“若说病痛是人生中最大的挫折，那我已经经历过最大的挫折了，还有什么我是无法去面对的呢?” ——陈淑桦, 1995

“If ill health is the biggest obstacle in life, now that I have experienced it, what else can I not face?” -- Sarah Chen, 1995

Sarah’s rich voice and musical sense remain unmatched, even after decades. —@matthewet9092 (June 10, 2025)

Before leaving the music industry for good, Sarah Chen named her final albums Forever, twice. The first was a misnomer, as the Chinese album was known as Sarah Blossom. The second, Forever, Sarah, came closer to the poetic Chinese title Life after Life. Yet in an ever-evolving music industry where each passing year brings a new trend, forever is an illusion. 

So what is "forever?" What did Sarah Chen intend to express? As great a musician as Chen is, she is a mere mortal; and as beautiful as her music, her fans are mortals who live through her lifetime. Her work fades as we mortals grace the earth.

Time moves forward relentlessly, healing and destroying along the way, erasing the lives and treasures we held dear, obliterating creations and ideas we once toiled over. 

There is no forever. Thirty years already feels like an eternity. Forever is illusory,  perhaps even delusional. 

Yet forever is, in every sense of the word, real. When I tell my daughter, "Mama will love you forever," I know it's true, she knows it's true. And you, a bystander, know it's true, that my love for her goes on beyond my life, beyond her life, transcending every barrier imaginable. 

It is this sense of forever that Sarah Chen was expressing. Love is forever. Her love for music is forever, its intensity deeply felt in her songs, indestructible against the blunt force of time.

This site was enriched by the generosity of a long-time Sarah Chen fan from Malaysia, C.Y., who shared her personal collection of clippings and magazine articles spanning much of Chen's career (1983-1996).