As time goes on, many of our memories will be subconsciously bounded together with objects, either tangible or intangible. For example, James Bond fans associate a certain experience with each of the 007 movies. And in China for the post-1980s generation, one of the most memory-inducing things is the story of Li Lei and Han Meimei.

And now that a TV series about the two figures is about to shoot, it once again calls up nostalgic feelings among the 30-something generation.

The Li and Han story

Li Lei and Han Meimei are fictional characters in a series of English-learning textbooks for middle school students in China issued by People's Education Press in the 1990s. For about a decade these textbooks influenced millions of Chinese students.

In 2009 People's Education Press issued a new English textbook edition. But this time, Li and Han, together with their pals Lin Tao, Lucy, Lily and Jim, are no longer middle school students but appear as grown-ups, with their own families and children. This made a stir among the post-1980s generation, most of whom spent their youth with the old edition and are now in their early 30s or late 20s.

Besides sighing about "how time flies" and that even fictitious characters are growing older, a number of people have commented on what a pity it is that Li and Han did not end up together.

In fact, in a previous interview with the Global Times, Liu Daoyi, who worked on the English textbooks with Longman Press, said that when they were writing the contents, there was no intention to create a love affair between Li and Han. Yet, many post-1980s, who once used these textbooks, still believe there ought to be something different between the two.

"The two names sound so perfect to be together. Both of them are Chinese, and it's more common for two Chinese people to be together. And Li and Han seem to have more contacts with each other than with others," Xu Yuteng, a singer born in 1981 told the Global Times in an interview. He added, to see the books as a whole, Li appears like the male protagonist while Han the female protagonist, and in the minds most people there would be a romantic relationship between two such characters.

Also in the new edition, the two children of Han are called "Keke" and "Xixi," which has led many of the post-1980s crowd to interpret it as Han's "pity" for not being able to marry Li. (In Chinese, "kexi" means pity.)

The derivatives

After learning the fate of Li and Han from a magazine in 2009, Xu wrote a song that tells the "current" situation of all those beloved characters: Li Lei and Han Meimei do not end up together; Lucy returns to her home country while her twin sister Lily is in Shanghai; Jim has become a car company manager; Lin Tao is now a policeman; and Uncle Wang retired last year.

The song quickly became popular on the Internet, and some netizens even made videos for it.

In fact, the interest in Li and Han began much earlier.

Cai Kai, who was then a graphic designer, told the Global Times that she started to design notebooks bearing Li and Han's images in 2006. And though the prints for the images were not very good back then, the notebooks sold out quickly.

"So I later designed a series of products, such as T-shirts, notebooks and posters," Cai said. "Even the image of Li and Han holding hands together (which later got very popular on the Internet) was my design."

Following Cai and Xu, a stage play called Li Lei and Han Meimei was produced by Beijing-based Rainbow Theater in November of 2010. Staring young actress Jiang Xiaohan and actor Yi Yang, the play toured China for three years in about 20 cities.

There are also micro movies and now a TV series.

On the official website of The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), the 30-episode TV drama is classified as "contemporary urban," and is set to finish shooting in May, 2014.

The story starts with Han Meimei, a beautiful girl, who transfers to a new class at the beginning of a semester. In the class, Han meets new friends Lucy, Li Lei and Lin Tao.

The gang enjoys a good middle school time together. After the college entrance examination ends, Li fulfills his wish to be accepted into a law school while Lin goes abroad in obedience to his parents' arrangement. But Han does not do well on the exam due to family issues and is forced by Lin's parents to cut off contact with their son.

Years later, after more of life's ups and downs, all of them have established careers. Lin decides to invest in a movie named Li Lei and Han Meimei, to recall the happiness and sadness of youth.

A nostalgic mood

"It recalls the good old days in middle school," said Ma Boyong, a post-1980s writer in Beijing, who also wrote a simple script of the Li and Han story. "All of us experienced love's first bloom at that time but did not dare to speak it out. When we are grown up and look back, though there's nothing to regret, it's still a little sad."

"There's a psychological projection from the post-1980s [generation] to Li and Han," he added.

And because there's little background description of Li and Han in the textbooks, it's possible for anybody to project themselves onto the pair, as Xu said.

He also noted that though cartoon figures like Black Cat Detective and the Smurfs were also popular for the post-1980s generation in their childhood and can bring up memories of the past as well, Li and Han, as human figures, are closer to real life.

"You cannot imagine [these cartoon figures] having a romance or what they might be like when they grow up. But Li and Han can be just like us," Xu said.

However, neither Xu nor Ma supports the story of Li and Han being overly commercialized.

"It's good [to have some sideline products]… but people will become tired of them if there are too many," Ma commented.

"Anything, when it is commercialized, will lose its pureness. And the only thing we ask is for the business persons not to only think of the money," Xu said.

And as for the related stage play, TV drama or movie, Xu thinks it will be good enough to develop a simple, reasonable and pure story of the two.

"But looking back to what we have today, a lot of contemporary works have been over adapted," Xu said, adding that he thinks it goes too far in one micro movie: the plot portrays Han as an agent that travels back from the future to look for talented middle school students to help save the Earth.