Baobei by Desert Zhang 宝贝(张悬) Guitar Cover

Covered By Joyce

Verses
C  Em7  Fmaj7  G

Chorus
C  Am  Fmaj7  G

I recorded this song in 2018, after the lights had all gone out, in a strong air-conditioning room. with the guitar Brian gave me not long after I moved into Tulip 206.

Tulip 206 was a spacious three-bedroom flat overlooking the swimming pool in the central garden, where tropical plants and palm trees flourish. My room sat at the very end of the corridor. There was an elegant four-poster bed, two matching chests of drawers I never used. On the bedside table, a small white cube-shaped mechanical alarm clock that only lasted for a year. 

It was one of the first investment after I moved in. It worked better than my iPhone alarm that woke up Brian and Anita in the next room constantly before obtaining my attention. 

There was a long period of time, my free time outside of work is just a small window after sunset. On those late nights after work,  I would lie in bed with my tired heavy head towards the balcony doors, the guitar resting across my ribs, absent-mindedly strumming songs such as Fly Me to the Moon or Somewhere Only We Know. Baobei was one of those I returned to often, until I decided to record it and shelved. 

I once asked Brian whether they could hear me playing through the walls.

"Never," he said. The apartment was well built and used to house the Sheikh's jockeys. 

So I kept my late night gigs going, until eventually upgraded to the living room and started playing with Brian after we discovered each other's music landscape. 

It was only when we were about to leave Tulip 206 that I asked Anita that how could the alarm being heard so loud and clear while my guitar sounds so muted ?

She smiled and admitted that they could always hear my play but they just never minded. They even used it as an index for knowing what kind of day I had at work. 

My mother once said almost the same thing. 

When I was in middle school and became obsessed with the piano. Every noon, while she tried to nap between her accountant job, raising my children and everything else life asked of her, I filled our small apartment with Richard Clayderman’s new romantic melodies that only moved myself. 

She heard it all but She just never minded. I never knew how much tenderness could hide inside those four words that had been lightly conveyed. 

The first time I heard Baobei, it sounded like a sweet song to the new born. But the more I listened to it, the more it reminds me of the stubborn child I used to be, and being taken care of once at a time. Looking back, it is those silent listeners who pretended asleep made the sleepless nights so precious.