How Tăng Duy Tân's Ngây Thơ Became a 10 Billion View Success in China

A Vietnamese song finds a vast audience in China

More than 10 billion Douyin views, a Chinese duet with Huang Ling and a place on QQ Music: those are the achievements Big Arts Entertainment lists for the Chinese version of Ngây Thơ, the Vietnamese song performed by Tăng Duy Tân. Released in September 2020, the track went on to reach Chinese audiences through short videos, music platforms and television performances.

The song was written by Phong Max, an important credit in a story often centred on Tăng Duy Tân's growing international profile. Its Chinese adaptation, Thán, also known by the Chinese character 叹, paired the Vietnamese singer with Huang Ling and gave listeners a version they could follow in their own language.

Big Arts Entertainment's official artist profile records the Douyin milestone and the song's appearance on QQ Music. The management company's account provides the clearest institutional statement of the track's commercial reach, although it gives no measurement date or explanation of how the Douyin total was compiled.

The 10 billion figure concerns views on a platform where music accompanies videos. A song can circulate through many clips, with the same person encountering it repeatedly. Listening to a complete recording, watching a video using its chorus and searching for its name are different ways of engaging with music, each captured by a different platform measure.

Ngây Thơ's journey is therefore best understood through several concrete developments together: a Chinese recording, repeated use by video creators, recognition on music services and renewed exposure years after release. Other songs by Tăng Duy Tân followed similar routes, turning an individual success into a broader presence in China.

From a 2020 release to a 2024 television performance

Ngây Thơ arrived in several versions. The original official video appeared on Phong Max's YouTube channel on September 4, 2020, followed by a lyric video on Tăng Duy Tân's channel on September 8. The Chinese duet later became the version most closely associated with the enormous Douyin audience.

By 2022, the song was attracting substantial attention in China. A January 3, 2023 account recorded Thán's appearance alongside Huang Ling on QQ Music's chart marking the end of the year. That placed the song within a major Chinese music service as well as the fast circulation of short videos.

• September 2020: Ngây Thơ's original official video and lyric video were released on YouTube.
• August 2021: Tăng Duy Tân released Dạ Vũ, another song that spread rapidly on Douyin.
• 2022: Ngây Thơ gained wider attention in China, with its Chinese adaptation attracting billions of video views.
• January 3, 2023: Thán's appearance on QQ Music's chart for the previous year was documented.
• April 2024: Actress Liu Yan performed the Chinese version in the opening episode of Ride the Wind 2024.

Liu Yan's performance gave the composition another public stage roughly three and a half years after its original release. Its route from Vietnamese recording to Chinese adaptation and then television performance shows how an older song can find new audiences through different performers and formats.

What the platform figures tell readers

Ngây Thơ accumulated several kinds of digital attention. Figures published in 2022 put its TikTok views at 82.6 million and its YouTube views across three versions at nearly 60 million. Those figures describe a historical snapshot, rather than current totals.

Individual uploads had their own audiences. By early January 2023, the lyric video on Tăng Duy Tân's channel had nearly 6.3 million views, while the official video on Phong Max's channel had more than 8.5 million. Those upload figures cover a narrower set of videos than the earlier total across versions.

Ngây Thơ has also been credited with reaching No. 1 on the global Shazam chart, while a No. 2 peak has been cited for its Chinese version. Precise chart dates and the relationship between those rankings were not specified. Shazam identifies music from a short sample, so its chart reflects people trying to discover a song's name.

QQ Music adds another part of the picture. Listeners there can seek out a recording after encountering a fragment elsewhere. Together, the platforms trace a practical route: hear a melody in a clip, identify it, then find a full version to play.

Why the music works in short videos

Music producer Hoaprox has pointed to two qualities in Tăng Duy Tân's songs: lively electronic arrangements that fit short videos and emotional lyrics that connect with younger listeners. The combination gives creators something rhythmic to move to and something expressive to build a scene around.

Tăng Duy Tân has described a deliberate focus on melodies that are easy to hear, remember and sing again. A short, recognisable musical phrase can work even when a video contains only a small part of the recording. Repetition helps viewers recognise the sound the next time it appears.

Dạ Vũ became associated with videos showing changes in appearance, using its distinctive whistle and musical climax to accompany the reveal. Bên Trên Tầng Lầu spread through dancing and clips expressing personal feelings. Remixes of Cắt Đôi Nỗi Sầu gave creators further versions suited to entertainment videos.

The songs also draw on pentatonic melodies, built around a scale of five notes, alongside electronic production. Such patterns are familiar in many East Asian musical traditions. A listener can respond to the shape of the tune before understanding the words.

Music critic Nguyễn Quang Long offered another explanation for Ngây Thơ's reach: its musical thinking was close to contemporary Western youth music. He pointed to the strong relationship between drums, bass and arrangement. Its sections move directly into one another, maintaining momentum rather than repeatedly interrupting the flow.

Dạ Vũ shows how quickly another song travelled

Big Arts Entertainment says Dạ Vũ reached nearly 2 billion Douyin views within a month of its August 2021 release. That gives the broader story a second substantial example, with a much shorter measurement period than the cumulative figure attached to Thán.

The 2022 figures for Dạ Vũ also included 75.8 million TikTok views and 25 million YouTube views. Its Chinese circulation developed alongside audiences on services used outside mainland China, giving the song several routes to listeners.

