Rock Pioneer Zang Tianshuo in Prison Until 2014

Zang Tianshuo (臧天朔), part of the first wave of Chinese rock musicians who emerged in the early 80s as the country began to loosen its social shackles, will spend the next five years in jail. Zang had been arrested in September 2008 for being behind a gang fight that left one man dead back in 2003. In November last year the Beijing People’s Court found that Zang had organised the attack after a business dispute with the co-owner of one of his bars on the outskirts of Beijing.

Zang appealed the decision but Chinese courts rarely make mistakes, and the appeal was dismissed last week. Zang, who drifted out of the music industry and into China’s shadowy “black hand” (ie organised crime) world, will remain behind bars until 2014.

Zang began his music career in a band called Tumbler, along with one of the legends of Chinese rock, Ding Wu – lead singer of arguably China’s greatest rock band, Tang Dynasty. He then played keyboard for the Godfather of Chinese rock, Cui Jian. Zang formed his own band, 1989, named after the year it was formed. That year, the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, was a tumultuous one for rock music’s biggest fan base, university students. Zang himself gained a reputation as a rebellious singer, and became known as one of the bad boys of the music scene.

1989 the band was short-lived, not surviving much longer than the year itself. Zang had a successful solo career which peaked in the early years of this century. His 2001 single Friends, is one of the most popular songs of the past decade, and in 2002 he released his fifth and possibly best-received album, Folk Songs of Zang Tianshuo. In 2003 he was awarded Most Popular Mainland Singer-Songwriter at the Chinese Music Awards, the same year in which it all started to unravel for him.

Hong Kong's SINA Music Awards the Usual Suspects

The Hong Kong version of China's most popular infotainment web portal, Sina.com, announced its SINA Music Awards 2009 on 26 January. The Awards honoured the top 20 Most Listened To Songs of the year, as well as individual awards voted by the public, and the SINA Music Most Supreme Awards. Over 30 artists took home awards, but the biggest winners were (yet again) Eason Chan (Eason Chan (陈奕迅, pinyin: Chén Yìxùn - pictured left) and (yet again) Joey Lung (容祖儿, pinyin: Róng Zǔér - pictured below) who each won four awards.

Chan and Yung triumphed in the popular awards, winning the My Favourite Hong Kong Male and Female Singer awards respectively. They then followed it up with the two My Favourite National Singer awards. Eason Chan was also awarded the My Favourite Album award for H3M, while Joey Yung was given the My Favourite Golden Hit award for the song My Own Book of Legends. Both stars had songs in the Top 20 list - My Own Book of Legends and Eason Chan's 700 Years Later.

Two awards were given for Favourite Hong Kong Group: the Male Group award was given to five-piece guitar band Rubberband, and the Female Group prize went to At17 (雁石分天), a folk-pop duo who have been together since 2002. At17, despite not fitting neatly into any easily marketable Cantopop package, have built up a sizeable following for an independent act. At17 also picked up a second award for Outstanding Live Performance. A further group award, Favourite National Group, was awarded to Taiwan's superstar girl trio, S.H.E.

SINA Music also gave out Supreme awards, with the major one, Outstanding Musician Award presented to Khalil Fong (方大同, pinyin: Fāng Dàtóng), the Mandarin language's premier soul singer. Fong also won My Favourite Mandarin Hit award with the song Red Bean, and a second song The Moon Represents My Heart was one of the Top 20 Most Listened To tracks. Two other artists won three awards. Charlene Choi (蔡卓妍, pinyin: Cài Zhuóyán), one half of the girl duo Twins, now successfully forging a solo career while the group remains in indefinite hiatus. She won awards for Outstanding Performance, Singer with the Most Clicks, and a song in the Top 20, Two Missing One. The multi-talented singer-songwriter Ivana Wong (王菀之, pinyin: Wáng Wǎnzhī) won the Most Creative Album with On Wings of Time, Most Favourite Singer-Songwriter, and a Top 20 Song, The Moon Said.

