As time goes on, many of our memories will be subconsciously bounded together with objects, either tangible or intangible. Nowadays, a TV series about Lilei and Han Meimei, two figures is about to shoot, and it once again brings up nostalgic feelings among the 30-something generation.

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 who 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, previously, 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 us. He added, to see the books as a whole, Li appears like the male protagonist while Han the female protagonist, and in the minds of 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.)

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.

"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."

And as for some 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.