Journal • May 14，2026 ｜ Past Issues 前期

Have you ever wondered what happened to the woman in Li Qing-Zhao’s famous verse “Like a Dream,” on the night before she asked the maid about the crabapple blossoms? 

The answer, in my imagination, lies in “Rain by the Window” by Sarah Chen, originally appearing on the 1985 album Black Hair Turns White. Composed by Lou Wen-Zhong, the song captures the sorrow of a woman, alone on a rainy night, pouring out wine but afraid it would bring back memories of her heartbreaking past. 

“Rain by the Window,” one of the most quintessential Sarah Chen songs, gives renewed meaning to Li Qing-Zhao’s verse, providing a fitting backstory to the night before. In her gentle voice, Chen slowly unfolds the woman’s loneliness and sorrow, as she is both tempted to drown her emotions in wine and worried it would bring the memories back. As she repeats the second verse, Chen briefly breaks her voice – as if about to cry – only to return to a steady rhythm as she gathers herself, ending with “my past, scattering like falling flowers.” We know she will succumb to the heaviness of her feelings, become drunk, and wake up to ask about the flowers. 

Though Black Hair Turns White was an important moment in Chen’s career – coming after her Golden Bell Award and marking the point when she began to guide her own musical direction – “Rain by the Window” remains obscure. It was never included in later compilations and survives through a single low-quality YouTube upload. Chen's Rock Records colleagues would later downplay the album’s significance, seeing it as typecasting Chen as a singer of sad songs. Chen herself seems to be the only one who appreciates it, re-recording “Rain by the Window” a decade later before she stepped away from music. 

Yet the song, much like Li Qing-Zhao’s verse, endures. It captures a vulnerable state of mind that we all feel but cannot describe. Some emotions can neither be suppressed nor shared. They are released only in a poem or a song. Through “Rain by the Window” and her other work, Sarah Chen connects to listeners in ways that even a close friend or loved one cannot quite do.

We are pleased to spotlight the “Bless Sarah - 2022 Sarah Chen Birthday Special,” produced by Music Box, a Singapore-based YouTube channel. Hosted by Wen Long and produced by Ryan Tan, the episode featured Sarah Chen’s songs spanning two decades. Recorded before the construction of Sarah Chen Memory Gate, the show provided a largely accurate account of Chen’s career and albums. While it devoted significant airtime to songs written by Jonathan Lee, it correctly noted that the two musicians collaborated on only three albums and a handful of songs. 

The episode also included a live audience who offered heartfelt wishes to Chen, reflecting her enduring impact in Singapore and an international community that continue to relate to her.

After devoting herself to music for nearly three decades, Sarah Chen ended her career around 1996. For the next decades, she stayed away from public life, relinquishing control over her work and career narrative. This effectively froze her work and her artistic image. But how do listeners today engage with her music? Can it endure, especially in her absence and without an official foundation to preserve her legacy? We turn to YouTube for an answer.

We collected public comments left on Sarah Chen’s music videos over the past 12 months (April 2025 to April 2026). For comparison, we examined the same 12-month period ten years earlier (April 2015 to April 2016), and compiled parallel data for Julie Sue, a notable Mandopop singer whose career overlapped with Chen’s. Chen and Sue both broke through in 1983, competed for the same music awards in the 1980s and 1990s, wrapped up major recording activity in the mid-1990s, and released about 20 albums over roughly 15 years. Unlike Chen, Sue did not fully retire and remained visible, receiving a Golden Melody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Her continued presence likely helped center Sue herself as the primary author of her music. Chen’s absence, together with a history of being marketed as a “transformed” singer, has been accompanied by reductive narratives that credit her success to the men she worked with. 

Given Chen’s disengagement and the persistence of such narratives, one might expect listeners’ engagement with Chen’s music to fade over time, especially relative to Sue’s. The data, however, tell a different story (Figure1). 

