The F4 boys come to town for two concerts

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".