The list of Top 20 Most Listened To Songs is:
Miss You Day and Night - Linda Chung
Ding Ding Car - Fiona Sit
A Letter to Myself - Sherman Chung
If the World Has No Fairytales - Janice Vidal
Yes & No - Hins Cheung
Report Commander - Pakho Chau
One Charge - Vincy Chan
You Hide We Hide - Jason Chan
Here We Are - Kary Ng
Today, Finally Know Wrong - William Chan
B.O.K - Justin Lo
Earth is Very Dangerous - Leo Ku
Two Missing One - Charlene Choi
Borrow - Stephanie Cheng
The Moon Said - Ivana Wong
Apollo - Rubberband
700 Years Later - Eason Chan
The Moon Represents My Heart - Khalil Fong
Song of the Year - Kay Tse
My Own Book of Legends - Joey Yung

A full list of award-winners, in English, can be found at this Asian Fanatics post.

Bodyguards and Assassins Leads Asian Film Awards Nomination Tally

Action film Bodyguards and Assassins (十月围城, pinyin: Shí Yuè Wéi Chéng), a Hong Kong-Chinese co-production, earned most nominations for the upcoming Asian Film Awards (AFA), announced this week. Along with a South Korean movie, Mother, it was nominated in six categories including Best Film. Bodyguards and Assassins has already proved a hit at the box office - it was the second highest grossing domestic film in China last year behind The Founding of a Republic - and is hoping to repeat that success with critics. Ironically, The Founding of a Republic was snubbed by the AFA, with not a single nomination in the fourteen categories up for grabs.

In the Best Film Category there were six nominations, three of them Chinese productions. Besides Bodyguards and Assassins, the Taiwanese arthouse favourite and Golden Horse winner No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (不能沒有你), and the wartime drama from mainland China, City of Life and Death (南京! 南京!) are vying for the top prize. Oddly, neither Bodyguards and Assassins' director Teddy Chen (陈德森, pinyin: Chén Désēn) nor Leon Dai (戴立忍), the director of No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti, were nominated for the Best Director award. (Do awards judges think these films direct themselves?) Instead, up for an award is the director of the historical drama Prince of Tears (淚王子), Yonfan (杨凡, pinyin: Yáng Fán), probably best-known for his mainstream hit Lost Romance, and the not-so-mainstream drama about a homosexual playboy, Bishonen. City of Life and Death's director, Lu Chuan (陆川) is also nominated in the Best Director category.

Two Chinese actors were among the five nominees for Best Actor - veteran actor Wang Xueqi, enjoying a career revival of sorts in his sixties, for Bodyguards and Assassins, and Huang Bo (黄渤), already a winner at the Golden Horse Awards, for his comic role in Cow (斗牛). In the Best Actress category, another Golden Horse winner, Li Bingbing (李冰冰), will look to repeat her success with her role as a suspected undercover agent in the wartime spy thriller The Message.

Also nominated, for the second year in a row, is the 23 year old French-Taiwanese actress Sandrine Pinna (张榕容, pinyin: Zhāng Róngróng), regarded by many as a future star in the making. After her critical success last year in a little-seen film called Miao Miao, she was nominated again for Yang Yang (阳阳) in a role written specifically for her. She plays a talented Eurasian girl trying to navigate treacherous roads in both the entertainment industry and her personal life.

Three Chinese actors are competing for Best Supporting Actor: Bodyguards and Assassins' Nicholas Tse (谢霆锋, pinyin: Xiè Tíngfēng); Huang Xiaoming (黄晓明) for his eye-catching performance in The Message; and the Taiwanese actor-singer Tou Chung-Hua (庹宗华), best-known for his TV roles, for his performance as an Era of the Warring States general in The Warrior and the Wolf (狼灾记).

In the Best Supporting Actress category is versatile Chinese mainland actress Yan Ni (闫妮) in Cow, and Hong Kong's Kara Hui (惠英红, Wai Ying-hung), arguably one of the screen's greatest female kung fu exponents. Now approaching 50, Hui is revitalising her career as a dramatic actress, and earns a nomination for her performance as a doting mother who becomes blackmail victim while protecting her teenage son in the Malaysian-set drama At the End of Daybreak (心魔).

The AFAs also have a Best Newcomer category, and Super Girl winner from a few years back, Li Yuchun (李宇春) was nominated for her film debut role in Bodyguards and Assassins, a role in which she got to show off her martial arts skills. Other nominees in the Best Newcomer category include Malaysian actress Jane Ng Meng Hui (黄明慧) for At the End of Daybreak, and the Beijing-born beauty pageant graduate Oceane Zhu (朱璇, pinyin: Zhū Xuán) who starred in Prince of Tears.

