Leehom Shanghai Concert 2008

So amazing! So much fun! So awesome! And we call him Alex Wang now. To celebrate the fact that he is ABC like us. [and this is a long post, but worth your time reading it]

Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008 = Wang Leehom’s Shanghai concert for his 2008 Music Man Concert Tour. I didn’t work that Saturday because I requested it off. Thanks to Lisa for covering for me that day!

I had to take care of some visa issues earlier that Saturday. Not to mention that the business class’s module 2 assignments were due Saturday midnight. So you can guess what many of us were doing on Friday night. Homework. Sina and I went to the Shanghai South Railway station to pick Jing up, who had traveled from Hangzhou to Shanghai for the concert. And we continued doing homework that night. Haha, it felt like I was back at UCLA again in apt. 304. Or back in the Hedrick or Sproul study lounges. A group of friends sitting around a table with their laptops, books and papers spread out. Typing away, listening to music. And every once in awhile stopping to ask a question or to chat about something off tangent.

So that Saturday morning, I woke up early to meet Lisa, Ryan and Nancy at the Science and Technology Museum metro stop. After much bureaucracy and red tape, none of us were able to complete the process. I was the one who got closest but because I didn’t bring my police registration (thank goodness that I went with Sina to do it, otherwise who knows what would have happened. And thank goodness that it was near the lunch hour so they didn’t ask me too many questions as to why my registration was so late, ~2 months after arrival in China when the policy is within 48 hours of arrival. Hence, no fine...because they were hungry?) Nancy has to return on Monday to drop off that final form and then they can start processing me so that Papa Mao can know my every movement.

I got back home and Sina and Jing were about to leave to go out sight seeing because they had submitted their module 2s. I decided to stay in and finish up work. I took a short nap afterwards because I was so tired from lack of sleep the night before. The meeting spot was going to me me/Sina’s apt. Jing and Sina inform me that they were still at People’s Square but they were on their way back on the metro. Daniella called me saying she just got off at the Shanghai Indoor Stadium metro stop and I gave her descriptive directions to help her find our apt “look at the wall on the right, are their shards of glass sticking out of the top? now you will turn left at the street with the woman sewing on the corner.” Karol was still doing homework...

Pretty soon, we realized that we had to get going to the concert because the tickets said it would start at 7:30pm (which really meants 8pm) and it was currently 6:30pm. We made a trip to the nearby grocery store to buy some “Leehom water”. His face endorses a brand of bottled water here in China; it’s called Wa Ha Ha water. We asked a worker to take a picture of us holding up the bottles and he probably thought we were crazy.


Me, Karol, Sina, Daniella, Jing at the Hua Lian Supermarket with our Leehom Wa Ha Ha water bottles!

We made the short walk across the main road to the Shanghai Stadium area. It’s great to live so close to the stadium because we didn’t have to travel too far. When we got there, there were so many vendors selling random things. Glow sticks, “food” and artist paraphernalia. However, as we were looking through everything we were wondering why Ayumi Hamasaki’s face was on everything. And why people were walking into the Indoor Stadium instead of the Outdoor Stadium (which are right next to each other). Turned out Ayumi was having a concert that night as well. We bought what we thought were lamb meat on a stick but it was really fatty meat on a stick. We kept walking towards the stadium that our ticket said “Shanghai Stadium” aka “outdoor.” And then we saw more Leehom paraphernalia. It was so much eye candy. We wanted to buy stuff, but didn’t want to carry it with us during the concert so we skipped out on that. But Sina and I got "glow sticks".


All of a sudden, we hear music coming from inside the stadium! But we were still outside! And we didn’t know where we were supposed to go to enter for our seats! We asked security and then bolted in the direction he told us to run. We ran around the entire stadium and it was later that we realized we went the long way when we could have gone in the opposite direction and save ourselves time. We kept running and running until we got to our gate and the 3 sets of security check points allowed us in. Then we had to find our seats in the dark. Sina and Jing’s tickets were two rows in front of me, Karol and Daniella. We bought them at different times. Some people were in our three seats and as I was trying to figure out how to get them out, a couple foreigners around us started helping us out. One girl asked me whether we were in row 14 (yes!) and then an old guy behind the row (probably with his Chinese mistress) helped us by looking at the seat number of the three people who weren’t getting up. Eventually, they stood up, apologized and left. And the three of us sat down happy.

