Chapter 63: Red vs. White
In tonight's "Golden Diamond Stars Celebrate TVB Anniversary," Li Sishi came as a "substitute" for Kuang Meixing, whose previous position was to compete against the Four Heavenly Kings as the "Four Heavenly Queens." So, as Li Sishi walked over, she ended up standing in the very front row of the group.
This year's Red vs. White battle was held at the Hong Kong Coliseum. In addition to Hua Sheng Records, which is affiliated with TBL, the participating singers included singers from 12 record companies, including PolyGram Records. Each of these record companies also sent a representative to sit in the front row. Each row of seats was equipped with a voting machine. The red button represented the red team, which was female singers, and the white button represented the white team, which was male singers. After each round of the competition, the people in this row would press the button to vote and determine the winner of that round.
Apart from record company representatives, the people in the first row were mostly prominent figures in the political world. Under such circumstances, "businessmen" like the gambling king of Macau had no choice but to settle for the second row.
Looking further back, there were many fans gathered in groups, occupying sections of the audience, creating a scene reminiscent of a fierce battle among heroes...
Compared to them, the Zhou family's small group of two or three was simply not enough. However, the siblings Zhou Huichang and Zhou Huiguang brought a flag to support Li Sishi and waved it excitedly. Li Sishi was both amused and deeply moved.
Li Sishi waved to her family, then stood up straight, raising her hands to await the start of the opening song and dance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the 'Golden Diamond Stars Celebrate TVB Anniversary' is now beginning!"
Upon hearing the whistle signaling the start, Li Sishi immediately waved her red-gloved hands to the music. With the cheerleaders surrounding the singers and the flashing lights, the entire venue instantly transformed into a sea of joy.
"Let us all encourage and cooperate, and wholeheartedly dance and sing to celebrate Emerald's birthday / Let all of humanity be active, cheering as we celebrate our 26th anniversary..."
The opening song and dance music for "Golden Diamond Stars Celebrate TVB Anniversary" has always been a combination of the year's hottest hits with newly rewritten lyrics. These new lyrics are written with the intention of "competing", so it can be said that the two sides are already exchanging barbs right from the start.
On one side, the red team sang loudly, "Come on, dare to lose again!" and "This young lady will definitely win today, no doubt about it!" On the other side, the white team retorted, adding, "Just know your place!" and "Success or failure is not limited, I'm always the most powerful!"... The energetic duet between the two sides drew cheers from the audience.
Cheers erupted continuously.
After their playful banter and duet, they sang a seemingly friendly duet: "Red and White, we've given our all in this joyful performance... Come on, let's sing our hearts out and go crazy tonight!"
The opening song and dance ended
The emcee, Chen Danju, appeared first and then invited Pei Yansang, the captain of the female singer team, and Hou Beihua, the captain of the male singer team, to the stage.
As is customary, the two team captains start off with polite exchanges before engaging in a war of words, exchanging insults and barbs.
But it was obvious that Hou Beihua, who was serving as the captain of the male singers' team for the first time this year, was no match for Pei Yansang, who had served as the captain of the female singers' team several times. In addition, although Pei Yansang was younger than him, she was more experienced, so he had to be mindful of the seniority between them. As a result, Pei Yansang, who was already very talkative, went all out tonight. As soon as she picked up the microphone, she started jokingly talking about how the male singers' team lost to the female singers' team at the Qingshuitan No. 1 Factory in a few hundred audience members last year, and that they wanted to move to the Hong Kong Coliseum in a 12,000 audience member to lose again. She said it was quite audacious...
"You're too kind. Losing in front of a few hundred people isn't a shameful thing. But tonight, with over twelve thousand people watching you female singers lose, I feel it's a terrible thing..." Hou Beihua retorted, raising the microphone.
"You two have already started arguing the moment you met, and I don't know which side to take. I guess the audience doesn't know which side to take either side either..." Chen Danju, a veteran host with many years of experience, stood between the two team captains, adopting a stance of not taking sides.
Upon hearing this, Pei Yansang, who had mocked the male singer team's defeat last year, immediately began campaigning on the spot: "Of course, we should help our red team! The audience here has discerning eyes and supports us—we just need to sit down!"
Upon hearing Pei Yansang's words, the audience members who were all sitting in their seats watching the performance burst into laughter.
"You think this is acceptable?" Hou Beihua retorted speechlessly, then ignored Pei Yansang's argument, which was neither entirely logical nor entirely justified, "Do you expect the audience to go through all that trouble to stand up and support us?" and directly countered with fallacies: "Then just support our White Team's breathing!"
"Are you kidding me? Are you trying to cheat like this?" Pei Yansang glared at him angrily.
"Alright, alright, stop arguing. Listen to me. Tonight, whichever team wins, you'll both receive five million in donations from the philanthropists. Combined with the five million you raised at the highway charity car race today, we'll have a total of ten million donated to the charity foundation..." Chen Dan abruptly interrupted the bickering again and then showed...