The Asian Film Awards are organised by the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, and winners will be announced on 22 March as part of the International Film Festival. The awards, held for just the fourth time, aim to recognise the best in Asian cinema. The full nomination list can be found at the AFA website - the link is a media release in PDF format.

Show Luo Dominates Album Sales with Rashomon's Release

Taiwan's King of Dance Music, Show Luo (罗志祥, pinyin: Luó Zhīxián), went straight to number one with his new album, Rashomon (罗生门, pinyin: Luóshēngmén), released on 15 January. According to the G Music charts, Rashomon - Show Luo's seventh studio album, accounted for a massive 39 percent of all album sales in Taiwan in the week 15 to 21 January. Luo dethroned another member of Taiwan's pop royalty, the Princess of Cuteness, Rainie Yang, whose two week reign at the top came to an end, dropping to the number 3 position.

Both Show Luo and Rainie Yang are co-starring in Hi My Sweetheart (海派甜心, also known as Shanghai Sweetheart), a romantic comedy TV series currently airing on Taiwanese TV on Sunday evenings. Like Rainie Yang's recent album, Rashomon contains a handful of songs that were also heard in the TV series, such as the opening theme song Love Madness (爱疯头), Love is Not a Solitary Walk (爱不单行) and Biological Clock (生理时钟). The TV series has struggled a bit ratings-wise - the first few episodes in particular suffered dismal ratings figures - but at least the original soundtrack has produced some decent music.

In another connection between Show and Rainie, the former has chosen an album title based on one of Japan's best-known and most celebrated movies. I'm not sure if this flags an attempt by Luo, who is fluent in Japanese, to capture the Japanese market (the title might just be play on Luo's own name, the two sharing the same initial character). Last year he already made preliminary efforts to launch his fashion brand, Stage, in Japan. If Rashomon is released in Japan Luo will be following in the footsteps of Yang, who has just released a Japanese version of one of her biggest hits, My Intuition.

China's 21st Starlight Awards

The Starlight Awards (星光奖), a biennial television awards ceremony, was held in the central Chinese city of Zhenzhou on January 19. China Radio International has labeled the Starlight Awards "China's Emmys", presumably because like the Emmys they hand out awards to TV shows. However, that's where the similarities end; unlike the Emmys there are no prizes for individual performers. The Starlight winners are also selected on what appears to be a compulsory criterion for Chinese awards, "ideological depth".

As a result the winners list is a highbrow selection of politically correct shows with titles like Welcome to the Motherland (向祖国报告), Six Centuries of Kunqi Opera (昆曲六百年), 2008 Chinese Migrant Workers Evening (2008中国农民工之夜), Xinjiang - Embrace of the Motherland (在祖国的怀抱里), Hundreds of Millions of Peasant Farmers' Laughter (亿万农民的笑声), and The Tibetan People Celebrate the Olympic Games (西藏人民喜迎奥运会). If nothing else, the awards do provide an accurate snapshot of mainland Chinese television. Surely no other nation inflicts its audiences with so many documentaries and variety shows designed to uplift and educate.

The Grand Prize, which China Radio International describes as "the highest honour in television programming given by the Chinese government", was given to The Devotion of Love (爱的奉献). This was an all-star fundraising gala held for the victims of the devastating Sichuan Earthquake in 2008. The CRI article, in English, is here but to get a list of winners you'll need to visit this site.

Boycott Results in Mediocre Solid Gold Music Awards

A boycott by the major record companies of the Jade Solid Gold Top 10 Music Awards left the event deprived of many big name performers. An important date on the Hong Kong music calendar, the awards honour the best in Cantopop and are based on TVB's long running Jade Solid Gold show and its Billboard charts. The 2009 Awards, however, were reduced to a second-rate version when artists from EMI, Sony-BMG, Universal and Warner failed to take part because of a dispute between the four labels and TVB. This left the majority of awards handed out to performers from the EEG label, diminishing the status of this year's event in many fans' eyes. (The dispute over copyright issues is explained in this post on the Asian Entertainment News blog.)