Dataset Unique Videos Comments Commenters Total Views (All Years)*

Sue (2016)           21 293 249

Chen (2016) 75 589 476

Sue (Recent) 95 1,592 1,244 73,909,763#

Chen (Recent) 312 4,388 3,145 212,647,971

Even accounting for platform growth over the past decade, the eightfold increase in comments on Sarah Chen’s videos is surprising. In fact, when we recently polled fans, only 22% correctly guessed 4,000 as the number of comments left in the past year (Figure 2). 

Rather than fading, engagement with Sarah Chen’s music has grown. And the numbers do not tell the whole story — the comments themselves, synthesized below and in the “Rain by the Window” video, read like thousands of birthday wishes, revealing how strongly listeners remain attached to the singer and her music.

* Total views are for videos receiving comments in the past year.

# Sue’s numbers, though lower than Chen’s, are still very strong and consistent with those of a regional legacy singer. 

The most notable difference between Julie Sue’s comments and Sarah Chen’s is their intimacy. Fans refer to Sue by her full name; Chen is often addressed as “Sarah,” “Sister Sarah,” or “Sarah, Big Sister.” 

Messages on Sue’s videos are primarily about her songs; few are directed to her personally. This does not mean that Sue’s comments are neutral – many are deeply personal, as “Dear Child” reminds listeners of children they have lost, “Holding Hands” of spouses they have loved, and “Papa, Can You Hear Me” of their late parents. But taken as a whole, Sue’s videos elicit reflections on how listeners relate to the songs, not the singer.

Chen’s comments are also often about the songs’ impact. But a significant portion are addressed to the singer herself. Fans speak to her, not just about her. The sentiment expressed by user @alllivesmatter785 is representative of many messages: “Sister Sarah, your voice accompanied my youth. You are forever the goddess in my heart. No matter where you are, I hope you are living a happy and beautiful life.”

These direct messages were already notable a decade ago and have only intensified in the past year. They are often heartfelt, revealing how important Chen’s music has been in listeners’ lives. One message by @MaxH7086 captures this sentiment: “In my lowest, loneliest days, I listened to her songs every day. They carried me through.”

Call it parasocial if you will, but Sarah Chen is not just a singer to her listeners. She is as intimate as a sister – a sister whose voice remains with them in their most vulnerable moments. The longing is almost unbearably touching, as many express how much they have missed her. Yet fans are also deeply understanding. As much as they long for her, few call for her return. User @水問-j4s expresses this respect for Chen’s choices: “In my heart she is forever the queen of pop. I wish the present-day Sarah a happy life of her own choosing.”

Ever since I discovered Sarah Chen’s songs two years ago, I have felt that a special soul lives in her music. After reading through 4,000 wishes, I understand why. Through her music, Chen occupies an intimate place in her listeners’ hearts – a place reserved for a big sister who speaks to you, listens to you, and stays with you when you need her most. 

“Sister Sarah” is an uncommon reference among Sarah Chen’s peers: Teresa Teng, Fong Feifei, and Tracy Huang do not have comparable “sister” titles. It also differs from titles such as “Sister Na” for Na Ying and “Sister Mui” for Anita Mui, where the surname suggests seniority. While “Sister Chen” would carry a sense of seniority, “Sister Sarah” suggests kinship.

The origin of the phrase is unclear, but it may have begun within the music industry, when younger musicians such as Tarcy Su, David Tao, and Jeff Chang addressed her as “Sister Sarah” before it spread more widely among fans. What is striking is that Chen herself does not seem to have actively cultivated a “big sister” persona. Unlike the charismatic Anita Mui and Teresa Teng, whose public interviews often gave the energy of a big sister, Chen was more introverted and reserved.

It is thus Chen’s music, not her public persona, that earns her the intimate title. She sings her way into your heart and becomes the voice that accompanies you in moments of vulnerability and solitude. The availability of her music, combined with her own absence, draws her even closer. After all, the big sister who comforts you in her songs will never intrude into your life.