Hong Kong Entertainment: The King of Kung Fu

Taipei, Fuxing Middle School.

Fifteen-year-old Jia Jingwen walked out of the school with a schoolbag on her back and earphones in her ears, listening to music.

She is small in stature, but has big, bright eyes.

During this era, the aesthetic tastes of the entire East Asian region were relatively consistent.

There is no requirement for head-to-body ratio, nor does it care about the refinement of facial features.

I don’t like oval faces either. People think round faces are beautiful.

As for the hair, it must be thick and dense, like clouds and waterfalls.

The requirements for eyebrows and eyes are very high, and a pair of big watery eyes can instantly capture the audience.

That’s why Zhao Yanzi became very popular in Asia, popular among people of all ages.

And Jia Jingwen, who has a pair of big eyes, also has her own era.

This kind of aesthetic has a unified name, called "Showa look".

In fact, this term is biased and should be called "East Asian color".

At that time, beauties in China and South Korea also met this standard.

Not to mention China, look at South Korea’s Kim Hee Sun, she is also of this type.

But there is no way around it. Japan was the first to develop and the first to promote and develop this aesthetic through its own entertainment industry.

Naturally, you also have the "naming rights".

Jia Jingwen walked out of the school gate, got on the bus, and found a seat to sit down.

When the car was about to start, a girl with short hair rushed up. She took a quick look inside the car, ran to sit next to Jia Jingwen, and gasped.

Jia Jingwen glanced at her, took off her headphones and said, "Chen Yue'er, why are you running so fast?"

"I almost missed it."

"If you can't catch it, just wait for the next one!"

"I ran so fast just to chase you."

"Why are you chasing me?"

"Can I stay at your house tonight?"

"Sure, where are your parents?"

"You went on a trip without taking me with you!"

Jia Jingwen chuckled, handed a headset to Chen Yueer, and asked, "Do you want to listen?"

"Whose song is this?"

"It's Director Yang's."

"All his songs are old songs. I'm tired of them."

"You've got new songs out recently, 'Devil' and 'The One I Love', they're both really good!"

"It's like squeezing toothpaste. I hope he can release a new album soon!" Chen Yue'er complained, but still took the earphones and put them in her ears.

Soon, the two returned to Jia Jingwen's home.

"Mom, I'm back!"

"Hello, aunt!"

Jia Jingwen's mother Lin Li smiled and said, "The moon is here, go wash your hands and get ready for dinner."

A few minutes later, Jia Jingwen's younger brother Jia Pengli also came back. He was nine years old and still in elementary school.

After dinner, the family watched TV in the living room.

One of the main reasons why Chen Yue'er came to Jia Jingwen's house was to watch Channel 4 at her house.

Taiwan’s Channel 4 is currently still illegal, and each TV station only broadcasts within a small area.

It is called a TV station, but in fact it is just a private workshop, doing business with neighbors.

Otherwise, there wouldn't be such a strange phenomenon that a small country like Taiwan has hundreds of TV stations.

Jia Pengli quickly turned the TV to Channel 4 and then sat obediently next to his sister.

"Hey, what station is this?"

The station logo is a red star with a gold background, with the word "Starry Sky" written next to it.

Normally during this time period, the channel they watch will broadcast ATV's TV series.

Although it is in Cantonese, they still enjoy watching it because it is much better than the crappy dramas on the old third channel.

On TV, there was a hillside with blooming flowers. Five young men and women were sitting with their backs to the screen. The girl in the middle was pointing to the sky.

Meteor showers fell from the sky, and then the MV of "Meteor Shower" came on.

In a ball of starlight, four handsome men appeared like a dream.

The handsome boy Nan in the middle has long flowing hair. He stretches out a finger and draws a string of little stars in the air.

Then the ordinary Bai Gu appeared on the stage. He showed a mysterious smile and gently spread out his hands, with stars shining in his hands.

Then, with a cynical look on his face, Julian Cheung put one hand in his pocket and drew a streak of starlight.

Finally, the relatively young-looking Sun Yaowei made a heart shape with his hands, and the starlight flowed along his fingers.

The four handsome men made a brilliant appearance, and both Jia Jingwen and Chen Xiaoyue were stunned.

Then, a warm song sounded...

The gentle starry sky should move you. I am behind you, arranging a sky for you.

I won’t allow you to be sad, I will help you to deal with your loneliness, and you can leave all the weight of your dreams to me.

Holding your hand, follow me. No matter how strong the wind is, with me, you will never lose your way again.

I will accompany you to watch the meteor shower falling on the earth, and let your tears fall on my shoulders.

I want you to believe in my love, to be brave for you, and then you will see where happiness lies.

……

Among these four people, Cheng Yi-kin and Sun Yaowei are both good at singing and can be called professional singers.

