Mainland mandopop
Chinese mandopop star Xu Fei, 30, is not nervous about her upcoming concert at Yugong Yishan tomorrow evening, Dongcheng district. Beijing is the final destination of an already completed 12-stop city tour on the Chinese mainland. At this point in time, she seems confident in her performance, now a well-oiled machine.
"I didn't ask the number," the elfin, balladeer says bemusedly when quizzed about ticket sales for the night. "But from my experience, the box office won't be bad."
Xu - a Scorpio from Jilin Province who weighs 38.5 kilograms and is about 163 centimeters in height - came to prominence in 2006 by winning 6th place on Super Girl, an annual national singing contest organized by Hunan Satellite Television.
Much like a Chinese imitation of global franchise behemoth Pop Idol, Super Girl, for all its popularity and success, has been described as "poison for the youth" in some conservative but perhaps more concerned quarters of local society.
This hasn't fazed Xu in the slightest. Being in the eye of her own hurricane keeps her busy enough. She is, by her own admission, a full-fledged mandopop star.
"Mandopop stars are like other singers," Xu says. "We should produce good music and really excel in our jobs."
So what exactly constitutes a mandopop star?
Cui Chang, 24, DJ at China Expressway Traffic (affiliated with China National Radio), says a singer with star quality in the mandopop genre must have "the skill of singing with a distinctive voice so that he or she can be easily remembered."
Since Chinese youth these days love karaoke, Cui says they prefer simpler melodies that they can more easily perform.
"It's about popularity," says Cui when asked about what songs make his playlist. Cui doesn't deny that commercial factors and major record companies heavily influence the station's song selections, despite also saying that the quality of a song is all that matters to an audience.
Traditionally, the centers of Chinese pop music have always come from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and not specifically the Chinese mainland. This form of pop music tends to be sickly-sweet and inoffensive, dripping with the longing melodies of over-sentimentalized ballads.
Last month, Singaporean mandopop singer, composer, producer, actor, dancer, choreographer, mogul and model JJ Lin (based in Taiwan), released "The Dark Knight" - a song about fighting depression, suicide and social problems with the power of music. The accompanying video was a 30-minute, glorified mini-film in the same indulgent vein as R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet.
Cui doesn't believe in all the supposed meaning of "The Dark Knight."
"Obviously there are commercial considerations at play here," says Cui. To him, the perceived negativity and depression JJ Lin seems to suffer from "is a great selling point. People can get to see another aspect of personality from their idol."
"I'm still pursuing my dreams," says Xu, the composer who would have been a teacher if all this mando-luck hadn't happened to her. "I like pop music, but a lot of pop music sounds alike. I prefer to walk a different way. I want to keep my personality in my songs."
Qian Chengya contributed to this story.