Goodbye! My Love (Zai Jian! Wo De Ai Ren)

Teresa Teng  

Uploaded 21 Nov 2023. 

This song turned out to be surprisingly straightforward to arrange for piano - I say “surprisingly” because I remembered my early teenage self trying to simulate this song on the piano but frustratingly not being able to get past the intro - simply cause at that time I didn’t know what chords were, let alone what a diminished chord was. 

This song was first composed in 1974 as a Japanese song with the English title “Goodbye, My Love” for Japanese-American singer Ann Lewis. Although Teresa Teng also covered the Japanese version (only that the song’s spoken part was altered to Mandarin), it’s her Mandarin title 再见! 我的爱人 released one year after that became the more recognisable version amongst Chinese-speaking folks. This was also the same song she sang whilst fighting back tears during her 1976 concert in Hong Kong. As a singer of many iconic love songs, she herself was very unlucky in love, so it was almost as though she was lamenting all her future romantic relationships all of which never ended happily. 

再见! 我的爱人is a song that pulls one’s heartstrings at all the right places - the 12/8 ballad style, the chords, the musical arrangement, the simple yet sincere lyrics, and her voice to carry it. Today, the song continues to be a memorable sentimental favourite to many.