When Leehom appeared on the stage after the opening singer the crowd went crazy!!! I went crazy!!! I mean, I have seen him before, and even closer in person (darn that table for separating us!!) But this was his concert!! I was super excited even though he was tiny. But there were the projected images. But wow. I was enjoying every moment of the concert. Every song, even the ones that aren’t my favorites. During his “Change Me” song, “imposter” Leehoms appeared on stage for drummer, and guitars. The funny part was that the drummer dropped their sticks, but the music had kept going. But these look-alikes were just there for the effect, you have to know the music video to know what I’m talking about. Also another highlight was when the Chinese guy sitting in front of us started freaking out when Leehom’s “Can You Feel My World” song started. He was doing this awkwardly cute shoulder dance that the three of us started imitating because it was so awkwardly awesome. And during the encore...

Leehom: So which song should I sing?
Audience: 唯一!! [Wei Yi, The One and Only]
Leehom: I already sang that song! How about 唯二? [Wei Er]

[Yi means one, Er means two. Trust me, it was cute]

Also when he was calling out to the audience, “Any friends from [place]?” Karol and I yelled out when he asked, “Any friends from Taiwan?!?!?” And then he said “Any Hong Kong friends?!?” but he said it in Cantonese and kinda totally butchered the pronunciation. Even though he can speak it better than he did that night. We were disappointed he never asked “Any friends from America?!?” We would have gone crazy yelling. In order for him to hear us ... because we were sitting far away. LOL.

I took many pictures and many videos. But some came out blurry. But they are still worth a thousand words each to me. He sang all his popular songs including a new song “搖滾怎麼了“ [What Happened to Rock and Roll]. Forever Love, Can You Feel My World, 唯一， 心中的日月， 蓋世英雄， 大成小愛， 一首簡單的歌， 放開你的心， 龍的傳人， 改變自己， 花田錯，愛你等於愛自己，竹林深處，落葉歸根, 在梅邊 ... and more. Really, so much fun and so awesome. I want to go to another Leehom concert. He’ll probably sing the same songs, but who cares. I enjoy them. And you know how some artists sound different in concert than they do on their albums? Because they’re singing live (no lip-syncing). Leehom was singing live, you could tell. But it sounded so close to the album voice. He did some improv here and there, but the sound was so much the same. He has perfect pitch. Plus, he kept bringing out instruments to play during the concert. He brought out his guitar, piano, violin, drums ... he even started beatboxing at one point.

After the concert, we went outside to the vendors and bought some posters and cups. Leehom overload!! One guy who was selling posters was trying to get us to buy this one poster of Leehom that wasn’t exactly too flattering. He told us, "Leehom, 帥的不得了!" [Leehom, So handsome you don’t even know what to think!]. Karol and I thought it was hilarious the way he was selling his posters. We bought some from him, but not that poster. There was one guy who was selling bags; cheapy souvenirs but we were still interested. He said he could give it to us for 5RMB each. We said no. Then he said 2 for 5RMB each. We said 2 for 4RMB. He said no. So Sina told him, "Come on, give me best friend price!" [running joke among us]. He said, "We are not friends..." And that was when we were all like, "wow ... burn..." We walked away to the vendor next to him and started bargaining for Leehom cups. He wanted 10RMB for each. We told him no. We would pay 5RMB for each. He said something to the effect of "I sell these for 20-30RMB each. I will give it to you for cheaper because the concert is over and I don’t want to carry them home." We said, "Fine, then sell it to us for 5RMB each and you don’t have to carry 5 extra cups home." He said, "10RMB and I give you a free poster." We told him that we had already bought posters. Eventually we got the price down to 6RMB per cup + free poster. As we were walking away, he was telling his friend (the guy who refused to sell the bags to us for 1RMB less), "those girls bargained hard." But who knows how much those cups really cost.

We walked a little more and came across another vendor who sold us the bags for the price we wanted. Score! We grabbed some ice cream at the stadium’s Coldstones (yes, the American ice cream chain) because after each concert they have buy 1 get 1 free ice cream if you show them your concert ticket. While we were eating ice cream, we were still stuck in this Leehom dreamland phase. We kept talking about how awesome the concert was and how awesome Leehom is and all that good stuff. Actually, we are all still stuck in this Leehom dream phase.

Now here are some of the pictures. I had to steal some of these pics because my camera ran out of battery on the last song of the concert:

me, Daniella, Karol (foreigner with Chinese mistress behind us)
Daniella & Karol

me & Daniella

Karol & me

Sina & Jing

me, Daniella, Karol

LEEHOM!!

Leehom with his glittery hair and silver leather glittery pants

The seats we wish we were sitting in

Karol on her first date with Alex Wang

After the concert @ Shanghai Stadium
Seats: Section 17-2 ... a.k.a far away, but still tons of fun

Wow. Such an awesome night with good friends, good fun and good music!










And one more final picture of Leehom just for fun. If only they were selling this poster. I wouldn't even bother bargaining the price: