The F4 boys come to town for two concerts
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
There's a lot of things that fans, especially female fans, will put up with from their idols -- bad singing, bad dancing, bad attitude -- and they will put up with much more just to catch a glimpse of them, going as far as haunting hotel lobbies and flirting with security guards.
More than 20 young women piled up in front of the elevators at the Hotel Borobudur on Thursday night, shoving each other out of the way to get a better view should Taiwanese boyband F4 be kind enough to come down from their rooms and give them a little wave or a smile.
"This is killing me! I'm gonna cry if I don't get to meet them," Mary, a young woman in her late 20s said to a friend as she got her camera-enabled cell phone ready for the "big" moment.
But that night, she and all the other girls were disappointed as the fabulous F4 had already gone up to their rooms via the elevator from the basement.
Yes, the four boys are in town; Jerry Yan, Vic Zhou, Ken Zhu, and Vanness Wu. This latest export from Taiwan enthralled fans with a two-hour concert at the Jakarta Fair Ground in Central Jakarta on Friday. And are due to give another concert on Saturday.
Dedicated fans, like Mary, have been preparing for the event months beforehand, buying up VIP and VVIP tickets to ensure the best view of the four boys' biceps.
Mary had bought her Rp 2 million (about US$234) ticket back in September, when the ticket boxes first opened.
"Initially, I wanted to buy a Rp 500,000 ticket, but was afraid that by January I would be pregnant," she said. Some 70,000 tickets were made available for the two concerts, selling at between Rp 200,000 and Rp 2 million. They were 80 percent sold.
So who are these guys, and why do they hold such a grip here -- and elsewhere in Asia -- that the President's daughter has reserved 30 seats for her and her family. According to a ticket- seller in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, she received the seats from one of the event's sponsors.
Junaidi, pop culture observer from the University of Indonesia's Faculty of Humanities, said the phenomenon was happening as Asia was sick and tired of Hollywood-style heroes.
"In a way, it is the rise of Asian heroes," he said in a talk show earlier.
Indeed, unlike their Hollywood counterparts, F4's brand of machismo comes with a squeaky-clean image -- clean shaven, no tattoos, discreet body piercing and great hair.
Initially, F4 was not even a boyband. It is a rich-boy bully gang in the hugely popular TV drama series Meteor Garden, which has been adapted from a Japanese manga comic titled Hana Yori Dango (Boys are Better than Flowers).
Aired in Indonesia on Indosiar since April 2001, the Meteor Garden story tells of a poor, high-spirited girl, Sanchai (played by Barbie Xu), who is hooked up with the leader of the gang, Dao Ming Si (Jerry Yan), at an elite Taipei university. The show is now in its second series.
The show's producer, Angie Chai, told Time magazine's Davena Mok that she had handpicked the boys out of an audition group of 200 -- with good looks and 1.8 meters in height being the minimum qualifications -- and dubbed them F4, short for "Flower Four".
A three-album contract with Sony Music added to the boys' fame; with the first album Meteor Rain (2001) being followed by Fantasy 4ever late last year. Two of the boys have also released solo albums, Zhou's Make a Wish and Wu's Body Will Sing, both of which hit the record stores last year.
F4 also sang the Asian version of the Disney cartoon Lilo & Stitch's theme song Can't Help Falling in Love, and their concerts in Beijing, Singapore and Hong Kong have been hugely successful.
Like this article mentioned earlier, fans will put up with a lot, even their idols' quirkiness and lack of talent. This was clearly evident in the group's new year concert in Hong Kong.
Vic Zhou's lack of audience interaction, Vanness Wu's wobbly singing (on account of his high-energy dancing), and Jerry Yan's out-of-tune singing and stiff dancing, were probably not lost on the tens of thousands attending the concert, but as one fan puts it clearly "they're gorgeous so they (the deficiencies) are forgiven".