Encounter With a Chinese Pop Diva

The first time I saw Chang Aifei (常艾非), she was walking alone on the vast, empty grounds of an 18th century French chateau, lost in her thoughts. She wore a long, dark dress, looking forlorn as the wind blew through her raven hair. She was the vision of a melancholic beauty, in search of love, yet untouchable. As the day receded, she faded into the sunset, a sad, lonely, mysterious figure.

Actually, that was a scene from Aifei’s music video for her hit song “Ci Xin” (刺心). We were introduced to each other by a friend and were meeting up for the first time the following day, so I checked out the video beforehand in order to get to know her music.

I didn’t expect much from this moderately well-known Chinese singer, but was pleasantly surprised by what I saw in the video. Aifei sang with authentic emotion and there was a sense of longing and loneliness to her voice that I found intriguing. Moreover, her manner in the video was earnest and completely unaffected. I thought to myself, this isn’t the usual manufactured Mando-pop diva but a real person who seems committed to her craft. Here is the video:

http://v.ku6.com/show/UlkFFqlY1IpXeWNo.html

The Lan Club

We met up for lunch the next day at The Lan Club, an ultra chic restaurant designed by Phillippe Starck in the Chaoyang district. The Beijing traffic held me up and I arrived late. As I approached Aifei, she turned to face me and I noticed what a photogenic face she had even without professional lighting and makeup.

To my great relief, Aifei was easygoing, down-to-earth and surprisingly self-effacing for a person working in the entertainment industry. We talked about her life and career.

Growing Up in Nanjing

“People tell me I look like a Northerner,” Aifei smiled, “but actually I’m from Nanjing.

“My dad performed in a song and dance ensemble attached to the People’s Liberation Army. Though he was mainly involved in the performing arts, he acted just like a military man. He treated the three of us — my older sister, brother and I — as if we were soldiers! It didn’t help that he had a bad temper. He’d bark at us if our shoes weren’t lined up straight, and would beat us if we got into trouble. I grew up afraid of my father, and would sometimes hide from him after he came home from work.”

Aifei wanted to become a singer after graduating from high school, but her father insisted that she go into accounting, as her grandfather had done. She dutifully completed her accounting degree and worked joylessly in an office for a while, but just couldn’t shake off her yearning to sing.

After countless arguments with Aifei, her father came to realize that his own genes ran too strong in this daughter, who not only inherited his good looks but also the very same expressive impulses that roiled within him. With a sigh he finally relented and let Aifei go her own way.

“I packed my suitcase and headed north to Beijing,” Aifei continued, picking through her salad. “For me, this wasn’t only a chance to pursue my dream, but also to release myself from my father’s grip. I loved him and understood that everything he did was out of love, but I desperately needed to break free from his control. I just wanted my freedom. Freedom, freedom, freedom. That’s all I could think about.”

A New Life in Beijing

Arriving in Beijing in 1997, Aifei tried out for and successfully entered the Beijing Dance Drama & Opera Theater. This state-run troupe put on quaint and politically correct song and dance performances, which were hardly Aifei’s cup of tea. But it offered her a degree of professional respectability, a roof to live under, a low but steady salary and reasonable medical benefits. Besides, work at the Theater was stable but infrequent, allowing her time to explore other performing opportunities. Joining the troupe also helped to reassure her father, who had been concerned that Aifei would just end up drifting in the capital’s messy entertainment scene.

“My musical hero at that time was Su Rui,” Aifei said. “What I really wanted to do was to sing like her.”

Su Rui (蘇芮) was a Taiwanese pop icon in the early 80′s who lit a fire under an entire generation of young Chinese across Asia with her rock-inflected, socially conscious music. But the gigs that Aifei managed to line up on her own – mostly evening performances at bars and hotel lounges — didn’t demand this kind of music, and neither did the general public, which preferred saccharine love ballads.

Sex and the City

I asked Aifei if she ever ran into trouble or had to deal with shady characters working at bars and clubs. “Not really,” she replied. “There was just this one time at a bar. I’d just finished a set when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said his ‘boss’ wanted me to join their table. I politely turned him down, and he gave me a cold stare before walking away. Later, the manager of the bar told me the ‘boss’ was actually a local gangster, and advised me to stay away from performing in the area for a while because I’d offended the guy. But that was it.”

