My Musical Inspiration: "In Search of You" (Part 2)
During my rural teaching assignment, Zhou Pin could no longer force me to produce new music. My life became much simpler and quieter. Although the pla
Note: The following is Yu (Yu Menglong)'s spiritual message.
Continued from My Musical Inspiration: "In Search of You" (Part 1)
I was never allowed access to the internet. My phone could only play videos or display webpages that had already been downloaded. It had no internet connection at all, and every platform used to communicate with the outside world was managed by staff from the entertainment industry.
This served two purposes. First, it prevented me from contacting anyone who might help me escape. Second, it kept me from seeing the songs and lyrics I had poured my heart into being released under other people's names.
Whenever I needed to learn new vocabulary or study music theory for songwriting, Zhou Pin would have staff download the necessary materials onto my phone. For a long time, that was the only way I could study.
People on film sets often saw me scrolling through my phone and assumed I had unrestricted internet access. After my death, some wondered why I had never used my phone to ask the outside world for help. This is why.
About a week before I was sent to the teaching assignment, the staff received an email. They downloaded it onto my phone using a data cable before my manager returned the phone to me.
The email was from a young woman. She listed the things I should prepare for the teaching assignment and said that she would be responsible for receiving me there and helping me obtain whatever I needed.
I did not meet her in person until I arrived. She was a young woman, slightly younger than I was.
The weather was bitterly cold. Since the assignment was meant as punishment, the entertainment company only gave me three sets of clothes, without even a warm winter coat. I shivered constantly. Even wearing every piece of clothing I owned, I could not keep warm. My body had still not recovered, and I suffered another nosebleed in front of her.
The next day, she brought me a warm coat. She said it had been discarded by a relative after exchanging it at the end of the season, but it looked almost new and was incredibly warm. I knew she had bought it for me herself. I also understood why she claimed otherwise—my room was bugged with listening devices.
I treasured that coat and took it with me everywhere I went.
The local residents had all been paid to remain silent. None of them would reveal anything about me to outsiders.
I knew the young woman assigned to receive me was almost certainly an operative sent to monitor me, but neither of us ever acknowledged it. She cared for me and treated me with genuine warmth. Because of the listening devices, she spoke as little as possible, yet her kindness was sincere. Other than my mother, no one assigned to watch me had ever treated me so well.
As time went on, she visited more and more often. It no longer felt as though she was monitoring me. Instead, she seemed to be checking whether I was doing well, whether I needed anything, and every few days she would bring me food and supplies to help restore my health.
The so-called teaching assignment was merely a cover. In reality, I had simply been transferred to another place of imprisonment with even harsher living conditions. If you look at the official online records from that period, you will find almost no public photographs of me with the local children or residents.
At first, I could not tell whether this quiet young woman genuinely cared about me or whether she was simply carrying out her assignment—using gifts and supplies to gain my trust and gather useful information.
But little by little, I realized she was different.
Her kindness was genuine.
When I was with her, I was neither the celebrity Yu Menglong nor the so-called "Xinjiang Boy" who had been humiliated and abused. In her eyes, I had neither fame nor shame. I was simply an ordinary young man.
Although I was imprisoned, she carried the keys. As we grew closer, she came to trust that I would not run away. In truth, we were surrounded by mountains, and I had nowhere to escape even if I wanted to.
Gradually, she began allowing me brief moments outside. With her accompanying me, I could finally leave the house, walk around, and breathe fresh air.
Although I remained a prisoner, there were several scheduled times when she would escort me—officially supervising me—to the local primary school connected to the teaching program, where I could spend time among the children and experience their energy and vitality.
One evening, beneath a beautiful sky filled with stars, she asked me to meet her in a secluded place.
There, she quietly confessed that she had indeed been assigned to monitor me.
I was shocked. I could not understand why she would tell me.
She said she knew I was an innocent and kind person, and that my care for the children at the school came from the heart. She no longer wanted to deceive me.
As she spoke, a light shone in her beautiful eyes—a light that drew me toward her while making me want to step away at the same time.
For the first time, I felt my heart stirred.
Yet I also felt there was an enormous distance between us. Her manners, education, and grace did not resemble those of someone raised in a remote mountain village. She seemed to come from a family of privilege and refinement.
And what about me?
I was nothing more than a victim of the entertainment industry's black industry chain.
She was someone I could only admire from afar.
Every morning before the first class, she accompanied me to the school, where we joined the children's morning study period. In truth, I had never received a proper education myself. Everything I knew about music and Chinese literature had been learned through self-study.
There was very little I could actually teach the children. Most of the time, I simply accompanied them during morning study sessions and recess, and even then only a few times each week.
