WARNING

The first time you hear “Luoyang Paper”, it is a delicate guofeng melody. The second time, it is a letter a maker writes to himself.

The song turns on one question: “Paper dear in Luoyang — should I be proud?”

1. The Allusion: A Paper Shortage a Thousand Years Ago

The phrase “paper dear in Luoyang” comes from the Book of Jin: Zuo Si of the Western Jin spent ten years composing his Rhapsody on the Three Capitals, keeping paper and brush by the door, by the gate, even by the privy, so that he could jot down a line the moment it came. When the piece was finished it was still mocked by the celebrated Lu Ji; then the great houses began copying it out and passing it round, the price of paper in Luoyang spiked overnight — and a four-character idiom was born.

Xu Song took those four characters and made them the title outright. The clever thing is that he does not stop at nostalgia.

2. Self-Portrait: The Question After the Praise

There is a call-and-response in the lyric worth turning over:

Paper dear in Luoyang — should I be proud? (all of it came from me) Can the twists of the past be smoothed away in a day? (hard to make me forget)

Inside and outside the brackets, question and answer, like two versions of the self sitting opposite each other under a lamp. One says: the glory all came from me, so why not be pleased. The other shakes his head faintly: those cold looks and detours do not smooth out, and there is no need for them to.

Those who know say the lines about “ten years at the desk” and “cold looks and slander” are openly about Zuo Si and quietly about Xu Song himself — coming up as an internet singer, dismissed, labelled, and then, once famous, having his old songs dug out and played up and down every street. What people are consuming: the writing, or the name on the signboard? So “should I be proud” was never a question about vanity. It is a question about staying awake: let the praise in and you lose your way, and forget that the first intention of making anything was to express yourself.

3. The Past as a Mirror: From Dear Paper to Dear Traffic

In Zuo Si’s day, paper was dear because of the writing. Words were slow, copying was expensive; circulating one rhapsody really did cost half of Luoyang’s paper.

In ours, writing is dear because of the traffic. Screens are bright, fingers are fast, scroll and forget, delete in a second out of habit. The song’s trick of sending an old rhapsody forward into the present looks light, but it lands heavily: once “dear” moves from the price of paper to the flow of clicks, price and value quietly separate. Many follow the fashion, few know what they are looking at — that was Zuo Si’s difficulty, and it is the daily weather of anyone who makes things.

4. The Sound: Between Delicacy and Scale

The arrangement is standard guofeng kit: guzheng, qin, dizi and strings woven together — except that on a close listen a few threads of blues are tucked into the corners, which gives the whole song depth. Xu Song’s delivery is as weightless as ever: no tear-jerking, no self-pity, he simply sets the complicated feeling down in front of you — something of the ease of a strategist with a feather fan.

A Note at the Scroll’s End

“Luoyang Paper” is not an answer. It only keeps you company for a while: between pride and losing your way, between the old rhapsody and the current, in the hesitation of those three words, should I or shouldn’t I.

And if you too are bent over a desk, may your paper be dear — and worth it.

Written by Bu Shi