Really, that was it? Aifei probably detected my skepticism. She took a sip of tea, gathered her thoughts and then continued.

“You know, in many ways I’m still very much the person I used to be in Nanjing. People tell me I’m too simple and naïve for this industry, and they’re probably right. But early on I made a promise to my father – and to myself — about how I’d live my life here in Beijing, and I’ve stayed true to my principles, probably at some cost to my career. I avoid bad people. I go straight home after performing. I live healthily.

“I’m well aware that people in the entertainment industry have a bad reputation. You know, most men in China immediately rule me out as marriage material because I’m a pop singer. They read the gossip headlines and assume everyone in the industry is taking drugs, having affairs or whatever. But in fact most of us are just like everyone else, trying hard to make an honest living.

“If anything, I’m sometimes shocked at the lifestyle of my white collar friends. I know this really pretty woman who is a high-flying manager at a multinational company. During the day she goes to the office wearing these smart, conservative suits. At night, she throws on her miniskirts and goes hunting for Western men.

“I remember she called me up late one night, begging me to go out with her to The World of Suzie Wong. I arrived at her flat around 11:00 p.m. She was still dashing to and fro, showering, putting on makeup and picking out clothes. I usually don’t stay out late unless I have to, and almost fell asleep on her sofa waiting for her to get ready.

“When we got to the club, she sat at the bar with a cigarette dangling between her fingers. Her eyes darted left and right like a hunter looking for prey. Given that she was gorgeous and was hardly wearing anything at all that night, it wasn’t long before guys started coming over to her. They ignored me, though!

“That night she took a guy home and I left on my own. She later bragged to me that she had four different men over four nights that week.

“In the end, she became pregnant by a foreign man she had an affair with. But he disappeared and she had to go through the pregnancy all by herself. After raising the baby alone for several months, she eventually found the father again. Last I heard, they’re still together, but who knows for how much longer?”

Aifei leaned back in her chair and took another sip of tea. I smiled and nodded to let her know I understood what she was trying to say.

Affairs of the Heart

Turning back to the topic of her career, Aifei said she regrets staying in the Beijing Dance Drama & Opera Theatre for so long. “In the end it’s a state-run ensemble, and its lazy culture sort of rubbed off on me. I settled into that lifestyle and the time just slipped away. If I’d been out on my own, forced to scratch out a living, I’d probably been better able to fulfill my potential.”

Album Cover for "Ganqing Guanxi"

A glimpse of that potential came in 2006 with the online release of her self-produced album “Ganqing Guanxi” (感情关系 Affairs of the Heart). The single from that album, “Ci Xin”, became an Internet hit, and the ringtone of the song has been downloaded at least 300,000 times.

“I was in my mid-thirties and realized that the prime years of my singing career would soon be over. But what did I have to show for it? After much thinking I decided to put out an album. Without much of a track record, though, no company would invest in me. It doesn’t help that I’m not willing to make compromises to get ahead in this industry, know what I mean? So I had to take out a large chunk of my own life savings to produce the album and the video. It was very risky.”

The experience turned out to be quite an ordeal. Two Taiwanese producers gouged her financially to produce some of the songs; her CD distributor in Guangdong only paid a fifth of the fees she’d contracted them for; and she’s sure the company selling the ringtone for “Ci Xin” is vastly under-reporting the download figures to her.

“I’d do something about all these breaches of contract, but you know how the legal system is in China. So I just let it all go,” Aifei said with resignation.

Aifei’s shoestring budget enabled her to finish producing the music and video, but not to actually promote the album. As a result, the album became popular primarily through word-of-mouth from people who’d heard it on the Internet or the radio.

“If you look through the Internet,” Aifei said, “you’ll see a lot of comments from ordinary people on websites saying ‘Who is this singer, and why haven’t we heard about her before?’ or ‘Why isn’t this great song (i.e. “Ci Xin’) being promoted anywhere?’ So even though I didn’t make money from the album, it’s great to know so many people liked it. It has also brought me more attention from the industry, and I’ve gotten some opportunities as a result of that.”

I asked Aifei what her ultimate ambitions are. She wistfully replied, “At my age, the window of opportunity is likely to close very fast. I just want to make something I’m proud of, something I can leave behind, so that in the future I’ll be able to say ‘Hey, I once was a singer, and this is what I sang.’”

(See also “Chang Aifei: Live in Concert“)

 

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