1990: Starting from Baojia Street

After coming out of the art gallery, several people stood at the door. Mo Yan looked at the Victoria Harbor in front of him and asked, "Where are we going now?"

Zhou Yan looked at the time and said, "It's getting late, let's go eat."

It's already past five o'clock, it's a bit too late to go to the cultural center, and the dining area is still some distance away.

"Okay, it's up to you."

The restaurant Zhou Yan wanted to take them to was the Cantonese restaurant that Wang Zuxian took him and his younger brothers and sisters to when he came to Hong Kong to film "Green Snake".

The restaurant was not far from where they lived, but it was more than two kilometers away. It was definitely unrealistic to walk there, so Zhou Yan called two cars to take them there.

This restaurant is doing good business, so Zhou Yan asked someone to reserve a table in advance. It is the same table that Joey Wong reserved when she first came here, a large table near the corner.

After they sat down, Yu Hua looked around the restaurant and said with a smile, "This restaurant is doing good business. Have you been here often before?"

"I've been here a few times." Zhou Yan smiled. "I'm in Hong Kong, and basically everyone invites me to dinner. I'm not familiar with many of the restaurants I've been to."

The last time he came to Hong Kong, the club where he had dinner with Anita Mui and the others was quite good, but Zhou Yan was not familiar with that club, and since he would be with Yu Hua and the others, there was no need to make a special phone call to arrange for them to go to a private club.

It’s also nice to sit in the restaurant lobby like now and feel the bustling atmosphere of Hong Kong.

"In the past, it was others who invited you, but today you have to invite us," said Yu Hua.

"That's not a good idea. I think we should just share the cost of the meal," Liu Zhenyun said politely.

However, Liu Zhenyun's politeness sounded fake, and he didn't care at all if others could tell that he was being fake polite. His expression seemed to be saying, "I'm just saying it, but if you really want to share the cost equally, I won't do it."

Chi Zijian seemed to be really polite. "We got here on your band's plane today, so we're already taking advantage. How about this? I'll treat you to dinner."

Before Zhou Yan could say anything, Yu Hua smiled and said, "If you want to invite Zhou Yan to dinner, let's wait until we get back to Yanjing. In Hong Kong, we can just follow his arrangements."

"He's right, leave it to me here."

After hearing what they said, Chi Zijian did not insist any more.

When ordering food, everyone was being polite. In the end, Zhou Yan didn't ask for their opinions and ordered the dishes on his own.

After ordering the food and chatting, beautiful piano music rang out in the restaurant.

There was a piano not far from their table. Zhou Yan had played it when he first came.

The person playing the piano at this moment is a girl in her early twenties, and the piece she plays is "To Alice".

"Für Alice" is a common piece of music in restaurants. It can be said that almost every restaurant with a piano has someone playing this piece of music.

This piano is still the same one from that year and has not been replaced. I have to say that the hotel has done a good job of maintaining the piano, and the pitch and tone are all well maintained.

Although many restaurants have pianos, they do not pay much attention to the maintenance of the piano. They think that as long as it can produce music, it is fine. As for the pitch and timbre, they do not care about anything. After all, few of the diners can hear the difference.

When the song was halfway through, Yu Hua said with a smile, "This girl must have changed her career lately."

Zhou Yan nodded. The level of the girl playing the piano was indeed not very high. There were many problems in her playing of "To Alice". It could only fool people who didn't understand it at all. Those who knew a little bit could tell that her ability was not good.

As veteran classical music fans, Yu Hua and others certainly have this ability to appreciate it.

"For a restaurant like this, it's not easy to get a piano and find a pianist to play music for the guests. The level of the pianist they hired is definitely not very high."

In those days, unlike later times when there were not so many people learning piano, it was not easy to find someone who practiced piano seriously.

There is also a huge salary gap between professionals and non-professionals.

It's not that it's impossible to hire good people with low salaries, but the possibility is relatively small. Many of these people learned a little piano when they were young, and then came to do odd jobs to earn extra money.

Yu Hua knew that Zhou Yan was right, so he didn't say anything. It was always better to have music to listen to than to have no music at all.

After the performance of "To Alice", the piano stopped for a while.

