It is estimated that the song Farewell was written by him when he was a music teacher from 1913 to 1915. He became a monk at the age of 38, so he should have written it before he became a monk, but he doesn't have a representative of his works in his hand. The following is the information found in Tianya.

Li Shutong (188-1942) was an author of school songs, an educator of music and fine arts, a calligrapher and a drama activist. Born in Tianjin, a family engaged in salt industry and money industry. When I was young, I was good at poetry and painting, writing and engraving, and I was versatile. From 195 to 1911, I studied western painting and music at Tokyo Fine Arts School in Japan. In 196, China's earliest music publication, Music Magazine, was independently published in Japan. In the same year, he and his classmate Ceng Xiaogu launched the earliest drama group "Spring Willow Club" in China, and played the leading role in the drama La Traviata and Black Slave's Call to Heaven. After returning to China in 1911, he was the literary editor of the Pacific newspaper. In 1913, he was hired as a music and drawing teacher in Zhejiang two-level normal school (later changed to Zhejiang First Normal School). Since 1915, he has also served as a music and drawing teacher in Nanjing Normal School. In August, 1918, he became a monk in Dinghui Temple, Hupao, Hangzhou, with the name of Hongyi. He died in Wenling Nursing Home in Quanzhou, Fujian in 1943.

Li Shutong is not only the most outstanding author of school songs in China, but also pays attention to the traditional national cultural heritage as the theme of school songs earlier. In 195, he printed and published the Collection of Songs of Chinese Studies for school teaching, that is, 13 pieces were selected from the Book of Songs, Songs of the South and ancient poems, accompanied by western and Japanese tunes, together with the translated scores of two Kunqu operas. Among them, "Song of the Motherland" was still a few school music songs with China folk tunes as lyrics. Soon, he traveled to Japan and saw that "nine times out of ten, my ancient poems are copied by words" in Japanese singing collections. On the one hand, some people in our country praised Japanese singing, but on the other hand, they denigrated China's ancient classics, so he wrote "Alas! Word stamp! ",criticized this blind worship of foreign countries and ignorance. In Music Magazine, the social education function of music "pondering morality, promoting social soundness, cultivating temperament and feeling the quintessence of spirit" is strongly advocated. At the same time, he published "My Country", "Sui Di Liu" and other music songs that care about the country and the people.

Li Shutong's music songs inherit the fine tradition of China's classical poetry. Most of his works are lyrical works based on scenery, with beautiful words, cadence and cadence, profound artistic conception and rich charm. In addition, he has a relatively comprehensive cultural accomplishment of Chinese and Western music, and most of them are popular songs from Europe and America. The tunes are beautiful and moving, fresh and smooth, and the combination of lyrics and songs is appropriate and smooth, bringing out the best in each other and reaching a high artistic level. Therefore, his music works are widely loved by young students and intellectuals, such as Farewell, Memories of Childhood, Dream, West Lake (lead singer and trilogy) and so on, especially Farewell, which has been successfully selected as an episode or theme song by the films Early Spring in February and Old Events in the South of the City, and has become a young student or intellectual in China in a historical period. Spring outing, composed by his own words, is the earliest chorus song in China.

Li Shutong's more than 7 pieces of music and songs have been compiled into Songs of Chinese Studies (195), Fifty Famous Chinese Songs (edited by Feng Zikai and Qiu Menghan, published by Kaiming Bookstore in 1921), Songs of Li Shutong (edited by Feng Zikai, published by People's Music Publishing House in 1958) and Songs of Master Li Shutong Hongyi.