The biggest winner of the night was EEG's major star, Joey Lung (容祖儿, pinyin: Róng Zǔér), seen pictured above with two of the seven trophies she won in total. Two of her songs were honoured in the Top Ten Song Awards, with one of them, My Own Book of Legends (搜神記), taking out the Gold Song Gold award (ie best song of the year). The complete list of the ten songs of the year is:

• A Letter to Myself (給自己的信) - Sherman Chung
• My Own Book of Legends (搜神記) - Joey Yung
• If the Time Comes (如果時間來到) - Raymond Lam
• The Diamond Sutra (金剛經) - Denise Ho
• Earth is Dangerous (地球很危險) - Leo Ku
• Here We Are - Kary Ng
• Two Without One (二缺一) - Charlene Choi
• Borrow (借) - Stephanie Cheng
• Actually I Am Very Happy (原來過得很快樂) - Miriam Yeung
• With Songs and Tears (可歌可泣) - Joey Yung

Joey Yung also took home one of the major female awards, the Most Popular Asia Pacific Hong Kong Female Star, but missed out on the Best Female Singer which went instead to Miriam Yeung (杨千嬅, pinyin: Yáng Qiānhuà).

In the male categories there was controversary when the Most Popular Asia Pacific Hong Kong Star was awarded to Raymond Lam (林峯, pinyin: Lín Fēng) - a very popular actor but relative newcomer to the music industry. In the absence of better credentialed singers like Eason Chan and Hins Cheung it was more or less a two-horse race between Lam and Leo Ku (古巨基, pinyin: Gǔ Jùjī). Nevertheless Lam's announcement as winner was reportedly met by boos from some of the more passionate audience members in the Hong Kong Coliseum. Lam's name now joins an exclusive but illustruous honours board of previous winners, alongside 10-times winner Andy Lau, fellow Heavenly Kings Jacky Cheung and Aaron Kwok, and winner of the previous two years, Eason Chan. Leo Ku didn't go home empty-handed, winning the Best Male Singer award.

A full list of the awards winners, in both Chinese and English, is at this Asian Video Network post.

Beyond the Realm TVB's Most Watched Series in 2009

Two lavish historical costume dramas were Hong Kong TVB's most watched series in 2009. Beyond the Realm of Conscience (宫心计), set during 9th century Tang Dynasty, was the most popular TV series of the year with an average index rating of 34, and a total audience of 2.26 million viewers. In second place was Rosy Business (巾幗梟雄), a drama about a family business during the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century. It averaged 33 in the ratings, drawing in a total of 2.11 million watchers.

Beyond the Realm of Conscience (covered in more detail in this earlier post) ran for 33 episodes in October and November and peaked at a record-equalling 50 rating in its final episode. Set inside the emperor's imperial household, the show's viewing figures rivaled that of TVB's biggest ever hit series, the 2005 Korean drama Jewel in the Palace (on which Beyond the Realm is loosely based) and another series set in the business world, Moonlight Resonance (2008). The series starred Charmaine Sheh (佘诗曼, pinyin: Shé Shīmàn) and Tavia Yeung (杨怡, pinyin: Yáng Yí) as two rival palace maids who "graduate" to concubines, and Kevin Cheng (郑嘉颖, pinyin: Zhéng Jiāyǐng) and Moses Chan (陈豪, pinyin: Chén Háo) played the love interests. The series was directed by Fong Chun Chiu, who also was one of four directors at the helm of the Rosy Business series.

Rosy Business (see my earlier post) may have been pipped by Beyond the Realm in the popularity stakes, but was the bigger winner at the TVB Anniversary Awards held in December. It won six awards including Best Series, Best Actor (Wayne Lai 黎耀祥: Lí Yàoxiáng) and Best Actress (Sheren Tang 邓萃雯, pinyin: Dèng Cuìwén). It also dominated the Ming Pao Awards, although without competition from Beyond the Realm which was released too late to be eligible.

Just behind Rosy Business in the ratings rankings was the contemporary action drama Burning Flame 3 (烈火雄心3), a sequel of sorts to two very successful earlier series about the lives and loves of a team of firefighters. Total audience figures for the series were 2.10 million, and it averaged 33 in the ratings. Two comedy series rounded out the top five in the rankings: You're Hired (絕代商骄) was number four in the rankings, averaging 32 points, and the action comedy D.I.E Again (古靈精探B) averaged 31.

Source for the rankings is the excellent 幸而城 Fortunate City blog which has the top ten highest ranking series. The Asian Fanantics forum also has a post with all the 2009 series' ratings figures.