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Contents
Introduction
•
General introduction
•
About S.H.E
When it all began
•
In the beginning
The Collection
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Albums 专辑
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Posters
•
Books
Albums and Songs
•
女生宿舍
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青春株式会社
•
美丽新世界
•
Together 新歌+精选
•
Super Star
•
奇幻旅程
•
Encore 安可!!
Experiences
•
Autograph 签唱会
− 奇幻旅程
− Encore 安可!!
•
奇幻乐园 Concert
Thoughts
Miscellaneous |
News
22 Feb 2005 - Began writing this
page
06 Mar 2005 - More added, new layout
Introduction
General Introduction
Welcome. I am a S.H.E fan, and this page is about the
Taiwan girl band, S.H.E, how I got to know them and lots of others.
About S.H.E
S.H.E is a Taiwanese girl-band, now famous in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia,
China, Hong Kong, Japan and many other places. S.H.E consists of 3 members, Selina
Ren, Hebe Tien and Ella Chen. The group name was formed using the
initials of their names.
I found an article on Wikipedia so I shall quote it here. I will add on to the
article as time progresses:
On August 8, 2000, HIM International Records held a 'Universal 2000 Talent and
Beauty Girl Contest' in search for new artists to be signed under their label.
(something like American Idol) The contest had about 1000 contestants and after
many tiring rounds of competing, seven contestants were left for the Final
round. The three members of S.H.E. were formed from here. Following the
competition, the record company gave all seven contestants an audition. At the
beginning, only one would be given a contract, but because of their incredible
performance, all three of them were signed together under HIM International
records. Together, they formed S.H.E with Selina Ren, Hebe Tien and Ella Chen.
Selina Ren was the actual winner of this contest. Her younger sister really
wanted to join but was too young. Instead, Selina joined the contest in her
place. She caught the judges' attention in the first round by singing Coco Lee's
'Before I Fall In Love' and entered the final round with no trouble with 'The
Closest Stranger'. Due to her nervousness during the final round, Selina was
called twice, and when she was announced the winner, she was doubtful because
there were other contestants who did not get called on.
Hebe Tien was recommended to join by the workers of the television show. During
the first round, her voice started breaking while singing 'Return Home'. Hebe
decided to sing a song with a lower key in the final round. But because she was
unfamiliar with the song, she forgot her lyrics in the finals, messing up her
performance. However, the manager appreciated her straight personality.
When Ella Chen and her younger brother went to Taipei from Pingtung for a
holiday, Ella's elder sister registered her into the competition. She almost
gave up before the first round because of the long queue of contestants, but was
convinced by her sister to stay, and made her way through the final round. She
had a unique deep voice, which caught the company's attention and made her stand
out from the others.
After three of them were signed to HIM, the company initially did not make them
a group because their different personalities and looks did not fit with what
the audience was used to. But because Taiwan had never had an all-girl group
with different personalities and looks, they thought that it would be new and
fresh, so they boldly put the three girls together. After the three girls heard
this, they did not really accept the decision because it was not what they were
thinking. All three of them came from different places; they never telephoned
each other and only said 'hi' when they met. Because most of the songs in the
album did not require them to sing together, their relationship was not very
good, making the company worry. When the company then let them stay in the same
room in the same dormitory, the girls were worried that they would argue. But
the company hoped that by this they could learn to cooperate with each other. To
prevent them from arguing, the record company set a few rules of life for the
girls living in the dormitory. After a week, the record company's worries were
gone because the three girls were closer to each other and could be mistaken as
triplets! Just like that, the three girls lived in a small dormitory together
for a few months and passed on flus and boredom to each other. Sometimes they
would cry under their blankets because they were extremely homesick. When they
were bored, they opened the window, ate junk food, and watched the stars.
