Like many Chinese girls her age, Qi Ji enjoys singing and dancing and dreams of becoming a star, but rather than trying to make a start in vast and crowded China, she is pinning her hopes on Taiwan.
The 18-year-old is the first of many Chinese contestants expected to enter a Taiwanese reality show aimed at creating a girl band that producers hope can rival supergroups such as Japan’s AKB48 or South Korea’s Girls’ Generation.
With such televised contests now a major part of the global music industry, in Asia they are spurring a migration of talent between countries as performers and producers look to crack domestic, regional and global markets. For Qi, who grew up in northeastern China and attended a performing arts school in Beijing, this could offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a fast track to stardom in China’s market of 1.3 billion people — and perhaps beyond.
Photo: Mandy Cheng, AFP
“Many young Chinese people like me dream of becoming a star,” Qi said prior to a recording session for Asian Idol Group Competition (亞洲天團爭霸戰), which aired in the middle of last month. “I hope to start in Taiwan and eventually have a career both here and in China.”
Growing numbers of young Chinese performers are coming to Taiwan in search of a big break, reversing a trend that saw famous Taiwanese performers such as A-mei (張惠妹) and Jay Chou (周杰倫) focus on China. The show’s producer, Lee Fang-ju, the mastermind behind reality shows both in his native Taiwan and in China, is holding auditions in several major Chinese cities this summer to select more contestants to come to Taipei.
“Taiwan has a special allure as many young Chinese idolize Taiwanese singers. They think that making a mark here could turn them into pop divas such as Taiwan’s Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) and Elva Hsiao (蕭亞軒),” Lee said. “We hope to combine Taiwan and China’s strength to create a pop idol group so that our idols won’t be replaced by the Japanese or South Koreans.”
The most successful case so far is arguably Hu Xia (胡夏), a 22-year-old from Guangxi Province, China, who was signed by Sony Music Taiwan after winning the One Million Star singing contest in 2010. His latest record Flame of Love hit No. 1 on Taiwan’s G-Music chart in March.
“Winning a title in Taiwan is a big boost for a young Chinese performer since it has a leading role in Mandarin pop music,” said Hsieh Tsung-han, a music producer and lecturer at China University of Technology in Taipei.
A-List Entertainment, which is based in Taipei and offers courses for those aspiring to become singers, models and show hosts, is, meanwhile, getting plenty of interest from China.
Last year, it recruited about 100 Chinese nationals aged between 14 and 35 from as far as Mongolia to take performing lessons in Taiwan for an eight-day program at a cost of 15,000 Chinese yuan (US$2,380).
“Many Chinese youth follow Taiwan’s TV programs closely and they are attracted by Taiwan’s colorful, diverse and free entertainment scene,” A-List publicity officer Stella Teng said. “China is huge and so you are less likely to get discovered.”
While many Chinese acts look to get noticed in smaller markets first, one English-speaking Asian act has looked to use their ethnicity to do the reverse and crack the US — despite a history of such attempts falling flat.
“Blush” is made up of five women from the Philippines, India, China, Japan and South Korea who beat hundreds of other pop star wannabes during a talent search across Asia in 2010 called Project Lotus. Based in both Hong Kong and the US, Blush have opened for Justin Bieber on the Hong Kong leg of his tour last year, recorded with US hip hop star Snoop Dogg and are supported by an A-list of Los Angeles-based producers who have worked with the likes of Lady Gaga and Beyonce.
“Asian singers have not crossed over, although many attempts have been made,” Project Lotus producer and Blush manager Jon Niermann said in Los Angeles. “What we’ve tried to do is take artists from the region, but develop them in a very Western style with Western producers, Western songs and a Western way of sound, and that’s what is helping give Blush the recognition and some initial success.”
In February, the band’s single Dance On hit No. 1 on the Billboard dance club chart, above Rihanna and Kelly Clarkson. The band’s debut EP The Undivided was released last month.
“We’re in it for the long run and we are serious about our music,” said Blush’s Victoria Chan (陳皓恩), who is the band’s Chinese member. “We have been waiting for this for a long time.”
“You lead with the music and the rest of it becomes a public relations angle as to who this group is to set them apart, which is important,” Niermann said. “But it ultimately comes down to talent.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS