I've recently been obsessed with this song. I encountered it whilst looking for something else, but its story, and how it's been used, got my interest. It's a patriotic Chinese song, written to commemorate the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war, as strategically pointless a waste of human life as there's ever been. The lyrics are in the form of a letter from a soldier reassuring his lover that his death was a worthwhile sacrifice for the country.
AFAICS, this was the first performance of the song in 1987, a duet between a crippled soldier (possibly a veteran from that war) and a female singer. Also of interest is this (warning: graphic imagery), what seems to be a music video, although it seems rather bloody for MTV. The song later found an equally apt use in commemorating the dead of Tiananmen Square, as here.
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