Look Who it Was Random video

Jiayuguan

111 views · Published 23 November 2016 · 4:24 · Indexed 30 September 2026

Channel: Mitchel Delevie · 2016 · Music

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Jiayuguan is a pop song in mandarin Chinese and English. Lyrics co-written in 2004 by Tom Lowe and two unknown 19 year old locals from Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, where the Great Wall ends. 

Tom was sharing a 4 hour cab ride to a glacier in the Qilianshan Mountains with said locals and asked them to help him write a song in Chinese that rhymed, was grammatically correct, and contained some cool-sounding, untranslatable Chinese proverbs.

Tom then took the words back to his parents’ house in Cheshire, England with a melody in his head. The faithful piano he learned on wrote the chords by itself.

The song was produced and recorded at Delevie Studios in Los Angeles by Mitchel Delevie five years after the song's conception in 2009. Mitchel wrote the lyrics to the second verse in English and brought in his loyal team of musicians to play guitar, trumpet, keyboard and bass parts. Mitchel played drums while Tom played piano and sang lead and backing vocals.

This music video was shot seven years after the recording in 2016 in several locations around the world. In order of appearance:

1) Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Alaska.
2) Wrangell-Petersburg County and Prince Of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Alaska
3) Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands
4) The Crystal Serenity
5) Samaná, Dominican Republic
6) Martha Brae River, Montego Bay, Jamaica
7) Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico
8) Misty Fjords, Ketchikan and Hyder, Alaska
9) Berlin, Germany
10) Mellor, Stockport, Cheshire, England
11) Skagway and Haines County, Alaska 
12) Juneau, Alaska

Starring in order of appearance:

Tom Lowe, Grace Lenan, Zoé Pembroke, Sachika Hattori Strong, Shannon McAvoy, Chloe Coles, Thomas Bennett, Daniel Lightowler, Rachel, Ayumi Yokozawa, Singing Raft Captain, Jennifer Lowe, Margaret Lowe, Alfie Lowe and Lucia Wijayasiri.

Special thanks to all the above and also Maya Wijayasiri and Reid the other Martha Brae River Raft Captain for operating the camera.

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