{"id":1382,"date":"2024-12-06T14:34:32","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T19:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2025-03-26T16:04:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T20:04:41","slug":"arouse-goes-global-andy-lau-taipei-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/12\/06\/arouse-goes-global-andy-lau-taipei-arena\/","title":{"rendered":"AROUSE GOES GLOBAL: ANDY LAU \uff08\u5218\u5fb7\u534e\uff09 @ TAIPEI ARENA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Image credits: Michelle Wu<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absence makes the heart grow fonder – while this debatable phrase might not always hold true, Andy Lau definitely took it to heart when he opened for the last leg of his 2024  Today\u2026 Is the Day<\/em> tour in Taipei, Taiwan earlier this November. Despite several misfortunes experienced in the tour,  including delays in concert times from various typhoon warnings and a minor injury he\u2019d sustained from a previous concert, the Hong Kong superstar eagerly greeted his 15,000 fans in the Songshan District Taipei Arena shortly before the start of the show, \u201cHello, friends in Taipei! It\u2019s good to be back!  \u597d\u9ad8\u5174\u56de\u6765\u4e86\uff0c\u53f0\u5317\u670b\u53cb\u4eec\uff01\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon Lau\u2019s announcement that he would perform in the Taipei Arena for the first time in ten years, a full-on brawl emerged over the tickets.\u00a0 \u201cAndy Lau\u201d might get little to no reactions for the average American, but the singer is a household name in the Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking world, with a three-decade-spanning career in both the music and film industry going strong to this day. Imagine him as Chinese Tom Cruise, if Tom Cruise spent less time in Scientology and more time in the studio releasing really good Cantonese pop music. Tickets for his four-day Taipei concerts sold out within a week of registration,\u00a0 according to local news. I have only my Tixcraft-savvy (Taiwanese version of Ticketmaster) grandparents to thank for my spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everything was relatively smooth sailing from there, after the initial ticketing stress. The concert check-in process consisted of mostly simple security checks before me and my friend were ushered into the crowded but still comfortably air-conditioned venue. To keep us from boredom during the hour-long countdown to the concert, we were treated to free snacks and free merch ranging from posters to handheld fans to sticker-decorated photocards; some girl in the row in front of me even managed to get her hands on a whole umbrella with Andy Lau\u2019s face on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weeks leading up to the concert, some concerned Chinese-speaking netizens (Internet users) chattered about Lau\u2019s ability to perform a whole three-hour concert due to his age and past medical issues. However, the 62-year-old superstar failed to disappoint, singing exceptionally well for nearly the whole concert duration. He stopped only to talk to fans and interact with the crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cInsane\u201d is the only way I can describe the concert experience. The singer loaded the setlist with his famous crowd-pleasers, like \u201cDays We Spent Together\u00a0 \u4e00\u8d77\u8d70\u8fc7\u7684\u65e5\u5b50\u201d\u00a0 and \u201cForget Love Potion \u5fd8\u60c5\u6c34,\u201d but made sure to sprinkle in some underrated cuts. Lau sang his sole Taiwanese Hokkien-language song \u201cWorld\u2019s First \u4e16\u754c\u7b2c\u4e00\u7b49\u201d\u00a0 specifically for the Taipei concerts. Equally impressive was the varied rotation of different sets and outfit changes Lau did for each song, with my favorite being the 1930s cheongsam-wearing background dancers and Old Shanghai-inspired backdrop for his cover of iconic Cantopop song \u201cThe Bund \u4e0a\u6d77\u6ee9\u201d, during which the crowd was possibly the loudest that night.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a strange yet endearing sense of unity that night, being in the sea of fans ranging from ages of both middle-aged and Gen-Z\u00a0 for this 62-year old Hong Kong singer whose popularity has not only grown, but seemingly skyrocketed as the years passed. \u201cI\u2019ll love you for a thousand years!! \u7231\u4f60\u4e00\u4e07\u5e74\uff01\uff01\u201d, the crowd had shouted as the concert wrapped up, to which Lau jokingly replied, \u201cYou guys better not lie! \u4e0d\u53ef\u4ee5\u6492\u8352\u54e6\uff01\u201d Rest assured \u534e\u54e5, I\u2019ll still be keeping your photocard in my purse by the time I\u2019m also your age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  My Andy Lau photocard\/merch bag I\u2019ve been amassing for months. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image credits: Michelle Wu Absence makes the heart grow fonder – while this debatable phrase might not always hold true, Andy Lau definitely took it to heart when he opened for the last leg of his 2024  Today\u2026 Is the Day tour in Taipei, Taiwan earlier this November. Despite several misfortunes experienced in the tour,  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[24,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}