Selina 任家萱
Name : Selina Ren Jia Xuan (任家萱)
Birthplace : Taipei, Taiwan (台北市)
Birthdate : 31st October 1981
Height : 163 cm
Blood Type: A
Family Members : Dad, Mom and Younger Sister
Favourite Singers : Coco Lee, Zhang Hui Mei, Kit Chan
Favourite Accessories : Things associated with Melody
Favourite Genres of Shows : Comedies, Art
Favourite Animal : Rabbit
Hated Animal : Big Dogs
Favourite Colour : Pink
Favourite Kind of Clothing : Have her own style
Favourite Food : Seaweed, Baby Food
Thing she wants to do : Go to Japan for a shopping spree
Hobbies : Shopping, Singing
Hebe
田馥甄
Name : Hebe Tian Fu Zhen (田馥甄)
Birthplace : Hsinchu, Taiwan (新竹)
Birthdate : 30th March 1983
Height : 161 cm
Blood Type: A
Family Members : Dad, Mom, Elder Brother
Favoutite Singers : Faye Wong, The Cranberries, Tanya Chua
Favourite Animals : Dogs, Elephants
Hated Animals : Cats, Rats
Favourite Colours : Black, Red
Favourite Kind of Clothing : Natural, Simple
Favourite Food : Fruits, Bread
Things she wants to do : Sleep, Sing
Hobbies : Watch Movies, TV, Listening to Music & Talking
Ella
陈嘉桦
Name : Ella Chen Jia Hua (陳嘉樺)
Birthplace : Pingtung, Taiwan
Birthdate : 18th June 1981
Height : 163 cm
Blood Type: O
Family Members : Dad, Mom, Grandparents, Elder Sister, Younger Brother
Favourite Singers : Karen Mok, Bon Jovi, Stefanie Sun, Wang Lee-Hom, Céline Dion
Favourite Accessories : Watches
Favourite Genres of Shows : Comedies, Love, War, Action
Favourite Animals : Cats, Dogs
Hated Animal : Lizards
Favourite Colour : Black, White, Green and Blue
Favourite Kind of Clothing : Comfort
Favourite Food : Seafood Marcaroni, Mother's Home Cooked Food
Things she wants to do : Concerts for everyone
Hobbies : Basketball, Computer Games
When it all began
In The Beginning
It all began on 7 August 2003, 8:54:49pm (according to my
archive records). My cousin Yang Yu sent me an MP3 file, “S.H.E - mei li xin shi
jie.mp3”. It was the S.H.E
美丽新世界
MP3 file. Prior to that, I didn’t really like Chinese songs. In fact, I hated
Chinese songs. I attribute it to the fact that my Chinese wasn’t very good and I
was doing badly in school, for the Chinese subject.
Because I really didn’t like Chinese songs, so I never
listened to any of them, and was totally alien to the mandopop all around me.
For example I would always tune the radio to a classical or an English channel
while on my dad’s car, if a Chinese channel was on air. The only Chinese
programmes I did watch were those Chinese Drama Series on Channel 8 on TV, and
the occasional news.
Back to the story…I didn’t really like Chinese songs, but
I listened to it anyway… and I thought it was really nice! Now that’s strange
because I always had bad impressions on Chinese songs. Another interesting
things was that I actually sent that song,
美丽新世界, to another friend,
on 9 August 2003, 4:53:23pm. But since I didn’t like Chinese songs, I didn’t do
anything else like go find out about other Chinese songs, so of course I didn’t
even know who S.H.E was… until sometime later. I can’t really remember the
details but there were several signs which can give an idea to when I first
began to listen to their songs.
The first important sign, as far as I could find in my
archives, was some 2 months later, when I first sent a few S.H.E songs to a
friend: Superstar on 15 October 2003 8:26:52pm and I.O.I.O. on 17
October 2003 11:21:36pm. I also told people about the S.H.E official website
during that October, and I remember I went to the site as there were MVs
available online for streaming. It was at http://she.him.com.tw/MTV then.
