When I am sick, I watch TV

After I came back from Taibei, I got sort of sick. What ended up happening was I sat down to eat and watch TV, since no one was at home all weekend. I was so tired that I ended up sitting there for about 6 hours too tired to move. After this experience here are some of my observations.

There's one Jay Zhou/Chou/Chow/whatever video for "Jiandan Ai" in which he approaches a young girl in a park and offers her candy. Now this girl looks like she's about 14, and so the whole thing is a little weird and slightly disturbing. Particularly the candy.

There are certain performers that seem sort of like "The Chinese (insert American pop star here)" There's this Japanese guy who seems like The Asian Justin Timberlake, there's even The Chinese Avril Lavigne. I wonder how conscious this imitation is. I mean to some Chinese executives sit around in a room somewhere and say, "Ok, Avril Lavigne is popular in America, so let's find some Chinese girl and dress her up and have her sing songs about "Being Herself."? Or is it just osmosis, as music is picked up here and simply starts a similar trend?

Despite that I wouldn't say that American pop and Taiwanese pop are exactly the same. For example, even the stuff that gets picked up here and played ad nauseum is the more squeaky clean, and let's be honest, white stuff. The Backstreet Boys over Nelly, the Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, and some British boy band called Blue. Equally there's some stuff that it really popular here that I'm guessing would never fly in the States. I'd say that concepts of masculinity here, although this is something of a sweeping generalization, are quite different. There are a couple male singers who would be considered pretty effeminate in the states. Also, many boys wear pink or sometimes chartreuse.