Julian Cheung also debuted as a singer and has had hit songs such as "Modern Love Story".

Bai Gu's singing is relatively mediocre, but he has also been a good actor and sang, and has released several albums. His song "Heaven's Destiny" was considered a popular song at the time.

His level is at least not worse than the four in the original version.

Moreover, since they were chosen to form F4, they naturally practiced Mandarin well.

With its appearance and singing skills surpassing the original, this MV quickly captured the hearts of the audience in front of the TV as soon as it was released.

"So handsome, who are they?" Chen Xiaoyue's eyes were full of stars.

"F4, isn't it written?"

Jia Jingwen is fine. Her father opened a restaurant called "Tianjin Wei". Due to its good reputation, many celebrities have visited it.

She has seen many celebrities since she was a child, including Yang Ye, Chen Long, Lin Qingxia and so on.

So even though she thought the four boys on TV were very handsome, celebrities were not that mysterious in her eyes, and she would not be as obsessed with them as Chen Xiaoyue.

"Which one do you think is the most handsome?"

"First one!"

"I think the second one is more handsome!"

"They are all very handsome, and the song is nice too. It was written by Director Yang!"

"Ah, really?"

"It was written in the subtitles just now. He wrote both the lyrics and the music. He must be a new artist from his company!"

When a song is finished, commercials will begin.

Although Star TV had just been established, it had attracted a lot of advertisements thanks to Yang Ye's reputation. The first one was Lindt chocolate.

Yang Ye is the spokesperson for Lindt, and this time she took the opportunity to launch a new version of the advertisement.

Lindt is really lucky to have a big international director like Yang Ye personally shoot the commercial.

There are countless classic chocolate advertisements in the future, and Yang Ye can just pick them up casually, which is no big deal.

Next is the advertisement for the “Pocket Elf” game console endorsed by Wang Zuxian.

After a two-minute advertisement, "Meteor Garden" officially began showing.

At the beginning of the TV series, Chu Yuxuan, played by Yi Nengjing, appeared on the screen riding a small motorcycle.

Chen Xiaoyue said in surprise: "It's Yi Nengjing!"

Girls' Generation is very famous in Taiwan, especially the three Taiwanese members: Wang Zuxian, Xiao Qiang, and Yi Nengjing.

They are now so popular in Taiwan that they are household names.

However, compared to Wang Zuxian's brilliant performance in the film industry, Xiao Long also released good movies such as "If You Were Me".

Apart from releasing an album with the group and the girl group movie "Happy Ghost", Yi Nengjing has not had any other well-known works.

He is the weakest among the three.

Despite this, her appearance still attracted many Taiwanese audiences to stop and watch.

Next, two funny girls showed off their wealth, making the audience laugh.

Then, a classmate named Ashu offended F4 and was forced to drop out of school.

The teacher came over to ask what happened, and when he learned the reason, he became furious: "Such bad apples will never be allowed in the school!"

Then he walked up to Ah Shu indignantly and said to him, "Ah Shu, don't be a black sheep in the future!"

Jia Jingwen and Chen Xiaoyue were laughing their heads off, and at this moment, the F4, driving a luxury car, made a brilliant appearance...

"Boys Over Flowers" is the best-selling girls' comic in Japan. The fact that this story has been popular in Asia for thirty years must have something interesting to it.

Although the plot seems very childish to many adults, after one episode was aired, Jia Jingwen and Chen Xiaoyue, two adolescent girls, were fascinated by it.

Chen Xiaoyue said with a lingering feeling: "No more, I wonder if there will be a second episode!"

There was no second episode. After the commercials, a variety show was aired.

"Hello everyone, welcome to Star TV, I am Cai Kangyong, the host of "Entertainment Star News"."

Jia Jingwen was surprised and said: "Star TV actually speaks Mandarin!"

Only now did they know that this TV station was called Star TV, although they didn’t know what the word “Star TV” meant.

Since Star TV is a Mandarin channel, it recruited a group of new hosts from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, and Kevin Tsai is one of them.

Kevin Tsai’s father was friends with King Hu and also with the Duan brothers of the Rolling Stones.

Kevin Tsai was able to attend UCLA for graduate studies thanks to King Hu’s letter of recommendation.

Universities in Europe and the United States have a letter of recommendation system. Getting a letter of recommendation from a big shot can raise your chances of admission.

For example, Yang Ye is a cultural celebrity and a real knight, so his recommendation letter is very valuable.

With the relationship between King Hu and the Duan brothers, Cai Kangyong, who was about to graduate from graduate school, was naturally recommended to Yang Ye.

Although Kevin Tsai loves movies and is a professional actor, Yang Ye knows that his talent actually lies in hosting.

He was good at speaking and understood the art of language, so Yang Ye let him start as a host.

