In August, when the pop duo was giving a show in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, Xi sent them the completed version of the song Barcarolla before it was released online.

"It was a very touching moment. We knew we had made it," says Zhang. "Music has the same magic as a time machine."

"The songs we performed when we were young are quite different from today's music. I am glad that the younger generation want to bring an old song alive with new ideas," says Chyi.

Good Meimei, which was launched in 2010 by singer-songwriters Qin, a 31-year-old former illustrator who graduated from Jilin Animation Institute, and Zhang, a 30-year-old former engineer who graduated from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, is one of the most popular duos in the country, especially among college students.

They are amateur singers and both write original songs. They became friends through listening to each other's songs on social media and then decided to form a band.

Known for covering classic pop songs from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as performing their original material, the duo first rose to fame by releasing songs online.

Their debut album, Chun Sheng, which had seven original songs, was written and produced by the duo. Without support from any record companies, they designed the album cover and wrote the promotional materials themselves. With an investment of around just 2,000 yuan ($288), the album sold over 8,000 copies online.

The duo has already built up a broad fan base in China's mainstream pop music scene with their catchy, easy-listening songs.

In September 2015, they successfully held a concert at the Beijing Workers' Stadium, an iconic venue that only a few Chinese mainland singers or bands have been able to handle, including rock singer-songwriter Wang Feng, and Western artists, such as rock band Linkin Park.

It was a bold move, the duo recalls. Through crowd-funding online, which saw each audience member pay 99 yuan for a ticket, they reached their goal of racking up nearly 2 million yuan within the space of a month and performed their songs in front of an audience of 37,000 people on Sept 18.

"It seems that we've been too hard on ourselves, setting impossible goals," says Zhang. "Going from bars to live music venues, and then on to theaters and the Beijing Workers' Stadium, it was like a dream."

In 2015, they also spent months touring more than 20 universities in China, sharing their stories of transforming themselves from nobodies to professional indie musicians.

"Our fans are young, mostly students and people who have just entered the workforce. We are close to our fans. We tell them our own experiences and how two amateur music lovers became indie singers and made our dreams come true," Zhang says.

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