A chemistry-themed song, whose lyrics are written by the president of Peking University, one of China's top universities, has sparked wide debate on the Internet due to its colloquial lyrics and use of many special words popular on the Internet, the Yangtze Evening Post and New Express Daily reported Wednesday.

Zhou Qifeng, the head of Peking University.[File photo]

Zhou Qifeng, the head of Peking University and also a chemist, even put newly invented and Internet-popular words like "geilivable" (a pinyin-English combination word meaning "giving power") into the lyrics, making the already plain lyrics even more accessible.

After the song, performed by a student chorus, was broadcast recently on China Central Television, it was quickly posted on a mirco blog and forwarded more than 20,000 times and got more than 6,000 comments on weibo.com, China's largest mirco blog website.

Zhou said in a lecture that he wrote the lyrics to motivate others to compose songs for the celebration of the International Year of Chemistry 2011, in which organizers are looking for the "Song of Chemistry" from the public.

Some netizens argued that colloquial lyrics combined with Internet-popular words make the song very approachable for most ordinary people. A netizen named Big tree CB4C6 even said the lyrics were cute and another one named Motai praised Zhou's special use of modern and approachable words to explain the function of science.

However, some criticized the colloquialism of the lyrics and doubted Zhou's ability in Chinese writing as Zhou is the head of Peking University, commonly believed to be the top one in the field of liberal arts.

The style of the lyrics was even used by netizens to create another themed song, about physics.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)