The two team captains used raptalk to introduce their team members to the audience.
This kind of event is a typical example of giving newcomers a chance to appear in front of the public. In addition to charity fundraising performances, most of these charity shows also have the meaning of "mentoring newcomers by experienced performers".
After the two captains introduced their team members based on their strengths or representative works, the first round of the competition began with a clash between the two teams' ace players: without a doubt, the white team decisively fielded Shang Hanyou, who possessed both strength and stamina, while the red team immediately countered with Cen Xilian, who also possessed both strength and stamina.
Speaking of which, Shang Hanyou and Cen Xilian, who are sworn siblings, are also the best scapegoats for the annual TVB Anniversary Awards.
Both of them can sing and dance, and they love to sing and dance. Every year, whenever there is a challenging segment, they will basically send this brother and sister to compete against each other. For example, in the first round and the first segment of this year, "Who will lead the way?", the emcee Chen Danju will ride a small bicycle with two microphone stands around the stage, while Shang Hanyou and Cen Xilian will have to chase after the microphone to sing and see who misses the fewest words and sings the best.
Li Sishi had no plans for the time being, so she stood on the side of the stage with the red team. While cheering loudly with her teammates to encourage Cen Xilian, she would also occasionally boo each other with the male singers of the white team standing next to her.
Watching Chen Danju ride his little bicycle, weaving and twisting through the stage, while the superstar siblings following closely behind were scrambling to keep up, the two of them managed to sing quite well despite their frantic running. Their voices were so steady that if you closed your eyes, you wouldn't guess that they were singing while running around in such a disheveled and disorganized manner.
However, Li Sishi, who was clapping and cheering along with everyone, finally heard someone make a mistake at one point—the one who made the mistake was Hanyou, the audio equipment supplier. During another inner-outer loop, he was thrown off and his running speed was not keeping up. He was a little too far from the microphone, so he inevitably missed the first two words of the lyrics.
Li Sishi's eyes lit up: This time it's in the bag!
The atmosphere now is great. People value winning and losing, but they don't have a strong competitive spirit. Plus, it's mainly a charity performance. Even though they're bickering and fighting fiercely, they can still shake hands and make peace after the competition. Even the fans cheer and applaud their idols. It's not like in later years when a slight mistake can lead to a huge fight.
Of course, when it comes to a real fight, these fans who are capable of real-life confrontations are far more powerful than the fans of later generations who mainly engage in verbal battles...
After the performance, the two talented singers who were running around singing were fine, but Chen Dan, who was riding a bicycle all over the stage, was sweating profusely. Then, following the topic of quick costume changes, he and the male and female team leaders introduced the next segment, "Rapid Costume Change Match-Up".
Four male singers battled against four female singers. After each verse, they had to run back behind the backdrop to change into each other's costumes—the female singers changed into men's clothes, and the male singers changed into women's clothes...
Although each of them had presentable short-sleeved shirts and shorts outfits as a base layer, the speed at which this group of people changed clothes was really not good, especially the male singers: the female singers, whether changing into men's clothes or changing back into women's clothes, at least managed to have only one person fail to change in time; while the male singers, on the other hand, only had one person change in time for both shows.
Among these four female singers, the one who is best at quickly changing clothes is Wen Huihui, who has recently held many concerts. When changing into men's clothing, she simply doesn't button up the clothes but ties up the hem, which gives her a unique and dashing look.
As for the male singers who performed rather poorly in both performances, when they changed back into men's clothing at the end, apart from the one who didn't take off his shirt and suit jacket but simply put on his coat and skirt, making both changes particularly quick and neat, the other three completely demonstrated the process of dressing in men's formal attire: one was only wearing an undershirt, one barely managed to put on a shirt, and one had buttoned up his shirt but didn't have time to put on his suit jacket...
After this segment, Hou Beihua, the captain of the male singer team, led a group of male singers to perform a selection of covers of classic hits from 1986.
This can be considered a classic segment of the medley cover song series that started this year. However, this medley has always been particularly challenging: in addition to the rather chaotic arrangement, the cover song arrangement is also quite quirky and chaotic. Most of the time, male singers sing female singers' songs and female singers sing male singers' songs, which is particularly difficult to listen to from the pitch to the rhythm.
But such occasions are also the last close-up opportunities for newcomers who haven't been assigned any special performance or competition segments, aside from their introductions.
In this era of abundant talent, opportunities are only given to those who are prepared and capable.
Next up was a competition where male singers sang while doing push-ups and female singers sang while doing sit-ups. The female singers were Yeh Shan-yun and Tang Ching-wen.
Unable to compete with the two established divas who have already firmly established themselves in the music scene, Li Sishi continued to watch the competition with the self-awareness of a newcomer, like a nobody.
While secretly envying the two divas for having time to perform, I was also somewhat relieved that I hadn't been chosen for this segment: compared to always singing the last note...
While the singing skills of Cen Xilian and Tang Jingwen, who are excellent partners for the next round, are not bad, their attitude is much more "lazy".