Another important sign was the inclusion of the S.H.E
song, 远方, in my MSN
messenger nick, on 21 October 2003, between 11:54:01pm on 20 October
2003 and 21 October 2003 12:01:07am (as from my archive records). Around this
period, I really liked that song, and I still do.
According to internet sources, S.H.E’s fifth album,
Superstar, was released on 24 August 2003. As always, following an album’s
release would be lots of advertisement. As far as I can remember, I heard and
saw S.H.E’s new song, Superstar, on TV, several times. I was surprised again,
because I actually liked the song and the melody stuck in my head, until I was
unable to contain it any longer and did an internet search for the song and
found the song. It was also then when I realised that the song my cousin had
sent to me some time ago, was also sung by S.H.E! I estimate the time to be
around the early part of October but everything is a bit fuzzy now so I can’t be
certain.
It was then when I started to get interested, and started
to search for S.H.E songs online, and also found several S.H.E related websites
like:
http://www.shefans.com
http://www.geocities.com/cute_society/
http://www.geocities.com/alithair/she.htm
And of course the official site http://she.him.com.tw/MTV where I listened and
streamed many of their songs online.
I remember going to the CD shop to check out the Superstar
album, but I had no money to buy it. So I saved up, until I had $22:90 or what,
and went back to Sembawang Music, at Junction 8 (a shopping centre near my
school), but was dismayed that it had already been sold out! This probably
happened before 24 October 2003. The album I was looking for was the long
version (limited edition) so only the normal CD version was left. I went to
several CD shops (I remember walking around harbourfront to find it) trying to
find it, but to no avail. All the limited edition CDs had been snapped up.
According to my digital photos I took on 24
October 2003, I managed to get my hands on a S.H.E super star album (long
version). Apparently, my CCA friend’s (who did Gymnastics with me) cousin (or
someone else… will confirm later) bought the CD, so he lent it to me. I also
bought the I-weekly magazine on that day, as S.H.E was on the cover!
S.H.E came to Singapore to promote their album, and went
to Mediacorp Radio 933 for interviews, so I recorded it down and took many
photos of them from the 933 online webcam, from 11:15pm on 31 October 2003 to
12:20am on 1 November 2003. They also appeared on Singapore TV programme PSC
Nite (普威之夜), on 1 November
2003 from 8pm to 9pm.
So this is the story of how I got to know S.H.E… as for
the rest, well that’s for another story.
Experiences
S.H.E Singapore
Fantasy Land Tour Concert 8 Jan 05 & Autograph Session on 9th Jan 05
S.H.E
奇幻乐园演唱会；等待三年，迫不及待。
那夜，我们一起笑 一起哭 一起唱 一起遨游奇幻乐园。
S.H.E 第一场大型售票演唱会。
On 6th Jan 2005, S.H.E arrived in
Singapore. But for what reason? Yes. They were going to hold their Concert in
Singapore - this article documents this unforgettable experience as well as the
days preceding to, and proceeding the event.
This was S.H.E's first large scale
concert, and they traveled to several places, starting from Taiwan on 4th
September 2004, to other places like Shanghai and Malaysia. To begin the new
year, S.H.E would hold their concert in Singapore on the 8th of January,
Saturday night 8pm. Benjamin Tan, my friend since Primary 4, was also a S.H.E
fan. So on Friday night, he came to my house. We watched the Taiwan SHE concert
VCDs (which was already on sale, though not the official one), before we went to
sleep.
So the next day, we got up in the
morning and went to (I also got some halls sweets because they were cheap, at
the petrol station) to Chinatown and Orchard to get some CDs. I went to House of
Stars too to collect the S.H.E Encore DVD taiwan version which I had ordered.
Following that, we went to Popular Bookshop to get large bright coloured paper.
This was to make 3 large posters, each representing one letter, forming S.H.E.
