The Song That Got China’s Laid-Off Workers Through the 1990s, and Still Gets Us Through Now

Some songs sound like encouragement when you are young. In middle age, they sound like fate.

“Start Over Again” is one of those songs. The melody does not show off. The lyrics are plain speech. That plainness is why it has hit people for nearly thirty years: people losing something, turning a corner, trying to make a living again.

It was never just an inspirational song. In 1997, CCTV made a public-service advertisement about reemployment for laid-off workers. Chen Tao wrote the lyrics. Wang Xiaofeng composed the music. Liu Huan sang it for no fee. In 1999, it won the Five-One Project Award. It was written for ordinary people caught in a national shift.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, state-owned enterprise reform went deep. Millions of workers had entered factories in their teens and treated the factory as a lifelong shelter. They knew lathes, fitting, textiles, mines. They knew monthly wages, work-unit housing, factory-run schools, factory hospitals. Then the iron rice bowl shattered. Years of service were bought out. Workers were laid off. They had to find their own way. In middle age, with one narrow skill, they had elderly parents above them and children below. Many set aside the dignity of being a worker and set up stalls, repaired bicycles, peddled tricycles, ran tiny shops. They learned a market they had never been trained for.

From 1998 to 2001, more than twenty million state-owned enterprise workers were laid off nationwide. More than seventeen million found reemployment through difficult trial and error. These are not cold numbers. They are families shaking. The public-service short played over and over on television. Liu Huan’s voice entered millions of homes. In those lost years, the song comforted laid-off workers and gave many people the nerve to set out again.

The lyrics are honest. They do not say, “After the storm comes the rainbow.” They do not say, “Effort guarantees success.” First: “All the honors of yesterday have become distant memories.” That acknowledges a decent, stable, recognized life. Then: “After half a lifetime of toil, tonight I walk into the storm again.” It does not look away from the cruelty of having lived half a life and still having to start over.

The lyrics say what keeps a person gritting their teeth: “For my beloved family,” “Only for those expectant eyes.” It is the elderly at home, the young children, the gazes that watch you, depend on you, hope for you. At the hardest moments, people often do not live for themselves. They live for those who cannot afford to have them collapse.

“If the heart remains, the dream remains; between heaven and earth there is still true love. Look at success or failure, life is grand and unbound, it is only starting over again.” These lines are often taken as slogans. In those years, they were more like driftwood grasped by a drowning person. A way of telling yourself: I still have to hold on. Gritted teeth after having no other choice.

Liu Huan’s performance is why the song travels through time. His voice is thick and warm. There is no condescending pity, no deliberate sentimentality. He sounds like someone who has walked through it, patting your shoulder: It’s all right. Again. When he recorded it, he had a bad cold. To get the effect, he drank half a bottle of erguotou, a strong Chinese liquor, and finished with a hoarse voice. That hoarseness was not designed. It was instinctive roughness that matched the song’s core.

Liu Huan also taught at the University of International Business and Economics starting in 1991, mainly Western music history, for more than thirty years. He retired in 2023. He was nationally known but low-key. He was not a bystander singing about suffering from afar. His main work was teaching. He recorded this public-service song for no fee, speaking for ordinary workers at their lowest points. That calm, substantial character gave his performance the warmth of a fellow traveler.

Decades later, the economy changed. Flexible employment is now the norm in the job market. It is no longer only a temporary choice for laid-off workers. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimates that more than 200 million people in China are flexibly employed, including freelancers and platform workers. This group faces large income swings, pays social insurance out of pocket, and often lacks labor protections. The job market is unstable. Many jobs last only a period. Short-term work is common. Many low-end jobs pay little. Many freelancers have incomes that rise and fall, with no stable work unit as a safety net.

Hearing “After half a lifetime of toil, tonight I walk into the storm again” still produces empathy. In the 1990s, state-owned enterprise employees lost the support of their work units. Today, more people, by choice or by force, leave fixed positions and enter flexible employment. The shape of the problem is different. The powerlessness is shared.

There is controversy around the song. For laid-off workers, “starting over” was sometimes cruel. Decades of youth cannot be started over. Skills and experience accumulated over half a lifetime may be worthless in the market. Those who bore the cost of the transition were almost entirely ordinary workers. Management often landed smoothly, even profiting. These voices do not deny the song. They reveal the gap in the history the song carries. The inspirational frame cannot replace questions about structural costs.

The song offers consolation, not a solution. Consolation cannot solve every problem. In a storm, a person still needs a raincoat.

One song spans decades. It writes out the storms on the road of making a living for two generations. The melody is plain. Its power comes from recognizing the storm ordinary people live in. It records the birth pangs of a national transition. It consoles two generations struggling to make a living. When the song plays, it still recalls a gentle, substantial singer who left a word of comfort at the hardest moments.

The song is still played. For anyone walking into the storm again, it says what it said in 1997: keep going.