"We are honored to have the creators of Meteor Garden as our guests today. Next, let's welcome Miss Yi Nengjing and F4 with warm applause!"

Yi Nengjing brought four handsome guys to the studio and greeted everyone enthusiastically.

"Hello, everyone who watched Entertainment Star News. I'm Yi Nengjing. I'm glad to meet you!"

Next was F4’s self-introduction, and the two girls only now knew their names.

"So his name is Zheng Yijian!"

"So his name is Gu Tianle!"

Cai Kangyong first interviewed Yi Nengjing: "What is Xiao Yi busy with recently?"

"Recently I've been busy with the promotions for Meteor Garden and preparing for my new album."

"Is your band going to release a new album?"

"It's not our band, it's my first solo album, called "The Love You Want". I hope everyone will support it when it's released!"

Yi Nengjing first advertised herself, and knowing that fans actually hope that the girl group will release an album, she made another promise, saying, "But our Girls' Generation's new album is also in preparation, and it will probably be released next year!"

Girls' Generation are all busy with their own things now and rarely get together.

Yang Ye planned to announce their disbandment after helping them release their last album.

After the interview, Kevin Tsai dug out a lot of interesting stories about Girls' Generation from Yi Nengjing, which made the audience in front of the TV watch with great interest.

However, today the main focus is on promoting "Meteor Garden" and F4, and they cannot overshadow the main event, so the focus quickly shifted to the TV series and F4.

Then, various interesting things that happened during the filming of "Meteor Garden" were recounted by the five main actors.

This kind of program has been scripted in advance, including the characters of the main actors and the jokes that come out of their mouths, which are all designed in advance, so it naturally looks particularly interesting to the audience.

Time passed quickly and the show was over before they knew it. Jia Jingwen and Chen Xiaoyue were asked by Lin Li to do their homework.

The two girls sat in the room, unable to write a single word of their homework, and kept talking about "Meteor Garden" and F4.

We were still chatting until we fell asleep in bed.

……

Star TV broadcasts animation, music, television and movies 24 hours a day, providing viewers with a vast amount of entertainment information.

All the celebrities of Yangji have become human advertising machines, and they never forget to promote Star TV wherever they go.

Not only that, they also took turns to be guests on Star TV, which naturally attracted a large number of fans.

Even Yang Ye appeared on Star TV and told the audience the behind-the-scenes story of "Ghost Blows Out the Light: Mojin".

The popularity of "Meteor Garden" is definitely a magic weapon to boost ratings.

Although the show was pirated and broadcasted in Taiwan by Channel 4, the ratings are difficult to calculate.

However, during the broadcast of "Meteor Garden", the ratings of the three old TV stations collectively dropped by 5 percentage points, which shows how terrifying its influence is.

"Meteor Garden" is completely popular!
For a while, people from all over Asia kept sending invitations to Yang Ji, hoping that F4 and Yi Nengjing could go to perform.

Rolling Stone Records took the opportunity to launch F4's first album "Meteor Shower".

In addition to the movie theme song and three interludes written by Yang Ye, this album also features the efforts of Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng, and Xiao Chong. Every song is a classic, and it would be a bit of a waste to let the four of them sing it.

However, the sales volume was encouraging. After it was launched on Double Ten Day in Taiwan, it sold 100,000 copies on the first day and was sold out directly, which shocked the industry.

You have to know that in Taiwan, a record with sales of 50,000 copies is considered a platinum record. It would be ridiculous for a new singer's first album to get a gold record, let alone platinum.

F4 got double platinum on the first day, what the hell!
Fans who didn't buy the album called Rolling Stone Records to urge for delivery. As a result, the phone number of Rolling Stone Records was flooded with calls, and the human resources department did not restore the system until midnight.

After this battle, F4 instantly became the top group in Asia. What Little Tigers? Get out of my way.

It’s not that the Little Tigers were not popular, but they were not like F4, who had the support of super popular TV series.

This kind of terrifying explosive power is simply incomparable to the Little Tigers.

The people at the Rolling Stones were a little confused. They knew it would be a hot seller, but they didn't expect it to be so popular.

In the conference room, Duan Zhongyi sighed, "Now I finally understand what Director Yang meant by making the singer famous first and then releasing the album."

Li Zongsheng said: "In fact, these people are not fans. They don't care what F4 sings at all."

Duan Zhongtan said: "But our album has been sold, and the songs you wrote have also been heard by people."

Xiao Chong said: "At the beginning, Director Yang said that he was creating a boy band. Now it seems that this is the second Girls' Generation!"

Li Zongsheng said: "I am looking forward to next year's "The Voice of China"!"

Duan Zhongtan asked: "What are your plans next?"

Duan Zhongyi waved his hand and said, "Hold the concert!" (End of this chapter)