When the piano sounded again, Yu Hua, Shi Tiesheng and Mo Yan all turned to look at Zhou Yan, because they recognized that this was Zhou Yan's song.

Liu Zhenyun and Chi Zijian just felt that the song was very familiar, but they couldn't remember where they had heard it before.

However, when they saw Yu Hua and the others looking at Zhou Yan, they also realized that this song should belong to Zhou Yan.

"What's the name of this song? It's the one played when the hero meets the heroine in the movie 'The Piano Boy Who Wants to Fly'?" Mo Yan asked.

He knew that the song was sung by Zhou Yan, and even remembered where it came from, but he didn't remember the name of the song.

"It's called "Reunion." Yu Hua helped Zhou Yan answer Mo Yan's question.

"Oh, yes, it's a reunion."

"Reunion" is a song adapted by Zhou Yan based on "When It Rains". The melody is soft and soothing, and it is indeed very suitable for playing in a restaurant.

This piece of music is relatively easy to play, and the girl performed much better than when she played "Für Alice" just now.

It can be heard that she must play this piece often.

After hearing Zhou Yan's music in a restaurant in Hong Kong, Yu Hua and his friends had a clearer understanding of Zhou Yan's popularity in Hong Kong.

The restaurant's serving speed is average. After the girl played two songs, no dish was served yet.

However, Zhou Yan and his friends were not in a hurry. They drank tea and chatted while listening to live piano performance. Everyone was in a good mood.

After the second song ended, the aunt did not stop and started playing "The Girl's Prayer".

When hearing "Girl's Prayer", Zhou Yan couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, looking very surprised.

This girl had a lot of problems when she played "Für Alice" just now, and she actually dared to play "A Girl's Prayer"?
The song "Maiden's Prayer" is indeed not very difficult to listen to for laymen. If this song is put together with "Croatian Rhapsody", most laymen would probably think that the latter is much more difficult.

However, in fact, the difficulty of the two pieces is completely opposite to what the public thinks. "A Girl's Prayer" is several levels more difficult than "Croatian Rhapsody".

For a difficult piece like "A Girl's Prayer", as soon as you start playing it, you can tell whether it is played by a professional or just an amateur.

But Zhou Yan soon understood that this was not the original version, but a simplified version, which was much easier to play. Generally, songs that sound good and are easy to become popular will have simplified versions. This simplified version can give some people who are not very good at playing this song but want to play it a chance to perform it live.

Anyway, as long as you don't compare them sentence by sentence, to an outsider, both the original and simplified versions sound almost the same.

In fact, even if it is a simplified version, the difficulty is not particularly low. According to the girl's level, the performance should be similar to "Für Alice". However, her performance of this song is much better than "Für Alice". It can be seen that she must have practiced this song hard in her daily life.

After the third song ended, the girl playing the piano got up and went somewhere else, and the piano music stopped.

At this time, Zhou Yan and his friends’ dishes began to be served.

The quality of this restaurant is quite good. Yu Hua and his friends were very satisfied with the meal and kept praising its authenticity.

When they talk about authentic, they are naturally comparing it with the Cantonese restaurants they had eaten at in the mainland.

There are very few Cantonese dishes in Yanjing. Some restaurants like to add a few strange Cantonese dishes to the menu for the sake of publicity, but the resulting food is definitely not right.

After they ate for a while, the girl who played the piano came back. It turned out that it was not the end, but just an intermission.

After coming back, the girl played the fourth song.

"I remember this time, the song is called "Wind." Mo Yan said with a smile.

He was deeply impressed by this song because the melody was very unique and people could remember it as soon as they heard it. When he was watching "Letter from Heaven", this was also his favorite song and it made people very happy to listen to it.

The song "Wind" was adapted by Zhou Yan based on the lively song "Summer" in "Kikujiro's Summer".

Among all Zhou Yan's songs, "Wind", "Secret Joy" and "Sanmao" are classified into one category, and people call these three songs the "Happy Trilogy".

Many occasions that require a joyful atmosphere like to use these three songs as background music. Some TV programs also like to add these three songs during relaxing moments.

As the music started, the atmosphere in the whole restaurant became cheerful.

