Li Zongsheng Sang The Hill in Dalian
Thinking of the Youth, Causing no Audiences to Cry

 Written and photographed by Gu Zi, Reporter of Dalian Evening News

Li Zongsheng was singing with a great feeling in the concert spot

      Different from the concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, etc. where many fans cried, the concert held in Zhongsheng Cultural Center in the evening of the day before yesterday did not bring fans into tears as they had already merged in laugh in Li Zongsheng’s light and attentive singing, moving and interesting talk.

In a period for more than two hours and a half, the audiences followed 30 Li’s selective love songs to think of the past collectively, wanting to cry and laugh and experiencing the changing life lack of no moving things together. Though it was inevitably sad to recall the past, the fans were high-spirited throughout the performance. Every time when a familiar melody rose, there was immediately a grand chorus over the stadium. Everybody had a song of Li Zongsheng in mind, the youth of everybody was sung into the deep heart by this old friend. 
      Find your own exclusive time and space in his songs   
      Almost few people ever sang songs created by himself/herself in a whole concert like Li Zongsheng. Maybe the voice was not so perfect as the original singing in deduction, but it conveyed more profound understanding about the songs themselves to listeners than the original singing. Probably it is due to the most crazy thing in youth being to pioneer badly and love and be loved heartily, so the concert called “Now that Youth cannot be Retained” began with What the Reason for Love and Busy and Blind.
      What is the reason for love？Nobody can answer. On the stage, the gentle old man in a pink shirt, a jean, cloth shoes, wearing a pair of glasses in a brown frame and holding a wooden guitar with grey hairs full of head was Li Zongsheng. In exclamations, he just sang in smile “a single person’s life is not that bad in fact”. Off the stage, some people had been busy for most of life, some people had just begun. People of all shades were sitting together, what difference did they have? On the way of struggle, they were always perplexed with the perplexing in the lyrics——“Be busy for my own ideal or for not letting others down?” Li Zongsheng’s music represents the music memory for several generations, from Zhang Aijia to Zhou Huajian, Zhang Xinzhe and further to Muo Wenwei, Guang Liang, the sadness and dreariness for the 1960s generation, the sorrow for the 1970s generation and the helplessness for the 1980s generation. In these familiar music notes, the fans took seats by numbers and bound memory with melody to find their own exclusive time and space. 
      Shed tears secretly even it could not be held 
    “Now that Youth cannot be Retained” is both a kind of helplessness and a kind of expectation. So, in Li Zongsheng’s songs, different people have different perceptions. Just like a female fan who booked a seat closest to Li Zhongsheng long ago said, I prepared a liter of tears but there was not a single drop of it. The spot was more of joking youth than sacrificing it. The youth is something good, but nothing can retain it forever. By accepting this, one can “confront difficulties in life with smiling and grimacing”. In middle and old age, there is no time to be sentimental, for when one lives, there is future. During perform, some shouted unexpectedly: “Xiao Li, I love you”. Though he was more than 50-year old, Li Zongsheng still had something lovable like an big boy. In the performances in Beijing and Shanghai, etc., even through he could sing Love Cost in a free and easy way of seeing through the emptiness of the material world, Xiao Li still came into tears when singing Perception. However, in the concert in Dalian, though he still sang with concentration, some firm components were added on his expression. He did not cry, more audiences did not cry. And while those fans who could not hold back secretly shed tears from their eye corners, they always kept a smile on their mouth corners. As a matter of fact, a lot of fans came here not merely for watching Li Zongsheng, but also for looking at their own growth, their pains everyday, every step and every section and what was more, their love that is present everyday in the songs……all careful fans wondered why Li Zongsheng did not sing When Love Becomes Something in the Past. As a matter of fact, everybody had an answer belonging to their own, as letting love carved in the bottom of heart……
   “Crossing a hill, I found my hair turn grey”
      Li Zongsheng think himself that he had a good eye. During tens of years in the entertainment circle, he has always been playing Bo Le who can see what others can not. In fact this is true——without Li Zongsheng, a lot of singers would not have today’s achievements. In fact, Li Zhongsheng has never taken himself as a singer: “I am a song writer. Looking at others singing songs written by me and letting tens of thousand people and even several generations of people love it is a proud thing.” I have written songs for so many years. “Cooperating with a lot of women with a great charm and having to resist temptation was always a torture. However, they also gave me a lot of inspirations.” In the spot of the concert, Li Zongsheng sang the love songs he wrote for such singers as Muo Wenwei, Zhang Aijia, Chen Shuhua, Xin Xiaoqi, etc., but when any picture or word relating to his former wife Lin Yilian appeared, it would cause all people to have a sly smile, especially when Li Zongsheng took inventory of these women he cooperated with “there were fascinating ones and hateful ones”. And when he sang the songs he created for such male singers as Zhou Huajian, Zhang Xinzhe, etc., Li Zongsheng had also witty remarks. He said in smile that Zhou Huajian was exquisite in deducing his works just like a traditional Chinese painting with fine, delicate strokes. His singing technique was also rough like splashed ink. In the concert of that evening, he also did not forget to pluck and introduce new talents around him, one was Bai An, the other was Li Jianqing, a producer following him for more than ten years. On the spot of the concert, Li Zongsheng and Li Jianqing sang jointly Cutting Sandals, one of the series works of the Book of Songs. 
   “Crossing the hill, I found my hair had turn grey, chattering without stop about the sorrow that time and tide wait for no one, crossing the hill, I found nobody waiting, chattering without stop about the tenderness that I could not call back……” A lot of fans in Dalian listened for the first time to Li Zongsheng deducing this song on the spot, in which a natural mood rolled over and over with all sorts of painful recollections. After walking all the way from the brisk period of the entertainment circle to the poor condition like today, it seemed as if Li Zongsheng was fulfilling a life summarization in this song The Hill. In a song, there are tactful recounts, helpless light chants, perceptual announcements, detached penetrations and also sighs with mixed feelings. 
      The performance was concluded by Liao Li with A Song for Myself. When finishing the last sentence, he left quickly without turning his head.