Mu Xin [Photo provided to China Daily]

Mu wrote hundreds of poems in his lifetime, many of which have been published in popular books. The poem Life Was Once Slow was not among Mu's favorites, adds Chen.

Speaking of the popularity of the poem and the song, Chen says: "People are touched because it appeals to their desire for a slower place of life by creating a poetic vision of days gone by."

In fact, prior to the composition of the song by singer-and-songwriter Liu Huyi in 2014, Mu was not what you'd call a household name, although he enjoyed fame in art and literature circles for his books and paintings.

Mu was born in Wuzhen in 1927. He moved to New York in 1982 and returned home in 2006. His work, including books, poems and paintings, draw on both Chinese and Western styles.

The Mu Xin Art Museum, established in 2015, holds special shows every year, with either Mu's manuscripts or his paintings as the main focus, to allow visitors to better understand the writer, poet and painter.

By holding concerts since 2016, the museum is attempting to introduce another side of the polymath to the public-Mu's talent for music. Over the course of his career, he composed more than 30 musical pieces, the scores of which were discovered after his death, hidden among thousands of other manuscripts that were left in his house in Wuzhen.

"He loved music. He talked a lot about well-known musicians from the West in his books," says Chen's assistant, Xu Bo.

Mu once said there were "three people in him"-an author, a painter and a musician. But the author and the painter teamed up and killed the musician.

Coming from a wealthy family, he learned to play the piano at a very young age. He worked as a piano teacher at a middle school in Shanghai in the early 1970s. During his time in jail in Shanghai during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), he is said to have drawn piano keys on a piece of paper and practiced playing on it.