Archives For china

Am I starting a series? Nah… I don’t think I can come up with a Jpop list xD

Unlike the Kpop list which it focused 99% of the time on dance pop friendly tracks that went beyond American commercial pop, this “Cpop” list is… not really pop.

Popular music in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China (but mostly Taiwan) tends to be pop/rockish flare. Sure there are dance pop friendly, but even they have moved or are moving more towards pop/rock. They also love indie flavor, and accept not particularly attractiveness in their idols… even though there are some very good looking people who are immensely popular.

To be completely honest, compared to Korea’s pop music charts, Chinese music charts have a broad variety. But then again, compared to Japan’s pop music charts (which is comprised of AKB48 and Arashi xD), even Kpop charts (mostly 2NE1 and Big Bang now that DBSK is gone) seem to have some variety. xD

So this list of great Chinese music includes varying genres from R&B, pop/rock… more rockish, ballads (regular and of the indie type), etc. once again listed by year of release.

Again, it’s a bit weak on the earlier years… but you are welcome to make suggestions (for any year). A few guidelines would be that they cannot be too indie (I couldn’t fit Cheer Cheen or Mavis Fan in the list because they don’t feel completely pop, if you know what I mean), must include MVs (so songs released as singles), not older than late 90s.

Also… song must work as MV too. So no awesome songs but tacky videos. Sorry.

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL0C06C35FA9FC1C64&hl=en_US”]

YouTube link.

What do you like about the Cpop industry?

Who are your fave artists?

Once again, if you were subscribed to the YAM Magazine RSS Feed, you would know about this two-part post with LGBT music videos from around the world.

Also, you probably missed our LGBT Blogathon, didn’t you???

Here’s:

We can be sooooooooooooooo superficial from time to time ;D

Read it and pimp it~

In this case… WHY AREN’T YOU SUBSCRIBED TO THE YAM MAGAZINE RSS FEED?

This one turned out to be really awesome, if I may say so myself.

Of course, I have been trying to put this together since last year, LOL – so it’d better be good, right? Though, I know there are some repeat tracks if you’ve followed the blog, I think it’s fair to say that the combination of songs has a nice flow. It’s turned out to be a really moody list~

You can check my previous Chinese Music Playlists [1][2]

[iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL4603C993E0B0D0BB&hl=en_US”]

  1. Mavis Fan (范曉萱) – I Want Us to Be Together (我要我們在一起)
  2. Waa Wei (魏如萱) – Shangri-La (香格里拉)
  3. Jing Chang (張芸京) – Broken (壞了)
  4. Leehom Wang (王力宏) – Daily Necessities (柴米油鹽醬醋茶)
  5. R-Chord featuring LaLa Hsu (謝和弦 feat. 徐佳瑩) – Under the Willow Tree (柳樹下)
  6. Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) – Silent All These Years
  7. A-Mei Chang (張惠妹) – What Time Is It Already? (你在看我嗎)
  8. Jing Chang (張芸京) – The Opposite Me (相反的我)
  9. Chris Lee (李宇春) – Lost Heart Crazy (失心瘋)
  10. Dream Girls – Weak (軟弱)
  11. A-Mei Chang (張惠妹) [as AMIT] – After the Sentimental Love of Animals (相愛後動物感傷)*
  12. Stefanie Sun (孫燕姿) – The Kingdom of Fools (愚人的國度)

*Note: There’s some blurred nudity and depictions of sex in that video.

You can check the playlist on YouTube.

I was watching CCTV a couple of few days ago, when I saw the most awesome performance of the song Legend (传奇), which is sung by Faye Wong (I’m pretty sure she’s the original singer) in a beautiful way as well [1][2].

But this performance by Henan Opera singer Xiao Xiangyu (小香玉) literally brought tears to my eyes. I wasn’t able to get her name the first time I watched the show, but they repeated it last night and I wrote it down.

I managed to find a video with English subtitles. [CCTV looks better but it goes wrong after minute 15 or something – stuck on the freeze frame even when the audio continues]

[iframe src=”https://open.iqiyi.com/developer/player_js/coopPlayerIndex.html?vid=17928efefd8ba611dc8cac707ba8e835&tvId=2062401009&accessToken=2.f22860a2479ad60d8da7697274de9346&appKey=3955c3425820435e86d0f4cdfe56f5e7&appId=1368&height=100%&width=100%” width=”100%” height=”480″]

There’s even a bit of a funny part when they mention Jay Chou’s singing style. LOL They talk about the importance of Mulan in their national history, and discuss how Disney’s Mulan fell in love and there was a happy ending.

