Idol power
▶ Teenage boy bands garner increasing international fan base for Chinese pop culture
○ The popularity of very young singers and dancers has hit an all-time high in China
○ The band Boy Story, with backing from Chinese and Korean entertainment giants, exemplifies this trend
○ Idols should have more balanced lives and send proper messages to impressionable young people, say experts
Xinlong, 13, is chasing a flying golden scrap of paper on stage during a rehearsal break.
The boy is a member of Boy Story, a newly debuted Chinese boy group with six talented young dancers aged 11 to 14.
They are preparing for an online entertainment show, which is being filmed in Starpark studio in Daxing district, a Beijing suburb.
It is 11 am, and the rehearsal has lasted for one hour. Before that, the boys got up at 6 am to prepare their make-up for the show.
The day before, they did not finish their activity on a radio show until 10:30 pm.
Boy Story is one of the many young idol groups that have emerged in the past two years in China.
The trend came after the TFBoys’ miracle. Each of the three teenage members of TFBoys, has grown into a national superstar with tens of millions of fans, ranging from school children to middle-aged parents.
The national enthusiasm for idols is at an all time high this year, which has been dubbed China’s “Year One for Idols.”
But the TFBoys success cannot be copied easily.
While more entertainment agencies and children with idol dreams are seeking to share a piece of the pie, bigger companies that are more professional and international are also joining the competition for producing young idols.
Meanwhile, cultural experts called for enhancing control over the commercial activities of those underage idols, to avoid the young generation being influenced by subversive subcultures.
Real story
“Hanyu! Zihao! Xinlong! Zeyu! Mingrui! Shuyang! Boy Story!”
This is the chant coming from about 150 fans shouting loudly together when the six boys dance on stage, accompanying their funky song “Enough.”
“No need to copy! We are born different. I’m telling you our real story,” they rap. They sing in a mix of English and Chinese.
Pyrotechnic effects shoot in front of the young boys, making the studio room hot and smoky.
After the three-and-half-minute song, they are all sweaty and out of breath.
The whole video shoot takes about 15 minutes. They record the song twice.
It finishes at noon, but the young stars have no appetite because of the intense dance on stage.
The staff of their company decide to go back to the office directly, so that the boys could rest a little bit during the one-hour drive and prepare for later activities.
Fans are waiting outside.
Boy Story members keep bowing low and repeating “Thank you” when they walk through the screaming crowd from the stage door to their van.
Zhang Hailun, a 22-year-old from North China’s Hebei Province, was one among the fans.
She arrived at the Starpark at 7 am in order to stand at the first of the queue to meet her idols.
Zhang, who just graduated in an American college in June, first discovered the group in March.
“At first I found their videos on YouTube. I did not expect them to be a Chinese group, let alone this good,” Zhang, holding an official banner of Boy Story, told the Global Times.
Zhang then watched one video after another and became a fan.
She went to the debut showcase of the group with her camera and 100-400 GM lens to take pictures of the boys. The pictures she takes are no worse than a professional photographer.
She also has bought 10 copies of Boy Story’s mini album at 119 yuan ($17) each, in order to collect the random portraits of the group members inside the album.
“On average you need to buy 14.7
copies to get the whole set of portraits,” Zhang, a math student at college, said.
“Sometimes when I’m working I get exhausted. But when I think of Boy Story, and how hardworking they are, I keep going,” she said.
Boy Story became famous first overseas before in China.
The music video of Boy Story’s song “Enough” has been viewed more than 2.6 million times on YouTube.
In the comments section under the video, fans write in English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic to express their enthusiasm for the group.
“For once I’m older than an idol group and can say that ‘I feel like a proud mom,’” commented a fan on YouTube.
They are co-produced by China’s Tencent Music Entertainment and Korean JYP Entertainment (JYP), two entertainment giants.
JYP, founded in 1997 in Seoul, has maintained popular boy-groups including 2AM, 2PM, GOT7 and DAY6.
Boy Story is their new production targeting the young idol market and the Chinese market.
Through Boy Story, the companies hope to transplant the idol machine of K-pop to China from South Korea.
Before the official debut in September, Boy Story had a one-year warm-up project.
Within the month, Boy Story has taken a showcase tour to meet fans in Guangzhou, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing. They are also visiting Singapore.
The boys, like other children of age, go to school during the day time. But after school, they practice and do activities involving their idol identities.
“If I was not an idol, I would be a soccer player for the national team,” said Mingrui, 12, from Boy Story. “I’d be a pilot,” said Shuyang, 11 and the youngest.
“We are not different from our peers,” Xinlong said in an interview with the Global Times. “Maybe it’s just we could realize our dreams, and we are doing more during the same period of time,” he said.
“We want to present Chinese music and promote Chinese culture to the world,” said Xinlong.
Follow your dreams
In 2018, more than 20 Chinese idol groups made their official debuts, including many underage ones.
In South Korea, the trend began in 1996, when HOT, its members 16 to 18 years old, became the first young K-pop idol group.
More young people are chasing their dreams of becoming idols.
Before being selected into groups and officially debuting, they learn and train in entertainment companies, and are called trainees.
Zhang Yichi, a 22-year-old from Southwest China’s Guizhou Province, is now a private trainee in Beijing. Every day he undergoes training on dance and singing.
“It is really hard… My parents and friends had told me not to do this,” he said.
“But I told myself to work hard! Maybe if I had looked for a job after graduation, I could have been in an office with a stable salary, but it is not what I like to do,” he said.
His friend Su Zhiheng quit studying engineering in university to become an idol, following his dream.
“The younger boys are getting stronger, but we are no worse,” he said.
Second thoughts
For young fans, young idols become role models, and for adult fans, the young idols make them nostalgic for their teenage years, or make up their regret, Jiang Haisheng, head of the Journalism and Communication Department at the Shandong University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.
According to a report of South Korean education television, the most popular dream job for teenagers in the country is now idol, displacing the previous top choices of scientist, teacher and pilot.
South Korea, after 22 years of developing its teen idol industry, is doing some soul searching.
Many of the idols are not well-educated, especially when it comes to sex education and values, said the report. In China, the worries are the same. “A person’s comprehensive development calls for growth in merit, psychology, body, knowledge and many other aspects,” Jiang said. “The process has a natural principle. Children who become idols need to pay a price when their childhood is interrupted.”
“The commercial activities of underage idols need to be regulated some degree, in case it produces some antisocial influence toward teenagers,” Jiang said.
“Chasing young idols is like playing games, in which players must keep hitting new targets to have sense of achievement,” Shi Wenxue, a Beijingbased film critic, told the Global Times.
“Underage idols could bring positive influence to fans, such as motivating them to work hard or building patriotism,” Shi said.
Meanwhile, there could also be some problems that could bring negative effects. This is because the driving force behind the idols are commercial imperatives and the need to entertain, Shi said.
He noted that young fans and idols all need positive and active guidance, and this is the responsibility of families, schools, society and government.
“For once I’m older than an idol group and can say that ‘I feel like a proud mom.’”
One of Boy Story’s fans on YouTube