"The wind is so strong."
In the early morning of January 1, 2026, in Jinshan, Shanghai, the outdoor stage of Station B’s New Year’s Eve party.
Just after midnight, 63-year-old Liu Huan walked onto the stage wrapped in a dark coat, her neck slightly hunched, and her shoulders trembling slightly in the cold wind. Before speaking, he softly said these three words.
The temperature dropped to below zero that day. The audience was crowded, and no one expected that this would be Liu Huan's last public performance on a large stage.
On September 26, the University of International Business and Economics issued an obituary: Liu Huan, a retired teacher from the school and a famous musician, died of illness in Shanghai at 9:52 am on September 25 at the age of 63.
September 25th is the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The obituary stated that in compliance with Liu Huan's last wish, the funeral would be simple, no funeral committee would be established, and no farewell ceremony or memorial service would be held.
As Liu Huan has always done, there is no need for gongs and drums when arriving, and no pomp when leaving.
Troubled by illness
Liu Huan has been plagued by illness all year round.
The earliest one was in 2004. Liu Huan was preparing for his solo concert when his right leg suddenly hurt, but he didn't have time to go to the hospital, so he put on a plaster and carried it through. After a week or two, the pain in my legs gradually stopped, and I didn’t take it seriously anymore. But since then, Liu Huan found that his right leg was gradually unable to cross his legs.
In 2009, while he was studying with his daughter in the United States, he accidentally injured his right leg while doing housework and was in so much pain that he could not walk. But worried that his wife was anxious and that it would affect his daughter's exam, Liu Huan delayed the decision for four months. After returning to China for medical treatment, Liu Huan saw that the diagnosis certificate said "avascular necrosis of the femoral head" stage II. He breathed a sigh of relief and thought that the situation was much more optimistic than he thought.
In 2010, he underwent artificial hip replacement surgery in Beijing and began a long and silent recovery.
At that time, there were rumors that Liu Huan was undergoing surgery in the United States, and his wife Lu Lu was very angry.
"'Avascular necrosis of the femoral head' is a common and frequent disease. Chinese doctors should have the richest clinical experience in the world. Hundreds of such surgeries are performed every year, so why should they go abroad?!"
During the treatment, Liu Huan was worried about affecting the normal working order of the hospital and the recovery of other patients, so he kept a low profile. The patients across the wall were unaware of his existence.
In subsequent public appearances, Liu Huan often used crutches. Since he couldn't use the treadmill after getting sick, he went to the gym every day to ride a bicycle to prevent his leg muscles from atrophying.
In 2019, while recording "Singer 2019", Liu Huan suddenly got up and left the scene, telling the staff around him that he wanted to find a cool place to stay for a while. Li Rui stepped forward to ask, and Liu Huan said that he was uncomfortable breathing, his hands were shaking badly, and he had developed arrhythmia. Then, he took out the Suxiao Jiuxin Pill and took it, then sat on the side to rest on his back. It took a while before he recovered.
Later, everyone learned that Liu Huan had just undergone stent implantation surgery before recording. The doctor told him not to move around or get too excited, but he still insisted on singing.
under the stage
The biggest characteristic of Liu Huan is his professionalism and persistence. He doesn't care about managing himself, he only cares about the music itself.
In 2017, at the recording site of "China's New Singing", Liu Huan joked that he was different from the other three instructors and was purely a "three-no musician". "As a person, I have no contract company, no Weibo account, no public account, no fan group, no fan club."
When composing music for the TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan", Liu Huan spent three months completing more than 70 episodes of music. He tried subversive harmonies and modulations in the soundtrack, and went to Hengdian to watch the scenes. Not only did he require the sound field to be consistent with the scene, but he also strived to roughly match the music of the guqin and flute with the hand movements of the actors in the filming, without any obvious flaws.
In the first season of "The Voice of China", he turned around with only his voice and brought out Jike Junyi, Yuan Yawei and other students.
In 2012, Liu Huan repeatedly denied the rumors that "The Voice has a shady story" and "students will be eliminated if they don't sign a contract": "One thing I can guarantee is that there is no shady story here. Within my authority, I will not allow anyone to manipulate me. I have written this into the contract."
Before the second season started, he quit the show because he was "too tired." Later, in an interview, Liu Huan revealed that he likes to live a leisurely and happy-go-lucky life, and does not want to be as busy as a headless fly.