If you really want to skip all the show [Legend is about 20min. into the show], you can watch Xiao Xiangyu’s performance of Legend, but it doesn’t have subs and the quality is not the best.

Re-pimping this old list~ xD

It’s always been tough to be a working actress on the big screen, as you turn a little older, offers often seem to be linked to “being someone else’s mother,” but cable television seems to be becoming more and more attractive to not only writers – because they get to write more challenging stories and skip censors – but also to women who were movie actresses and have found new complex roles to take on.

you can read the whole thing on YAM Magazine~

I just finally burnt Zhong Ping Huang’s (黄­中平) name in my head.

Because of A-Mei’s latest MV.

Having realized that he’s made my favorite Faye Wong video, I just spent all night “curating” a list of 77 MVs of some of the music videos he’s directed since 1997… but only of the artists I follow… otherwise the list is just endless~

Most of the time, his style is described as just about style, emotion and composition. Though, I have seen a few of those that have something resembling a plot.

Faye Wong – Bu Liu/ Nothing Left

I think that video captures what I essentially love about Faye Wong.

Continue Reading…

YAM Magazine Weibo

April 22, 2011 — 2 Comments

So… after my Weibo Fail almost 2 months ago, I finally was able to setup the yammag Weibo account.

Except for the loading problems, which is a given in Chinese-based websites (because of the number of people?), Weibo seems to be pretty cool to use… even if I haven’t figure out all things yet.

One of them is that I can’t make the profile open to the public. People who are not logged into Weibo, get an invitation code… which I don’t really want. I want it to be open to the public, but no one seems to know what I mean.

If you already use Twitter, it’s easy to get use to Weibo~ but there are a few things that are kind cool/kinda not so cool in it. The first one that’s cool and not so cool at the same time is… use of emoticons. LOL I know people who don’t like them, and might find them odd using in a microblogging site-

BUT… Weibo isn’t really a microblog. It seems much more complex than Twitter.
Continue Reading…

The first edition of the Global Chinese Golden Chart was held recently in Taipei, Taiwan.

Besides Leehom performing All the Things You Never Knew, Bibi was also there performing a medley of her i.Fish.Light.Mirror singles, including a bit of Canned Fish (like… the intro LOL), Single Mirror, and finally closing with I Miss U Missing Me.

I’m happy that BiBi performs her best when there’s important people. LOL Like… she sounds pitch perfect when musician, producers, and actors are in the room. She doesn’t even need fireworks, outrageous clothing or flashy stuff, just her singing.

There’s this funny thing about fandom, they just don’t care about anything else that doesn’t directly affect fandom. So unless X-member of boy/girl group is directing a movie, you won’t hear who’s directing a film.

But then again, that’s what generally happens anywhere.

I just wished, at least, that labels would care to put this information down in their description fields… to make it easier. I know Chinese/Taiwanese music videos have the information — most of the times — of who wrote the music, the lyrics and who directed all in the video… but it makes it really REALLY SUPER REALLY hard for us, who don’t read character. For a two paragraph post, I have to spend 1hr (maybe) getting the character on paper, then using Japanese handwriting input or the Kanji dictionary to get the characters into a browser, and then search for it. And that’s just the bit where I get the names xD

Anyway, I feel illuminated because I have discovered 5 important names that I will highlight in this post. But since no one is more important than the other, it will be from most recent mentioned in the blog.

First, Bounce (比尔贾) of Bounce Visual Creative… the director of one of my latest fave music videos: Stefanie Sun’s The Kingdom of Fools, a song which bring me to… Francis Lee (李焯雄), a Taiwanese lyricist who wrote Sun’s lyrics for that song, as well as being in charge of many of the songs in BiBi’s NOW/WOW album… as well as the Canned Fish song.

Then theres’ COSMOS, aka. Yingzhi Chen (陳映之) who directed Elva Hsiao’s Let Love Fly, other artists… and has recently directed this new girl group called Dream Girls and their MV for Tears Should Also Be Beautiful… a song which was written by famous Taiwanese songwriter Yao Ruo Long (姚若龍), who is the one who wrote one of my 2010 faves- Broken by Jing Chang.

And finally, another video for Dream Girls (this time I’m Your Dreamgirl) directed me to Yi Ren Chen (陳奕仁), the MV director of such gems such as Incomparable Beauty and Little Love Song – all by Sodagreen ;D

I feel like I learned something important these past few days of posting CMusic MVs. LOL Too bad I still haven’t finished Chinese homework and it’s nearly 4am.