He's not handsome [WBMSTR: Says who?!], but he has a bouncy, happy personality and is my idea of an ideal man.
Taiwan-based singer Emil Chau Hua Jian is also the reason I rue my poor command of Mandarin.
Two Thursday nights ago, I was at his concert at Singapore Indoor Stadium. It was his third show here, and, devoted fan that I am.....
He was, as always, in top form. He was funny, he was cheeky, and his voice was as achingly clear as his recordings.
But there was a problem: I barely understood what he was singing and saying.
Oh, I could
catch snatches here and there. The songs were, in any case, on
the easily understood themes of love and friendship and his bantering
was mostly basic.
But there were long segments when I sat in linguistic wilderness. At many points, I couldn't understand why the audience was laughing (I smiled wanly, just in case, for I didn't want to appear ignorant), and when he dipped into unfamiliar songs, the lyrics were lost on me.
Chau was one reason I decided to brush up my Mandarin a few years back.
I had heard his ballads on radio, fell in love with his voice and wanted to understand the lyrics. So I bought his latest album and hired a Chinese tutor.
For a few months until I gave it up, I spent two hours on Sunday mornings re-learning the Mandarin I had been taught in school.
One of the first things I made Xingchen, my young tutor from China, teach me were the words to some of Chau's songs.
Line by line, she guided me through the lyrics printed on the album cover. It was hard going, for the script was small and in the unabbreviated form that Taiwan uses.
It was also pretty embarrassing, for there I was, repeating after her corny lines like "You say I only think of you when I'm lonely, but when we meet we don't speak of love."
Still, I mastered the words to two songs -- Feng Yu We Zu (Come Wind or Rain) and Qi Shi Bu Xiang Zou (I Don't Want To Go). At the concert Thursday, when Chau sang them, I knew what the words meant. I could even sing along.