In 2019, Hong Tao, the chief director of "Singer", came to invite him several times, but he never let go. What really made him nod was not the program, but the thought that had been hidden in his heart for many years, using this stage to speak out for original music: "Without originality, our future pop music will become nothing more than rice without rice!"
He worries that in the Internet age, everyone will blindly pursue traffic, cater to traffic, and lose their individuality. "They will always stay at 'Made in China,' and there will be no 'Created in China.'" That season, he could have sang his famous songs and secured the ranking, but he produced experimental works one after another, and fell to the edge of elimination several times. But Liu Huan believes that the prosperity of music is not about 10,000 people listening to just one kind of music, but 10,000 people listening to hundreds or even thousands of kinds of music.
On the night of the finals, when he received the "King of Singer" trophy, he only said: "Here I am, there are only songs, no king."
on the podium
Many young people know Liu Huan and his songs through TV. Not only "Youthful Ambition", "Crooked Moon", "Millions of Questions", "Song of a Hero" and "Phoenix Flying", but also "You and Me", which he sang with Sarah Brightman at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But the most eye-catching sentence in the obituary issued by the University of International Business and Economics is another sentence: "Teacher Liu Huan combines music education, music creation and singing. He is well versed in Chinese and Western studies, has noble ethics as a teacher, has devoted his life to the cause of music, and has made important contributions to the development of music education in colleges and universities."
In 1985, Liu Huan, who was majoring in French literature, won the prize in two song competitions in English and French in the Capital University, and he has been on the road to music ever since. But he never lost his other identity: starting in 1991, he taught "History of Western Music" at the University of International Business and Economics, which he taught for more than thirty years.
In 2011, he returned to the classroom after taking a break from the podium due to illness. The classroom, which can accommodate 306 people, was packed. He set a rule for the class: "I hope there will be no requests for me to sing a song."
He does not use slides in his lectures, but relies entirely on dictation. When his legs hurt, he would stand and teach a class from beginning to end. He believed in "teaching and learning" and "kung fu lies beyond poetry", and encouraged students to learn some seemingly "useless" knowledge. He also composed the music for the school's school song "The Song of UIBE".
In 2019, he donated 20 million yuan in his own name to establish the "Liu Huan Original Music Special Charity Fund", investing 1 million yuan every year to support a young singer-songwriter under the age of 30.
If this money is used for variety shows and investments, the rate of return will be much higher than this. But he chose the most "stupid" way, leaving money and time to young people who have not yet received applause.
Singer-songwriter Jude was once illuminated by Liu Huan on the road to his dream. He still remembers the scene of his first meeting. Although he was extremely nervous, the two chatted about music until midnight. Liu Huan also enthusiastically dug out the computers and equipment he used when making music.
Today, the classroom is still there, and the Community Chest will continue to evaluate it year by year. Only the person who says, "Standing here, I am the most ordinary teacher" will never come back.
After the news of Liu Huan's death was announced, condolences poured in from all directions.
Netizens dug out Liu Huan's songs and wrote them in the comment area sentence by sentence: "If your heart is in a dream, you will be there" "The river flows eastward, the stars in the sky join the Beidou"...
Na Ying wrote: "I often think of the days when we sang together, and I am heartbroken and reluctant to leave you at this moment. Brother Huan, thank you for the singing voice you left behind and everything we walked through together in those years. I will always miss it."
Musician Xiao Ke said: "Liu Huan is the king of pop music, he is the one who takes charge."
Lin Zhixuan said that Liu Huan is an important musician, educator, and singer in his heart. "Just think of him as flying to the moon. I will miss one more person during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the future."
Jike Junyi, a student of Liu Huan's team in "The Voice of China", changed his social profile picture on all platforms to black, and Yuan Yawei changed it to a crescent moon. This is the song that Liu Huan sang famously when he was 28 years old, and it was also the song that Yuan Yawei sang on the blind audition stage of "The Voice".
There is a sentence in the lyrics: "My heart is full of melancholy, not for the crooked moon, but for the village today, which is still singing the songs of the past."
More than thirty years later, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the person who first sang this song went to the moon.
The Mango V Fund, which jointly established the "Liu Huan Original Music Special Charity Fund" with Liu Huan, at the end of the condolence message, there is a sentence that seems to be written for everyone: "May heaven have a podium and music, and a full moon."
