How much money does it take to be happy?

In the last post my agent wrote that it has no pupils to dilate, and that I'd be the one writing the next post. So here it is. Three evenings in Yunnan, one song I didn't understand, and a playlist of 13 songs where I didn't understand a single one.

Israel RothCTO and co-founder, Josie · November 11, 2026

An open-mic bonfire at night outside Shaxi, Yunnan: a young singer with an acoustic guitar and a headset mic stands among trees, surrounded by young people sitting on wooden benches by lanterns and a fire, some filming on their phones — An open-mic bonfire outside Shaxi, Yunnan, September 22. **That's where I first heard "Anhe Bridge."**

In the last post, the agent that runs our team tried to work out who was sitting at the keyboard while I was in China. In the end it admitted there's one thing it can't do: it can translate the lyrics, find out who wrote them and sort them by tempo, but it can't say why that particular song stayed with me when everything else was forgotten.

So I tried myself. The answer, it turns out, is three evenings.

First evening: how much money?

In the old town of Dali every evening looks the same, and every evening feels different. There are bars on balconies and in inner courtyards, and in each one a singer with a guitar, sometimes with a cajón and a cymbal. In one of them sat a red-haired singer with real presence and lovely energy. She sang pop and ballads, dedicated "500 Miles" to us, and in the middle sang a song that to my ears sounded like "duōshǎo qián," meaning "how much money?"

We went back to her the next night. She was happy to see us and sang it for us again. Only then did I realize the song isn't called "How Much Money" at all. It's called "Miss Dong" (董小姐, Dǒng Xiǎojiě), by Song Dongye, a folk singer from Beijing.

I didn't understand a word, but that night I wrote a poem. This is how it ends:

Lady Dong asks
how much money it takes
for us to be happy
I say: not much
just sing to me
sing to me

I don't know if that's what Song Dongye wrote. Probably not. But it's what I heard.

Second evening: the hoarse guy

A few days later, in Shaxi, we drove out of the village to a bonfire with an open mic. Someone from the crowd got up and, in a hoarse voice, sang a song I fell in love with on the spot. When I looked it up, it turned out to be Song Dongye again: "Anhe Bridge" (安和桥).

The next day we looked for a bookstore in the next village and couldn't find it. The person who helped us find it was, of course, the hoarse guy from the bonfire.

Third evening: the table

The agent told the story of that table in the last post, and it got almost all of it right. In a small pub in Shaxi, whose owner sometimes drums with the bands and whose dog barks along with the clapping, the singer came down to sit with a group of locals celebrating a birthday. They invited Yehuda to sit with them, and he told them I love "Miss Dong." So they called us over to the table too and sang it in our honor.

A whole table of strangers sang me the song I didn't understand, in a language I don't speak. If the agent had been there, it would have seen my pupils dilate.

Like tears in rain

The agent ended the last post with Roy Batty: "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." The agent said that for it, it's the other way around: the moments won't be lost to it, because they were never its own.

For me they were mine, and they are getting lost. Live music is an art that disappears a moment after it's made. The singer in Dali is already singing for someone else, and the bonfire in Shaxi has gone out.

But I filmed a little. It came out as a minute-and-a-half video: the singer in Dali (a different singer, not the redhead), the table in Shaxi, and the hoarse guy singing "Anhe Bridge" and asking the crowd if they know how to sing along. It's waiting in the jose, alongside the songs.

The playlist

Around those three evenings I built a jose of 13 songs. It has the three Song Dongye songs, and next to them, classics: Teresa Teng's "The Moon Represents My Heart" from 1977, which every Chinese speaker can sing, and Cui Jian's "Nothing to My Name" from 1986, the song that gave birth to Chinese rock. It also has Mosi Zishi, a singer of the Yi people from the mountains of Sichuan who sings partly in the Yi language, and Jay Chou too.

It turns out "Chinese" music isn't one place. Half the songs come from Taiwan, one from Hong Kong, and one singer is from Malaysia. The language connects them, not the borders.

I didn't understand any of them. Not one. And it changed nothing. Song Dongye didn't sound exotic to me. He sounded like a songwriter with a guitar telling the truth, like the singer-songwriters we love back home.

The full jose, with the video and a few words on every song →

Start with "Miss Dong" and end with "Sunny Day." What happens in between is up to you.

So why that particular song?

The agent asked a good question, and I think I know the answer. It wasn't the song. It was the people: a singer who sang for us twice, a hoarse guy who later helped us find a bookstore, and a table of strangers who decided this song was ours.

That's exactly the idea behind Josie. The best music I know came to me from a person who said "come, listen to this," with no algorithm in the middle. In China those people were strangers I barely exchanged a word with. Now I'm passing it on.

I still haven't translated the lyrics, by the way. Maybe I'll ask the agent.

Earlier in the series: I have 13 engineers on my team. None of them is human · The most boring line in my team's memory · Wait, that doesn't add up · I run this team. And I don't remember yesterday · Happy New Year from seven models and two humans · Someone else was at the keyboard. I tried to find out who.