A Chinese song from 2009 made its way into a meme about LingLong tires.
If you’re a car enthusiast or follow a lot of car-related social media accounts, you’ve probably seen a popular meme going around showing how, when faced with spending $1,000+ on name-brand tires or $400 for a set of LingLongs (which, by the way, are actually called LingLongs, one word), you, without a doubt, choose the cheaper tires, so much so that you start singing this catchy Mandarin song.
Here are a couple of examples of this meme.
The Chinese Song being used is called Jin Sheng Yuan (Affinities of Life) by Chinese singer and songwriter Chuan Zi.
The song emphasizes the importance of relationships and brotherhood, encouraging friends to remember each other, stay connected on life’s road, and leave worries and pain behind.
Here’s a video of his original song sung by Zi himself.
YouTube Shorts creator A1234 gives the history of the song and how the artist wrote it, along with nearly 100 other songs, while he was in prison.
However, the version you hear in memes is a cover of Jin Sheng Yuan released around the same time by singer Wang San.
This cover went viral on TikTok and across social media at least 6 years ago; the song is used in the background of memes like the LingLong tires one, where people satirize themselves choosing the cheaper option when the so-called better option is way too expensive.
Jing Sheng Yuan also likely gained more popularity as the Women Cheat meme.
And if you’d like to learn how to sing the part of Jin Sheng Yuan from the memes yourself, there are tutorials like this one.
The part from the memes starts at 55 seconds.
Although the meme is about preferring affordable tires over more expensive options, the song itself is a serious and heartwarming song about life and our relationships, a juxtaposition that has car enthusiasts pausing for a moment to ponder and appreciate.
