BEIJING — There are many things about modern China that defy easy explanation: parents posing their children next to live tigers, the sight of grown women wearing furry cat-ear headbands while shopping, the performance-art-like spectacle of strangers napping together in Ikea display beds.

But no mystery is more confounding than that of China’s most enduring case of cultural diffusion: its love affair with “Going Home,” the 1989 smash-hit instrumental by the American saxophone superstar Kenny G.

For years the tune, in all its seductive woodwind glory, has been a staple of Chinese society. Every day, “Going Home” is piped into shopping malls, schools, train stations and fitness centers as a signal to the public that it is time, indeed, to go home.

One recent Saturday afternoon, as the smooth notes of “Going Home” cooed repeatedly over the ordered chaos of Beijing’s famous Panjiayuan Antiques Market, hawkers packed up their Mao-era propaganda ashtrays, 1930s telephones and “antique” jade amulets while the last bargain hunters headed for the gates.

To ensure no stragglers miss their cue, the melody plays on a loop — for the final hour and a half.

According to a manager, Panjiayuan has used the tune since 2000. She did not know why.

“Isn’t it just played everywhere?” she asked.

At 9:30 p.m. on Monday, the Powerhouse Gym in central Beijing was a half-hour from closing. As usual, “Going Home” began looping over the loudspeakers, sending the weight lifters and treadmill runners fleeing for the locker rooms. The manager, Zhu Mingde, followed, eager to turn off the lights and lock the doors. Mr. Zhu could not pinpoint when “Going Home” had become China’s adieu anthem, nor could he identify the famous musician behind it. But despite its lack of lyrics, he understood the melody’s cultural significance. “All I know is when they play this song, it’s quitting time,” he said.

For a generation of Chinese youth, “Going Home” has featured prominently on the soundtrack of their lives.

Mao Xiaojie, a junior at the Communication University of China in Beijing, said, “They’d play it over and over again at wedding banquets.”

Her classmate Zhang Dawei had more academic associations. “This is what they put on when they’re kicking us out of the school library,” he said.

Emma Zhang first encountered “Going Home” in a cafe many years ago, and then at home, at school, in bookstores, shopping malls and health spas, and on the street. “I used to think the tune was really nice and catchy,” she said. “But now I’m sick of it.”

Decades of easy listening to this one recording, with its undertones of social engineering, have led to certain habits. “Whenever I hear ‘Going Home,’ I finish things faster,” said Cheng Gang, 35, who works in finance.

On the popular Chinese video-sharing website Youku, “Going Home” accounts for four of the 10 most-played videos in the saxophone category, with 313,786 plays over the last three years.

“Nobody knows why the Chinese even like Kenny G so much,” said Jackie Subeck, a music and entertainment consultant from Los Angeles who has been doing business in China for 12 years. She first heard “Going Home” in China in 2002, when it was blasting on her hotel television. At the time, Ms. Subeck was trying to help establish a music royalty collection process in China, so the popularity of “Going Home” was more bitter than sweet. “That song’s on nonstop play and doesn’t collect a penny,” she said.

To add insult to injury, Ms. Subeck was once delayed for hours at the old Beijing airport, where the food court was playing a loop of Kenny G music videos. “We just sat there drinking beer and watching incessant Kenny G,” she recalled. “It was terrible.”

Not that Kenny G is overwrought about the unpaid royalties. Since the 1980s, he has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. (Little-known fact: In 1997, he earned a place in Guinness World Records for playing the longest note ever recorded on a saxophone: 45 minutes and 47 seconds, in E flat.)

Bully highly compressed pc. “Do I wish I could get paid for everything? Of course,” he said in a telephone interview. “But I surrender to the fact that that’s the way things go there.” Touring China in the 1990s, he heard “Going Home” playing in Tiananmen Square, in Shanghai, on a golf course and “in a restroom in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “It made me feel great to know there was no language barrier to connecting with music.”

He has since performed in China many times, including on a five-city tour last fall. But he could provide no further insight into his music’s popularity there.

“I don’t ask questions because I like to leave some of the mystery,” he said.

