The band members are lead vocalist-guitarist Along, trumpeter-vocalist Amai, drummer Chuimi, and bassist Wanli. [Photo by Zhou Chen/For China Daily]

Ouyang had worked as a designer at a film and television company in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, before returning to his hometown in 2016 to teach art at a local primary school.

As a young father, he wrote a song, titled Daddy Wishes I Was a Son, which was inspired by a conversation he had with a friend. Ouyang recalls that his friend had a newborn daughter but seemed unhappy when he shared the news. "Why do some people still hold the outdated mindset of favoring a boy over a girl? I was surprised to know how deeply rooted gender bias is in people's thinking, even among the younger generation," Ouyang adds.

Rainy Day completes the album as its last song, in which children left behind by migrant workers are the focus, and it laments how they miss their parents on rainy days.

In a previous interview Ouyang and Mai conducted with veteran TV news anchor Bai Yansong, they took him to the schools where they teach.

"There are some students whose parents work in bigger cities. They cannot see their parents. As teachers, we want to help them," Mai said in the interview. He is a music teacher and is keen on introducing his students to various kinds of music.

The band members agree that they have a long way to go before they achieve the status of the groups they look up to. They refer to the debut album as a closure of their early experience as a new band and look set for the next phase of their journey, already planning the band's next musical step. "We won't continue Amin's stories again on the next album, but will come up with new ideas," says Ouyang.