌 | cover by Ayen 何璟昕, she rented the 1980s style house (惠州棠梨和光民宿), as well as some other interesting and fun settings. Here is another one 【Mr. 森林】Acoustic guitar cover | Ayen 何璟昕: if you watch towards the end, you will notice the work put behind it.
Last but not least, music industry is intensely competitive (I talked a bit here). I didn’t expand or elaborate, but in short, the top dogs such as Taylor Swift of the USA and the G.E.M Gloria Deng Zhiqi of HK/China makes most of the dough in the industry, via steaming, live performance, merchandise and products endorsement (ads). That’s all good, but we should not forget about musicians who are less famous. That’s why personally I support all my kids music teachers (as much as practical) and in this case, we should support Ayen 何璟昕 too.
If you are interested learning guitar (take guitar lesson from her), or collaborate on music creation (music composition, lyrics etc.), you may reach out to her “如果你想讓我為你製作音樂（編曲/作詞/作曲都可以），或者想找我學習吉他音樂課程”