Still, Kenny G is aware of the tune’s shepherding function and plans accordingly when he performs in China.

“I save it for last,” he said, “because I don’t want everyone going home early.”

Going Home or Goin' Home may refer to:

• 3Music

Film and television[edit]

• Going Home (1944 film), an unreleased entry in the Private Snafu series
• Going Home (1971 film), starring Robert Mitchum
• Going Home (1987 film), starring Nicholas Campbell
• Going Home (1993 film) (Oeroeg), a Dutch film featuring Joris Putman
• Going Home (1996 film), a Short film starring Wings Hauser
• Going Home (2000 film), starring Jason Robards and Clint Black
• Going Home, a 2014 Indian short film, directed by Vikas Bahl, starring Alia Bhatt
• Going Home, a part of the 2002 Asian horror movie collaboration Three
• Going Home (TV series), a 2000–2001 Australian drama series
• 'Going Home' (Once Upon a Time), a third season episode of Once Upon a Time
• 'Going Home', refers to state assisted euthanasia services in the 1973 film Soylent Green

Literature[edit]

• Going Home (Steel novel), a 1973 novel by Danielle Steel
• Going Home (Peyton novel), a 1982 children's novel by K. M. Peyton
• Going Home (comics), a 1998–2001 Cerebus the Aardvark graphic novel and its first collected volume by Dave Sim
• Going Home (play), a 1976 play by Alma De Groen

Music[edit]

• Going Home (band), an American pop-punk band
• Going Home, a folk music duo with Hope Sandoval

Albums[edit]

• Going Home (Elvin Jones album), 1992
• Going Home (Taj Mahal album), 1980
• Goin' Home (Archie Shepp and Horace Parlan album), 1977
• Goin' Home (Art Pepper and George Cables album), 1982
• Goin' Home (Bob Stewart album), 1988
• Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, 2007
• Going Home, a 1975 album by Ten Years After
• Goin' Home, a 2004 album by Paul Rishell and Annie Raines
• Goin' Home, a 2014 album by Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Songs[edit]

• 'Goin' Home' (composition), a spiritual-like song adapted—and with lyrics written in 1922—by William Arms Fisher (1861–1948) from Symphony No. 9 (From the New World) by Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904).

• 'Going Home', a 1997 song from the album Abraxas Pool
• 'Going Home', a 2008 song by Brian Wilson from That Lucky Old Sun
• 'Going Home', a 1995 song by Disciple from What Was I Thinking
• 'Going Home' (Kenny G composition), a 1990 song by Kenny G from Kenny G Live
• 'Going Home', a 1990 song by Leo Sayer from Cool Touch
• 'Going Home', a 2012 song by Leonard Cohen from Old Ideas
• 'Going Home', a 1983 song by Mark Knopfler from the film soundtrack Local Hero
• 'Going Home', a 2003 song by Mary Fahl from her album The Other Side of Time, used as an opening theme of the 2003 film Gods and Generals
• 'Going Home', a 1992 song by Miles Davis and Michel Legrand from the film soundtrack Dingo
• 'Going Home', a 1979 song by Runrig from The Highland Connection
• 'Going Home', a 2014 song by Sophie Zelmani
• 'Goin' Home' (The Rolling Stones song), 1966
• 'Goin' Home' (The Osmonds song), 1973
• 'Goin' Home', a 1986 song by Corey Hart from Fields of Fire
• 'Goin' Home', a 2009 song by Dan Auerbach from Keep It Hid and featured in the 2009 film Up in the Air
• 'Goin' Home', a 1993 song by Dinosaur Jr. from Where You Been
• 'Goin' Home', a 1955 song by Fats Domino featured on Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino
• 'Goin' Home', a 1991 song by Helloween from Pink Bubbles Go Ape
• 'Goin' Home', a 1977 song by Missouri from Missouri
• 'Goin' Home', a 2002 song by Neil Young from Are You Passionate?
• 'Goin' Home', a 1998 song by Toto from Toto XX

See also[edit]

• Homegoing, an African-American funeral tradition