She rarely comes to rehearsals and always has her assistant take her place; during performances, she's uncoordinated and often makes mistakes; now, during competitions, she's singing while looking at lyrics on a cheat sheet; and she won't sing along to her beat, causing "delays" when she takes over… While I could somewhat excuse her uncoordinated movements by saying she lacks the talent for singing and dancing, the rest are truly attitude problems.
It's fortunate that she's truly talented, which makes people think it's her "personality"—that's how this industry is; if you have talent, everything is good, but if you don't, you can only endure criticism and condemnation.
Later on, Tang Jingwen also started to put in more effort, but unfortunately, she was probably not very coordinated and couldn't match the number of movements she made compared to the athletic Ye Shanyun next to her.
In the end, even though Huo Gucheng from the White Team had a microphone malfunction and his voice wasn't loud enough, and Ye Shanyun did sit-ups perfectly and worked incredibly hard, the Red Team, led by the female singer, still lost the round.
"It's alright, it's alright, you've worked hard, keep up the good work!" Pei Yansang quickly called Ye Shanyun and Tang Jingwen back to the queue to wait for some of the female singers to finish singing the 1987 Golden Hits compilation covers before they arrived at the highlight of the night, the "Golden Diamond Superstar Showdown" between the four kings and four queens.
This time, they'll be singing other people's songs again. The only difference from the previous hit song covers is that these eight people will be divided into two groups to sing songs by their rivals.
The first group started with Hou Beihua singing Tang Jingwen's song, but Tang Jingwen's most popular song this year is called "Helpless Wounded Woman"...
Although the song, from its title to its lyrics, is told from a woman's perspective and is full of self-pity, Hou Beihua still performed the song professionally, sporting the face of a handsome young man. Tang Jingwen, who usually doesn't like to slack off, also did her best this time, dancing along in a funny way to hinder Hou Beihua's performance. For a while, the two were locked in a fierce battle.
After Tang Jingwen stepped down
Hou Beihua then faced off against Ye Shanyun, who sang his cover song, while he accompanied her on the erhu.
In contrast, Ye Shanyun was the one who faltered this time—she's a typical "foreign girl" who barely speaks Chinese and relies entirely on English phonetics to sing Cantonese songs. Even with cheat sheets, she couldn't understand the song she was supposed to cover. In the end, she had to drag her old friend Hou Beihua up and have him lower his voice to act as a human teleprompter.
There's no fear of not having erhu accompaniment, because Hou Beihua simply mimics the motions of playing the erhu as part of his comedic performance.
That's all...
He claimed that breaking a boulder on his chest was something he could endure and learn quickly, but the erhu, a traditional instrument, is not something that can be mastered through intensive training overnight. This segment was purely to create an atmosphere for him.
After this group, which was playful, harmonious, and not particularly exciting, finished, the emcee Chen Danju began announcing the next pairing: "You guys are all so friendly, it doesn't feel like a singing battle at all. This time, let's just find someone to sing a love song—at midnight, what do you say?"
As expected of the original top star, screams and cheers immediately erupted from the audience.
“You guys have love songs, and so do we—MayMay, come out here!” Pei Yansang called Li Sishi over, first praising her youthful and beautiful look tonight, and then glaring at Ling Chen in a mocking manner, “Our MayMay is still young, you can’t bully her!”
"Competitions shouldn't be divided by age or gender!" Unexpectedly, Pei Yansang, once she got into the mood, didn't follow the dialogue from the rehearsal. Faced with the audience's good-natured laughter at the two particularly beautiful opponents, Ling Chen replied with a slightly aggrieved yet very serious tone.
His usual soft, childlike voice was very different from his deep, resonant voice when he sang. When he said this, he was also an overly clueless, straight-laced man. Coupled with Li Sishi, who was being protected by Pei Yansang and peeking out from behind, many viewers who had been shipping the "golden couple" due to the recent overwhelming hype from Luo Ji Telecom were shaking their heads and laughing on the spot.
It's not that they don't want to ask for recommendations, it's just that you guys don't have the right atmosphere!
Sensing the audience's helplessness, Li Sishi leaned out from behind Pei Yansang, took the microphone Pei Yansang handed her, and immediately made her stance clear: "Don't worry, I don't need you to give way!"
"Are you sure you can sing my key?" Ling Chen asked instinctively.
This wasn't just dialogue designed during rehearsals; it was also a genuine concern: because his songs have relatively low pitches, female singers often need to raise the key to sing them when they cover them.
Although I had heard Li Sishi sing his song during rehearsals, rehearsals and the stage are different, so it's normal to be a little worried.
"Bring it on!" Li Sishi tilted her chin slightly, exuding a youthful and charming beauty.
The viewers who had previously been speechless at the man's lack of romantic understanding suddenly became inexplicably excited upon seeing this scene: for some reason, this spark-filled moment was even more exciting than the previous scenes showing friendship and mutual assistance...
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