Thanks to F4, I’m singing in Mandarin again
I had second thoughts about going to the recent F*Forever concert—an almost-F4 reunion featuring Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, and Vanness Wu, with Ashin of the Taiwanese band Mayday—mostly because of the venue. For all its transport and logistical headaches, I have tried to avoid the Philippine Arena as much as possible unless I actually like the artist performing.
Did I like F4 enough to make the trip? The fever that swept the country in the early aughts was very real, and while I wouldn’t say I caught it, I was, at the very least, a willing participant.
The talk of the school
I could barely tell you what “Meteor Garden” was about, except that its two leads bickered like cats and dogs. What I do remember, though, was that it premiered in May 2003, right in the middle of summer vacation. When classes resumed that June, all my classmates ever talked about was the show—and who among us could be anointed as the class Shan Cai, Dao Ming Si, or Hua Ze Lei.
Everyone rushed straight home—or rather, to Ying De Academy—because missing an afternoon episode meant missing it completely.
I remember our neighborhood tagaplantsa, who would bring over her bootleg F4 VCDs so she could watch the music videos on our TV while helping my mother iron our clothes. In exchange, I made her listen to my CDs of Backstreet Boys and Boyzone.
Nostalgia, an old friend
Somehow, I still found myself trooping to Bulacan—a colleague may or may not have convinced me to go. The crowd, as expected, was overwhelmingly millennial and older. And, more importantly, finally armed with the purchasing power to indulge their teenage fandom. There was even a fan who flew in from Boracay just to get a glimpse of her teenage crushes for the first time; she couldn’t catch F4’s early-2000s shows because she quipped, “poorita pa ako noon!”
Another held up a banner declaring she was now of legal age to propose marriage to Yan. Others teased that the air reeked of Katinko; I didn’t catch a whiff, but let’s just say I could read most people’s phone messages from afar.
Ah, nostalgia—an old friend. The thing about a pop culture phenomenon is that it gets trapped inside a very specific bubble in time. For people like me who weren’t particularly devoted fans, F4 never really existed beyond that window.
As such, watching them onstage 23 years later felt almost like attending a high school reunion—you reminisce about the classroom hijinks, and not much else, but it was fun all the same.
That was more or less how things went for a good chunk of the show, when they performed songs I didn’t recognize—especially their later solo work. But then they would drop the hits I knew and pull me back into that bubble. I loved “Season of Fireworks,” “Meteor Rain,” and “At the First Place” because, honest to goodness, they were simply good pop songs.
The ‘unmarried’ Jerry Yan
Like a high school reunion, the concert had its share of missing faces and unfamiliar plus-ones. The most obvious change was the absence of original member Ken Chu—reportedly because negotiations fell through—and the addition of Ashin, who produced the world tour.
The concert also showed who had changed and who had pretty much stayed the same. Wu has always been the strongest performer—the group’s resident showman who effortlessly moves from theatrical pop to stadium rock and upbeat gospel.
And is this really Chou now? That painfully shy guy with a melancholic air was now all energetic and playful, performing “Make a Wish” onstage with breakdancing mascots. The same guy who used to let others do the talking now bantered with the group, and at one point, offered the still “unmarried” Yan to the fans.
Charisma in spades
Needless to say, there were thousands of willing takers. Yan, unlike the hot-headed character that made him famous, was rather soft-spoken and sensitive. He didn’t do much by way of vocals or performance. But when you’re pushing 50 and still look like it’s 2003, and have charisma in spades, you can sing in a duck costume—or just stand there—and the fans would still lose it.
Take our seatmate, who would, at the most random, quiet moments, suddenly shriek, “I love you, Dao Ming Si!” It was, hilariously, Melai Cantiveros.
But more than the kilig, the hysterics, and the marriage proposals, it was Yan who became the evening’s defining bridge to the past.
I’m not sure if the heartfelt monologue he delivered before his solo hit “I Really, Really Love You” was just a standard tour spiel, but the message—about people not being meant to stay with you forever, only to walk with you for a little while—hit close to home for longtime fans still grieving the death of Barbie Hsu, Yan’s definitive leading lady who played Shan Cai.
He hung a meteor necklace from a telescope—the one Dao Ming Si gave Shan Cai—and the gesture said everything that needed saying.
A snapshot of youth
We often hear how nostalgia transports us back to a simpler time and how emotionally moving it all is.
While I didn’t have a grand internal epiphany, watching these songs live gave me a snapshot of what my youth looked like: our CRT television with a missing channel button, where I watched the daily charts on Myx, and where F4 and its members traded places in the Top 3 week after week.
I remember being fascinated by the Mandarin lyrics, trying to phonetically memorize them the same way I memorized anime theme songs. I felt so smug when I figured out that “-hui” sounded like “hwei,” and that “e” sounded closer to “uh.” At the concert, I found myself unwittingly putting that childhood knowledge to the test as the Mandarin choruses I didn’t fully understand came back to me, precision be damned.
I could still barely tell you what “Meteor Garden” was about. But for someone who claimed he never caught the F4 fever, I sure sang along better than most.
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