Dạ Vũ combines a pentatonic melody with deep house, a style of electronic dance music built around a steady pulse, and elements associated with dramatic film or game music. Its lyrics describe a woman's distress after a breakup. That contrast between sadness and a danceable arrangement also appears elsewhere in Tăng Duy Tân's catalogue.

Chinese entertainer Zhou Jieqiong joined the Dạ Vũ dance trend. Other performers, including Feng Timo and Zhang Hanyun, participated in related covers and trends around his music. Such participation brought the recordings into the feeds of people who might not otherwise have searched for a Vietnamese artist.

Bên Trên Tầng Lầu connects personal emotion with mass appeal

Bên Trên Tầng Lầu reached more than 147 million TikTok views and more than 17 million YouTube views within a month of release, according to figures published in 2022. In Vietnam, it also topped Billboard Vietnam's Top Vietnamese Songs and Hot 100 charts, achievements recorded by Big Arts Entertainment.

The TikTok figure was more than eight times the YouTube figure, using the published totals of 147 million and 17 million. The comparison shows how differently a song's presence can develop across platforms: one encourages the reuse of brief musical passages, while another hosts complete recordings and videos.

Tăng Duy Tân said he wrote the song in 2021 during COVID-19 restrictions, when isolation and depression shaped his experience. He described making the composition as a way to work through that period and to reach people feeling something similar.

The track blends pop with deep house and asks its subject to face difficult circumstances rather than surrender to them. Its emotional message helps explain why it could accompany both dancing and more reflective videos. Creators could take different parts of the same recording and give them different meanings through images.

Cắt Đôi Nỗi Sầu broadens the audience

Cắt Đôi Nỗi Sầu supplied another set of measurable results in 2023. Within three days of release, it led YouTube Vietnam's trending list and rankings on TikTok and Zing MP3. By October 14, it had accumulated 10 million YouTube views after 11 days.

At that point, it stood at No. 76 among globally trending YouTube videos, reached the top 10 in Australia and placed No. 26 in Taiwan. Those locations extend the story beyond China, showing an audience developing across several markets.

Chinese language adaptations and covers gave the composition further opportunities to circulate. Actors Li Chen, Zheng Kai and Sha Yi also performed it at a Zhejiang Television New Year music event, adding a broadcast appearance to its online reach.

Cường Chu, chief executive and representative of Big Arts Entertainment, said listeners were arriving from the United States, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and other places. He said the gap between the Vietnamese audience and audiences elsewhere was narrowing, although he supplied no percentages.

Cường Chu also said Tăng Duy Tân had received invitations to collaborate from Tencent Music Entertainment Group and ByteDance. Those approaches show interest from major businesses operating in music and digital entertainment; details of any resulting agreements were not disclosed.

The career behind the recordings

Nguyễn Tăng Duy Tân was born in 1995 in Quảng Trị, central Vietnam. He studied Oriental Studies at the University of Sciences, Hue University, and worked as a tour guide before pursuing music professionally. During university, he took part in arts clubs and communities in Huế.

Big Arts Entertainment dates the start of his professional career to early 2018, when he released Hết Duyên with singer NIT. Tình Đầu followed in early 2020 and became an important breakthrough. Tăng Duy Tân has said the company's financial difficulties at the time made the song's reception especially consequential.

His career combines performing and songwriting, although Ngây Thơ belongs to Phong Max as its composer. Big Arts Entertainment also lists Tăng Duy Tân's writing collaborations on Cô Đơn Trên Sofa for Hồ Ngọc Hà and Mùa Hè Tuyệt Vời for Đức Phúc.

That range matters to his position in the industry. A successful recording can introduce his voice, while a song performed by someone else can carry his writing to another audience. The Chinese duet and subsequent covers add still more performers to that chain.

Commercial success comes through several channels

Tăng Duy Tân's music can generate income through licensed use, streaming and other exploitation of recordings and compositions. The people and companies receiving that income depend on who owns each set of rights and what their contracts say.

Bên Trên Tầng Lầu has been estimated to have earned billions of Vietnamese đồng in royalties. No precise sum or accounting statement accompanied that estimate. The financial value of the wider Chinese success therefore remains less transparent than the published view totals.

The clearest achievement is the repeated movement of songs between formats and audiences. Ngây Thơ reached listeners through a Chinese duet, Dạ Vũ through highly reusable video passages, and Cắt Đôi Nỗi Sầu through charts, adaptations and performances. Liu Yan's 2024 appearance showed that a song first released in 2020 could return to public attention years later.

For Vietnamese music, this is a concrete example of international circulation built from several steps rather than a single release abroad. A recognisable melody catches attention, local performers give it new expression, and listeners find their way to recordings they can play again.

Key Points

• Big Arts Entertainment says the Chinese version of Ngây Thơ, performed with Huang Ling, exceeded 10 billion Douyin views.
• Phong Max wrote the original song, released in September 2020 and performed by Tăng Duy Tân.
• The Chinese adaptation, Thán, appeared on QQ Music and reached television audiences through Liu Yan's April 2024 performance.
• Dạ Vũ reached nearly 2 billion Douyin views within a month of its August 2021 release, according to the artist's management.
• Bên Trên Tầng Lầu and Cắt Đôi Nỗi Sầu extended Tăng Duy Tân's reach through video trends, charts and international audiences.
• Published royalty estimates lack a precise accounting, while the digital figures measure several different kinds of audience activity.