This is post covers and old, old event occurring sometime back in July or so.  I wanted to write about it ’cause it showed an interesting look into a side of the entertainment industry in China.  Basically, through a odd source of contacts, I was able to go to the 18th (I think) reunion party of a high end spa chain in Shenzhen.  This is the kind of place where you go for manicures, haircuts, massages and the like for absurdly stupid prices.  It’s basically a place where the rich folks in Shenzhen can unload their money fast and feel proud at doing so.

Davide knew the CEO, who even proposed at one point that we perform at the event for a stupidly high amount of money.  Of course, we were into the idea, but it never happened (no surprises here).  Anyway, we were given tickets were very curious to attend to see the various folks who were indeed going to be performing there:  some big names in China and Asia.  The biggest name was a singer from Korea named “Rain”; that’s the only English name on the whole list.  We weren’t sure what to expect, but were hoping for some good publicity should we be fortunate enough to meet and have the opportunity to take photos with these folks.

Well, to give you the quick synopsis now, it was amazing how badly this whole event was organized and how weakly it was executed.  Really shocking.  It started off strong enough; a grand entry way in the large exhibition center in Shenzhen.  The space actually felt too big for a party, even one of this size (it quickly became apparent that there’d be no meeting opportunities).

We made our way into the huge banquet hall which was lit up with three massive video screens on the far end and a matching impressive sound system.  Other large LCDs were mounted on the left and right halls.  We had someone take us to our seat which was quite close to the main stage.

We were looking forward to a nice meal.  Everything up to this point indicated that that was exactly what we were going to get.  Amidst the well-dressed (for the most part) folks and the nice dinner ware, were plastic bottles of cheap orange juice and Pepsi.  This is usually no cause for alarm; you’ll see this odd display all the time.  Red wine…and Pepsi!  Served in the same glasses to boot.

Now, in China, everyone doesn’t get their own plate of food.  Instead, you have a small plate and bowl with chopsticks and tea cup and all of the food is served in the middle of the table (alongside the Pepsi) and you serve yourself from there in small quantities.  Well, these dishes came out so infrequently.  Like one every fifteen minutes.  It was punishingly slow.  First a dish of celery in a nice sauce with peanuts would come out and it would be devoured right away, then we’d wait and wait, as they played the same ole videos over and over on the walls.  Then another dish would come out and repeat.  Perhaps after an hour or so, we had more than one dish of food on the table.

Oh yeah, at one point, another woman showed up at our table and sat down in the chair that was occupied by another man who had stepped away for a bit.  When he returned, she refused to get up and just turned her back to him.  The guy, naturally, complained and called a waiter to do something about it.  It seemed like a long time until someone had the bright idea of bringing another chair.

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(above) Audio during the chair incident

In the midst of all this the show began.  The CEO got up and talked a bit about the business, the staff, and so on, and there were various musical acts in between.  Somewhere near the very beginning of the show, the right-hand audio channel went out.  And it never came back.  Nice.  Then the various stars started showing up.  They were mostly singing acts.  All of the solo singers sang against a backup track.  Some were pretty good, most were so-so, one was downright awful – looked like he had never been on stage before.  He walked out nervously, gave a weak wave, and then mumbled his way through a song, all the barely moving – just staying put and looking down.

Another famous Chinese singer sung a rather nice song.  She had a nice voice, but you could tell the song was unrehearsed.  You could see her looking to the back waiting for the signal when she was supposed to start singing during various parts of the song.  This wasn’t something subtle that I was catching.  This was beyond obvious.

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(above) Audio during the nice tune…where are we again?

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(above) A song called “Wu Suo Wei”, roughly translated as “Whatever”.  Listen to Davide mock the song right at the very beginning, quite funny.

Somewhere towards the end of the show, we heard that the main act, this “Rain” guy wasn’t going to perform.  Someone had said that he’d been denied a visa by the Chinese government.  Huh?  Who knows if that was true.  That left the last act to be some famous Korean beauty actress.  What a waste it was to wait on her.

Well, I can’t remember how late she was now.  An hour, forty-five minutes for sure.  At this time, I wasn’t even aware that she was an actress and not a singer.  There was some sort of ruckus going on in the middle of the hall.  A mass of people was moving towards the stage with flashing cameras all around.  I thought this must be some big shot, but the crowd mysteriously died out and we waited another thirty minutes for this person to show up.  Eventually, she did, though we didn’t realize it until someone told us.

They were using her to draw the names of the final lucky winners of the various drawings.  Oh gosh, that’s something that I forgot to mention.  The various door prizes were absurd:  100k RMB, 250K RMB (oh, around 15k and 40K US), and a few high end Mercedes.  I never got the opportunity to submit my number for the drawing.  And somehow, it seemed like we kept seeing the same phone numbers appear on the big screens.  Maybe it was just the fact that the numbers all consisted of 6′s and 8′s, lucky numbers for wealth in China.

Anyway, this actress didn’t do anything.  She just stood there and pressed buttons on a computer to randomly select more door prize winners.  It was fairly late in the middle of this whole part of the show that we realized that this was the final act and this was the big star.  Then the evening just kinda quietly ended and everyone left.

All in all, a pitiful waste of an obvious huge amount of money that this company spent.  The bizarre thing was that I told this story to various Chinese people and they all came to the same conclusion:  The company’s boss was probably happy with the evening because he was able to get all those big stars and show everyone what a big shot he was.  So what about the terrible execution?  Eh, that doesn’t matter so much.  Then, of course, I had to ask about the pitiful performances of the talent and the fact that the final star was so late and forced all the guests to sit through the same loop of 3-4 songs over and over.  Their responses, again, were generally the same:  Well, the stars know that this is not being broadcasted and that it’s only a private gig.  They couldn’t care less if there performances stunk.  They got paid and that’s all that mattered.

To be fair, one dude put quite a bit of effort into singing his song:  I’d actually heard this song before and it certainly isn’t an easy one to sing – a lot of high-pitched yelling involved!

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(above) At least this guy put an effort into singing his son (one of the few). He starts to belt it out after 45 seconds or so.  Actually, it’s a bit too much.