The Stars of East Asia Rising

Publication Date：10/01/2005
Byline：OSCAR CHUNG

Popular at home and across East Asia, Taiwanese entertainers are aiming high.

The lights went out completely. Fluorescent sticks began to wave rhythmically, and the audience at the Hong Kong Coliseum was an ocean of expectation. Jay Chou burst onto the stage in a black suit with a white lock in his signature fringe. The excited screaming welled until the Taiwanese star began to sing "In the Name of the Father."

This concert in November 2004 attracted Hong Kong fans as well as Jessie Wang, a Taiwanese college student and a member of Chou's fan club. "His songs invoke special feelings," says the 22-year-old. "They conjure up vivid images in my head." Together with her three friends from Taiwan, Wang spent four nights in Hong Kong to see four Chou concerts. "His songs are mostly the same from night to night--some are good for certain days and some for others, because your mood changes on different days."

Her passion for Chou's music, however, has remained constant since the singer-songwriter started getting a name in Taiwanese pop-music circles five years ago. Today, the 26-year-old Chou is the most popular singer in the Chinese-speaking world and is poised to cast his spell on the rest of the world.

"He's an ace at mixing different elements in his music," says J.R. Yang, managing director of Alfa Music International Co., Chou's agent and record company. The mixture is so unique and successful that the first time Yang, formerly a singer himself, heard Chou's music, he decided to promote him.

For Yang, Chou is a genius who does equally well as a singer, composer, lyricist and player of various instruments. Before he performed on stage, Chou wrote songs for other pop singers. "He's really good at classical piano, which he's learned since child hood. This helps explain how he creates such good music," Yang says.

At first, most listeners thought he was raised or educated abroad because of the strong rhythm-and-blues (R&B) feel to his work. Critics initially compared him to several other male pop singers who had such backgrounds and singing styles, but this soon died away as they noticed his unusual combination of R&B, rap, rock, Chinese instruments and lyrics covering a wide range of subjects from war to love. The emerging artist was impressive, and the title of his first album, Jay, suggested his comfort projecting a strong personal style.

His one-of-a-kind style has won Chou much attention. "The rap in his music is not American-style--it's Chinese," says Ko Yu-fen, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism of National Chengchi University, who did not think of buying his album until she listened to "Wife," a song that features the flavor of classic Chinese poetry on Jay. This, along with what she thinks is the funny way he sings, interested the scholar a lot. "He sings indistinctly. Sometimes you don't know what he's singing about if you stumble on his songs."

This has had no impact on Chou's popularity at all. "Chou's young and talented. He's the only Taiwanese star that is likely to be accepted the world over," says Lan Tsu-wei, the host of a radio program. Actually, the three-time winner of the best-album prize at the annual Golden Melody Awards, is already one of the few Taiwanese pop singers who enjoy name recognition beyond the Chinese-speaking world. He has held concerts in Thailand, and his songs have been released in Europe, a rare achievement for an Asian artist. This year Chou made his first movie, Initial D. Based on a Japanese comic strip and animated TV series, it targets Chinese-speaking markets as well as Japan, seeking to further internationalize his fame.

She's Got the Look

While Chou's success owes much to his unique talent for mixing musical styles, Jolin Tsai, his female counterpart in the Chinese-speaking world, reigns as the queen of music fashion. "You cannot overemphasize the importance of being able to keep coming up with something new and fresh for consumers in this industry," says Howard Chiang, general manager of ERA Integrated Marketing Co., Tsai's agency. "It was easier to satisfy audiences before but now they're more critical, so nothing worries me more than a lazy artist. If artists are unwilling to change, they'll soon be replaced."

Tsai used to project the image of a sweet, innocent girl when she first arrived on the scene in late 1999. In 2003, after vanishing from public view for a year, the "boy killer" re-emerged. Sexier, slimmer and with a tangle of dyed red hair, Tsai released an album that year suitably entitled Watch Me Change in 72 Ways --the eponymous single became an extremely popular dance hit.

"She hasn't eaten greasy food since then. I've never seen an artist so strict about his or her diet," Chiang says of Tsai's determination to succeed. Originally not much of a mover, Tsai learned how to dance and is now one of the few pop singers that can impress an audience with her live performances.

"The quality of her concerts has reached Japanese standards--professional in every detail. She is moving to a higher level," Ko says. One sign of this is Tsai's cooperation with Destiny's Child, a top-notch female trio from the United States, in making a McDonald's TV commercial last May. Released across Asia in August, the advertisement greatly enhances her visibility throughout the region.