Then I noticed something deeply disturbing.
The children were disappearing.
Only one child would disappear at a time. While taking attendance, I noticed that students who had always attended faithfully would suddenly be gone. The principal explained that they were left-behind children whose parents had returned from the cities to take them home.
It sounded perfectly reasonable. This was a school deep in the mountains, where most of the students were left-behind children. Besides, I was only a prisoner there. What right did I have to question anything?
At the time, I had no idea what was really happening.
Only after my death, when I was able to look back on the entire sequence of events, did I realize that those children had become victims of the Chinese Communist Party's black industry chain. One by one, they had been taken away by human traffickers and transported to locations designated by the regime for sale.
During the teaching assignment, Zhou Pin could no longer force me to produce music. My life became simple in a way it had never been before. Although supplies were scarce, the young woman's care made that period the most peaceful and happiest time of my life.
Yet based on the evidence I had gathered, I knew that every artist under the entertainment industry's control had a predetermined death date.
I understood that my own time was limited.
Since I could never promise her a future, and I had no freedom to choose my own marriage, I refused to pull her into the abyss with me and condemn us both to endless suffering.
There was another reason.
For years, the entertainment company had injected me with drugs intended to create a pale, delicate, and feminine public image. Those injections severely disrupted my body and caused it to develop in a more feminine direction, leaving me unable to have children.
How could someone like me marry and start a family?
I could give her nothing.
So I began avoiding her.
In my heart, there was no place for an ambiguous relationship. If I could not give her a future, then distance was the only thing I could still offer.
She seemed to understand exactly what I was doing.
She knew I was avoiding her.
Yet she continued treating me with the same kindness as before, regularly bringing me supplies and caring for me without expecting anything in return.
Still, I could see the hurt in her eyes.
Unable to bear it any longer, I asked my guardian angel what I should do.
She told me:
"You love each other sincerely. The kindness you share is pure, sacred, and precious. The journey itself is more important than the ending. No matter what the future brings, no matter how things ultimately turn out, this genuine love will remain forever engraved upon both of your hearts."
I asked, "My situation is so dangerous. If she continues caring about me, what if I bring danger upon her?"
My guardian angel replied that everyone has their own destiny. Even if I tried desperately to avoid her, I could not change what was meant to happen. The only promise she could make was that if the young woman truly faced danger one day, Heaven would not stand by and do nothing.
After that, whenever she came to visit me, the other people assigned to monitor me would usually leave the house and go elsewhere. They had no desire to spend every moment watching me. She would quietly disable the listening devices so that we could finally speak freely.
She openly confessed both her feelings for me and the truth about her background and identity.
I was shocked, heartbroken, and completely at a loss for words.
In return, I told her almost everything about myself—except that I was collecting evidence of the black industry chain and except for the humiliation I carried from having been degraded as someone "ridden by thousands and used by tens of thousands."
As I had expected, she came from a very different background than I did.
Yet we shared the same pain.
Neither of us had ever truly received our family's love.
Although I knew a relationship between us was impossible, I could not stop longing to see her.
She felt like the earthly embodiment of my guardian angel—a human being who had entered my life to bring me warmth and love.
She became the second light in my black-and-white world.
She was the second person who made me want to keep living.
Unlike my guardian angel, however, her warmth was something I could actually see and touch.
She knew how much I loved dogs.
Whenever I saw one, I could not help but smile.
She told me she wanted to preserve that smile, so she gave me a French Bulldog.
I asked her how such an expensive dog could possibly appear in a remote mountain village filled only with local mixed-breed dogs.
She smiled mysteriously and simply told me not to ask.
Whenever she had time, she brought dog food and supplies.
The little French Bulldog loved people. Whenever he saw me, he greeted me as though I were family, completely trusting and affectionate, unlike the village dogs, which tended to be much more wary and aggressive.
I let the young woman choose his name, thinking that if we were never able to see each other again, I could always look at the dog and remember her.
With a smile, she said, "Look at him—his little legs are so short, and his round little body makes him look just like a plump ham. Let's call him Ham."
And just like that, the French Bulldog had his name.
He had quite a personality. He was adorably ugly, yet somehow seemed to refuse to let anyone say he wasn't handsome.
I often felt that this little dog was very much like me.
Inside a body I believed had been defiled, I carried a mission that no one knew about and protected a purity that no one could understand. Although it was true that I had suffered the abuse behind the cruel words, "ridden by thousands and used by tens of thousands," every time I heard that phrase, it still felt as though my heart were being cut apart.
After the teaching assignment ended, I returned to the same filthy and terrifying world I had left behind. I continued to endure the entertainment industry's exploitation in exchange for one small measure of freedom—not being locked inside the iron cage. All I could do was pour my longing for the young woman and the feelings I could never express into my love for Ham and into the music I continued to write.
