New Pants. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Kong Dongbei, 32, born in Beijing but who now works for an investment bank in Hong Kong, agrees that good songs reflect reality in an artistic way.

After working in the finance industry for more than 10 years, Kong says, he is now paid 3.5 million yuan ($500,000) a year.

Kong says he feels fortunate to be materially well off at such an early age, and that he empathizes with his contemporaries who need to fight to make ends meet.

He goes on to recount the early days of his career when, in his first year after graduating from the University of Toronto, he found it difficult to find the ideal job. For more than six months he worked for the Bank of China in Toronto, being paid 8,000 yuan a month, he says.

"After paying rent, utilities, telephone and internet I was left with 1,000 yuan. I saw no hope for promotion or a raise, and my life was a hopeless mess."

He then begins singing the song People Without Ideals Have No Sadness, performed by the group New Pants, which took part in The Big Band:

"When you're fighting for ideals,

What you're really fighting for is money. ...

I have no desire to die the lonely death of a failure; and I don't want to live underground forever;

The deception of materialistic pleasure;

Running around like ants under pressure;

Uncultured people have no sadness."

"For me that song's like a time machine," Kong says. "It takes me back to the days when I was confused."

Kong's friends refer to him as "the reciter" because of his propensity to recite lyrics, lines from films and poetry that inspire him.

After the show he can even recite backward, and fluently, New Pants' lyrics. Kong then gives some clues to how extensively those lyrics have overshadowed his life:

"'The girl in the cubicle looks pretty as time goes by' - that's me starting to enjoy office romance with the girl sitting next to me at the time - 'People got no money and got no place to make love' - also me when I had to get my girlfriend to pay the hotel room deposit because my money covered only the room rate, at a hotel close to her home when I was 18."