At the table next to Zhou Yan and his friends, there was a child of about eight or nine years old. After hearing "Wind", he shouted in surprise, "It's our school bell."

The child was speaking Cantonese, and Yu Hua and the others couldn't understand, so they asked Zhou Yan for help, "What is the little guy saying?"

"He said 'Wind' was the bell for their school."

"Tsk, tsk, there's even a school that uses this song as the school bell. But this song really fits the mood of the students when they're leaving school."

Liu Zhenyun said with a smile, "This piece of music is lively and makes people feel happy. Now that it is tied to the end of school, students will feel even happier when they listen to it."

Chi Zijian nodded, "Well, luckily it wasn't used as a wake-up ringtone, otherwise everyone would get bored after hearing it for too long."

If you want to hate a song, the best way is to set it as your wake-up ringtone. No matter how much you liked the song before, as long as you use it as your wake-up ringtone and listen to it for a period of time, you will develop a physiological aversion to the song.

In fact, there are quite a few people who use Zhou Yan's music as wake-up ringtones. Among them, "Early Morning, First Snow, Red Sun" is very popular. This is because the song starts off soothingly and then gradually becomes stronger. In addition, the name contains words like early morning and red sun, making it very suitable as a school wake-up ringtone.

Zhou Yan had heard before that there was a school that played "Awakening" when it gathered students for morning exercises every day, which made the students excited early in the morning.

"Wind" is quite short and ended very quickly.

After that, the girl played only Zhou Yan's songs, which were all popular and not difficult.

This type of music is easy to play and is popular with customers.

About half an hour later, Zhou Yan and his friends had almost finished eating. The girl playing the piano played another seven or eight songs and then went somewhere else. It was not known whether this was an intermission or the end.

There was a long pause and the girl hadn't come back yet. Yu Hua smiled and said, "I guess the girl is off work. Why don't you go and sing a song for us? Put on your hat and mask so no one can recognize you."

In fact, Yu Hua just said it casually. He didn't really want Zhou Yan to perform. After all, he knew that Zhou Yan was very popular in Hong Kong. If he was recognized, it would be troublesome.

But what Yu Hua didn't expect was that after listening to him, Zhou Yan actually nodded, stood up and walked towards the piano.

Yu Hua looked at Zhou Yan's back as he walked towards the piano in surprise, "Why is he so kind to me today?"

Liu Zhenyun chuckled, "Maybe it's because you have a good reputation."

In fact, the reason why Zhou Yan went over so readily had nothing to do with Yu Hua's face. It was just that Zhou Yan remembered the scene when he had dinner here with Joey Wong and his younger brothers and sisters a few years ago.

Now that the piano is free, he goes to review it. Anyway, as Yu Hua said, he is wearing a hat and a mask, so most people can't recognize him.

Zhou Yangan walked to the piano and sat down, and the girl who was playing the piano came back.

It seemed that she just went there to take a break and her work was not finished yet.

Seeing the girl coming back, Zhou Yan was ready to get up and leave. He didn't want to delay her work.

The girl waved her hands and said, "It's okay, play it if you want."

For the girl, having someone play the piano not only does not affect her work, but also helps her share the work. Anyway, her work hours are fixed, and she can leave at the appointed time.

After hearing what the girl said, Zhou Yan did not refuse.

The girl had played it before, so there was no need to worry about pitch, so Zhou Yan didn't do any preparation and just started playing.

As soon as Zhou Yan made a move, the girl's eyes widened.

People often come to play the piano in the restaurant, but most of them have average skills and many can only play some simple songs haltingly.

In all this time, she has only met one person who is very good, a student majoring in music at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts.

The man in front of her, wearing a hat and a mask, was the second person with the best level she had met.

The first piece Zhou Yan played was "Eternal Night", a very difficult piece of music. Zhou Yan only played it because he was familiar with it, otherwise his performance would have been terrible.

From the girl's perspective, Zhou Yan was able to perform such a difficult song as "Eternal Night" so well. His level was really high, much better than the professional student from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts who came last time.

With such a high level of skill, he must be a professional student who has been learning piano since childhood. (End of this chapter)