This time, I found myself writing a love song. Inspiration came to me almost instantly, and I began composing it for the quiet young woman in the mountains whom I had fallen in love with. She would probably never know that the song was written for her—a tribute to the love between us that never had the chance to blossom.
I wondered whether, if I could live just a little longer, I might meet more people like her—people who would genuinely love me, care for me, and bring warmth into my life.
My guardian angel told me that my mission would one day help many people. She said that if the people I was meant to help were filled with the same warmth and kindness as that young woman, as my guardian angel, and as my beloved Lemons, then I would gladly give everything I had for them.
Because people like them would go on to give hope to many others—the same way the young woman, my guardian angel, and my beloved Lemons gave me the hope to keep living.
So as I wrote this song, I also thought about the people who might one day be saved because of my mission. Whenever the pain and sorrow became too much to bear, I reminded myself that I was not living for myself alone.
尋一個你 In Search of You
Lyrics & Music: 余夢龍 Yu Menglong
沉迷在 你清澈的眼睛 Lost in the crystal of your eyes so bright,
是途經 最難忘的風景 The most unforgettable view along my journey’s light.
無人可比擬 那些往昔 No one can compare those memories of old,
燦若繁星 Shining like stars of gold.
每一個 爲你做的決定 Every choice I made was all for you,
故事幾經輾轉 未落筆 Our story turned and twisted, waiting to come true.
一幕幕曾經 腦海放映 Scenes of the past replay within my mind,
刻骨銘心 Etched forever, one of a kind.
不想 不唸 不聽 I won’t think, won’t miss, won’t hear your name,
心也 不再 泛起 漣漪 My heart no longer ripples with the same.
天燈亮起 相聚別離 Sky lanterns rise through reunion and goodbye,
人來人往 終更替 Through changing worlds, all souls pass by.
翻山越嶺 尋一個你 Across the mountains, I’m searching for you,
不負此生 不負相遇 To honor this life and the meeting we knew.
不負我偏向苦海去 I would walk into seas of sorrow and pain,
只爲渡你 Only to ferry you again.
踏遍荊棘 尋一個你 Through fields of thorns, I’m searching for you,
不遠萬里 只爲朝夕 Across endless miles, for moments with you.
縱天下負盡 不負你 Though the whole world turns away from me, I’ll stay true to you eternally.
每一個 爲你做的決定 Every choice I made was all for you,
故事幾經輾轉 未落筆 Our story turned and twisted, waiting to come true.
一幕幕曾經 腦海放映 Scenes of the past replay within my mind,
刻骨銘心 Etched forever, one of a kind.
不想 不唸 不聽 I won’t think, won’t miss, won’t hear your name,
心也 不再 泛起 漣漪 My heart no longer ripples with the same.
天燈亮起 相聚別離 Sky lanterns rise through reunion and goodbye,
人來人往 終更替 Through changing worlds, all souls pass by.
翻山越嶺 尋一個你 Across the mountains, I’m searching for you,
不負此生 不負相遇 To honor this life and the meeting we knew.
不負我偏向苦海去 I would walk into seas of sorrow and pain,
只爲渡你 Only to ferry you again.
踏遍荊棘 尋一個你 Through fields of thorns, I’m searching for you,
不遠萬里 只爲朝夕 Across endless miles, for moments with you.
縱天下負盡 不負你 Though the whole world turns away from me, I’ll stay true to you eternally.
翻山越嶺 尋一個你 Across the mountains, I’m searching for you,
不負此生 不負相遇 To honor this life and the meeting we knew.
不負我偏向苦海去 I would walk into seas of sorrow and pain,
只爲渡你 Only to ferry you again.
踏遍荊棘 尋一個你 Through fields of thorns, I’m searching for you,
不遠萬里 只爲朝夕 Across endless miles, for moments with you.
縱天下負盡 不負你 Though the whole world turns away from me, I’ll stay true to you eternally.
Yu Menglong:
The primary reason I have shared the stories of the abuse I endured is to expose the black industry chain.
I hope that my supporters—the Lemons, the Yu Family, and all who care about me—will not immerse themselves too deeply in those painful experiences, as doing so may cause emotional trauma of your own.
I fulfilled my mission. My guardian angel and I have already reunited in our world. So please do not grieve too deeply over the suffering I endured during my lifetime.
Continue in My Musical Inspiration: "Engraved" (Part 1)
Explore the complete collection of stories behind Yu's original music:
https://www.ganjingworld.com/collection/1ilf9v6tumi3bHSSitX6quX11i0p
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