Every culture has the song it sings when people part. In the Chinese-speaking world it is this one: eight lines by Li Shutong, the artist-monk who wrote them in 1915, set to an American parlour melody from 1851 that he met via Japan. It closes graduations, it ends films, and everyone from Taipei to Beijing can finish the first line for you.
The words are literary Chinese, and that is the point of placing it at the very end of the course: 长亭 (chángtíng) is the wayside pavilion where travellers said goodbye; 天之涯，地之角 - the edge of the sky, the corners of the earth - is how far the scattered friends have gone; 知交半零落 admits that half of them are lost already. A ladle of rough wine (一瓢浊酒) is what remains, and tonight even dreams will be cold.
This is the one Mandarin song in the course where the singing is genuinely clear: Ordway's hymn-like tune is slow, one syllable to a note, and every word is separable by ear. The tones still belong to the melody, not the language - but as a poem this text is also READ aloud, so listen to the sung version for the feeling and the word pages for the tones, and you will have it both ways.