Jay Chou’s Romance Turns Cautionary? “Waiting For You After Class” Becomes a Stalking Law Example

Superstar Jay Chou (Jay Chou) teamed up with Gary Yang seven years ago for the hit song “Waiting For You After Class.” Boasting 140 million views on YouTube, the seemingly romantic ballad has recently been used as an example in university freshmen training courses on gender equality and sexual harassment, even sparking discussion on Weibo.
Students at Soochow University shared that their school’s gender equality awareness course used “Waiting For You After Class” as an example of the anti-stalking law (Stalking and Harassment Prevention Act), even highlighting in red the lyrics that constitute the law’s violations, such as: “I rented an apartment on your street, just to run into you by chance,” “I found a job very close to your dorm,” “Lying on the sports field of your school, gazing at the stars. The lights are still on in your classroom, you haven’t left,” “One day, one year, you will realize there’s someone quietly by your side,” and “At the square next to your school, I wait here for the bell to ring, so we can leave together after class, okay?”

In fact, as early as 2021, netizens had already discussed how the lyrics to “Waiting For You After Class” may seem romantic, but in reality, most cases of sexual harassment involve “average-looking stalkers.” The perseverance described in the lyrics clearly crosses the line of the anti-stalking law. The song has started to appear in gender equality education courses on many campuses, with online comments such as: “Tear off the overly romanticized veil,” and “We must point out misleading values in all types of literary and entertainment works.”
This isn’t the first time one of Jay Chou’s works has become student teaching material. “Listen To Mother’s Words,” with its educational lyrics, was included in 2006 in the first-grade curriculum at Taipei University of Education’s experimental elementary school, making it one of the few pop songs to enter Taiwanese elementary textbooks. Little did anyone expect that the seemingly romantic “Waiting For You After Class” would also become part of student curricula, and go viral in China, sparking discussion — something Jay Chou himself probably never imagined.