DgcityFans of Chinese guofeng music said goodbye this week to one of the scene’s defining voices. Wu En, a singer whose warm, clear tone carried some of the best-loved songs in animation and audio drama, died on October 31 at 41 after nearly seven years with an aggressive form of stomach cancer.
His partner shared the news in a short message: Wu En had passed away in the early hours. Within hours, comment sections across Weibo and Bilibili filled with listeners describing his songs as the soundtrack of their youth.
Wu En, also known as 5n, was a core member of the Luan Feng Ming music team and part of the wave that turned guofeng — a modern genre steeped in traditional Chinese aesthetics — from an online niche into a generation’s shared taste. His songs included “Wangxian,” tied to the global phenomenon “Mo Dao Zu Shi,” along with tracks such as “Renjian Zongwo” and “Zhuojiu Tingyu.” He also wrote fiction, moving easily between music and the literary worlds that inspired it.
His diagnosis came in December 2019, when doctors identified signet-ring cell carcinoma of the stomach, a malignancy known for being difficult to detect early and punishing to treat. He faced repeated surgeries and chemotherapy, and when the cancer returned and spread, he kept documenting the process online with an openness rare even in the close-knit guofeng community. At points he tried remaking himself as a blogger posting about flowers and pets, refusing to let the disease define the whole account.
In late August, he wrote that the illness had reached its final stage. His last long message, posted in early September, was addressed less to death than to the people who loved his music. He was not afraid, he said, but could not bear to see his fans saddened; the illness had taken away his ability to sing, and he could no longer repay them. He held out a quiet hope that, in some parallel world, he could keep singing.
Thousands responded as if to a friend. They wrote that they would remember the voice, urged their own families to take care, and imagined him singing without pain. For a genre built on longing and continuity, the farewell had a fitting shape: a singer who reached into the past for his sound was sent onward with his own songs.