It's All in the Mix

While Chou and Tsai are doubtless two of the brightest stars in the pop world, they are not alone. Chang Hui-mei, or Ah Mei, was on the cover of a 2002 issue of Time magazine's Asian edition, which included her on its list of Asian heroes. Chou was there one year later and dubbed the new king of Asian pop. Even foreign-born artists seeking pop-music careers, such as US-born heartthrob Wang Lee-hom and Singaporean sylph Sun Yanzi, have found opportunities in Taiwan.

A distinctive feature of the Asian entertainment scene is hopping between genres. Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose father is Japanese and mother Taiwanese, grew into a dashing poster boy in Taiwan. Music managers picked him up and launched a music career for him. But it was Kaneshiro's appearances on screen that made him one of Taiwan's most recognizable stars. Widely known first in the Chinese-speaking world, especially after landing a role in the 1994 movie Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar-wai, he later acted in Japanese movies and TV series. Broader international fame arrived with his role alongside Hong Kong's Andy Lau and mainland superstar Zhang Ziyi in House of Flying Daggers in 2004.

For the pop group F4, dizzyingly popular among teen fans in Taiwan, the genre-hopping worked in reverse. They first sparked interest through their roles in the TV series Meteor Garden. Adapted from a Japanese comic strip, the modern romance became popular in Taiwan in 2001. The boy band released its first album, Meteor Rain, later that year. It soon attracted audiences in China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.

Ko Yu-fen thinks that F4 is similar to popular boy groups in Japan, such as SMAP, in several ways. Japanese entertainment culture has had a strong aesthetic influence on young Taiwanese men. Unlike their Korean counterparts, F4 and SMAP look more feminine, wearing shoulder-length dyed hair and flighty clothes. Most idol-driven dramas in Japanese television are made by singers, and F4 has followed the same path, says Ko. SMAP's television success provided a launch pad for its members' stardom, such as Takuya Kimura, who is now popular across Asia. Each of F4's members has now released his own album.

How Much Longer Will You Be Mine?

Inspired by the overseas success of Meteor Garden , Taiwanese production houses are making more idol dramas. However, the pop music industry, which provides the most fertile soil for the birth of stars, is on the decline. "As South Korean culture is sweeping across Asia with its TV dramas, Taiwan relies on pop music to export its culture, but its future doesn't look good at all," says Howard Chiang.

The illegal downloading of songs from Web sites is a persistent threat to the music industry in Taiwan, where Internet penetration is one of the highest in the world. The prevalence of CD burners that allow people to copy music also discourages the public from buying original, legal CDs and compounds the piracy problem. At the end of 1996, the first album by Chang Hui-mei was released, selling more than 1 million copies. These days, however, Jay Chou's albums sell about 330,000 on average according to his agent J.R.Yang.

As the industry shrinks and profits dwindle, it cannot support talent as well as it used to. "In the past, songwriters worked full-time, but now many of them have to do something else to make up for the loss," says Chiang. "If the situation can't be reversed, you'll find fewer and fewer good songs and, consequently, good artists."

Today, the development of Taiwan's artists owes much to the China market. Although consumers pay less respect to intellectual property rights there, the market is big enough to compensate for losses resulting from piracy. According to Chiang, financial compensation for a performance in China is about eight times that of Taiwan. "Without the China market, my company would be on its way to bankruptcy," Yang says. Peripheral revenues can be even greater: advertising is now the major source of artists' incomes, not CD sales. Popularity in China also ensures further opportunity in the marketing direction.

However, the Taiwan market is still important; few stars would be popular in China without first being so in Taiwan. "Taiwanese artists are big in China because they're from Taiwan. Popularity in Taiwan is a guarantee of good quality," Chiang says.

On the other hand, conquering the China market is a precondition for conquering the world. Believing Chou is worth every penny of Alfa Music's investment, Yang has great confidence in his star's ability to become a world-class superstar. He still lacks global name recognition, although in comparison with other top artists in the world, Chou is equally outstanding in terms of his musical talent.

The situation may change as the already huge China market continues to develop. "When the market expands to a certain degree, the world will automatically notice him," says Lan Tsu-wei. And when a global market becomes the target, more money will be invested in Chou to pave his way to superstardom. Standing firm at home and developing the China market is, and will be, the strategy for Chou and other Taiwanese artists to let the world hear their voices.