We we got back to my house we cut them out, stuck them on a corrugated plastic
board (and Styrofoam for the E because we didn't have enough plastic boards) and
painted the white parts black. Our effort can be
seen in the picture. Of course this is for the
S.H.E concert and we planned to wave them wildly. The reason why we painted them
back is because during the concert, the background will be dark, so it's only
common sense to paint it black so the letters will show up. We didn't cut them
out because we also wanted to maintain the structural integrity of our banners
(remember we have to wave it around without it collapsing)
Once everything was painted, we got
ready and packed out stuff. Benjamin Tan took 40mins to shower (!!!)... don't
know why he took so long. Anyway, we left the house around 5:30pm without taking
dinner yet, and left for the Singapore Indoor Stadium in bus number 10. After a
long walk from the bus-stop to an MRT station, we met another friend there, Hong
Chen. Hong Chen is rich and he got the most expensive ticket costing $148. Me
and Ben were sitting at the same place. I booked the tickets online about 2
months before the concert. Because we are not overflowing we money, we had to
settle for the cheapest seats ($68). Me and Ben are in the Singapore S.H.E fan
club and we could have got the special fan-club seats for $150, but sadly we had
not enough money. In any case the seats were almost entirely sold out. We took
another bus (I think it was 11) to the Indoor Stadium, which was totally cramped
with people going to the S.H.E concert.
When we reached there, we were greeted
with a large crowd of people who were all streaming into the indoor stadium. We
walked around the indoor stadium. There were several things on sale like
light-sticks and SHE CDs and VCDs but we didn't buy any as we deemed the light
stick ineffective (and my torch was brighter :-) ) so we proceeded in we
excitement. Interestingly enough, the collected all water bottles and checked
our bags. I had hidden my two digital cameras at the bottom of my bag and it was
good that they didn't even notice them. We walked up to our seats. The Singapore
Indoor Stadium was a bit smaller than I expected, which was good because that
means I'll be closer to the center stage where S.H.E will be. Near the top of
the ceiling at the centre was this HUGE bass speakers which I estimate to be
bigger than my room! Anyway the concert began at around 8:30pm. The second photo shows the concert in action!
It was absolutely electrifying! The sound is so loud that I was wondering how
the roof even held up. Even my ultra loud whistle seemed quite useless in this
situation.
Our seats were located at the front of the back rows (which is up at the top)
and it was relatively darker there because the lights were all shining at the
bottom. So this is when our big poster came in handy. We went to the railing at
the front and stuck out poster there. I brought my ultra-bright Princeton Tec 40
torch and lit the poster up shining on it madly. Me and Ben were blow whistles
like mad. The Princeton Tec was really bright. Anyway, I checked with some other
fan-club members who were sitting at the bottom and they said they could see our
poster and the torch. Not too bad at all! I guess it was quite visible. Anyway,
me and Ben spent most of the time at the railing kneeling down. Everyone else
was seated though I think it wouldn't be as exciting and enjoyable if I had just
sat there like a stone. We moved across the side but people were complaining on
the other side so we went back to our original railing place. The sound was so
loud that I suspect that the mike was getting feedback from the speakers
creating a never-ending loop of noise. This happened 2 or 3 times I think.. in
the middle of the song, but SHE actually sang the song again because of that! I
took many photos, though it's hard to see anyone because they are not so near. I
hope the company will make a Singapore concert VCD and maybe our poster will be
visible! This is the first pop concert I've ever attended (ben's first too) and
I must say it is really amazing. Actually thinking about it again it all seems
so unreal, as if it was a dream... I took many photos so I hope I can remember
and cherish this concert. It ended around 11:20 to 11:30pm.
Anyway S.H.E had this Appreciation and Autograph session at IMM on 9th Jan 05.
However, this time it was different as it had a 1000 people limit. This is
because SHE had to perform at the 仁心慈爱照万千 charity show on Channel U (which was
what I was talking about in the start of this entry... S.H.E sang 我爱你 and 痛快) so
they didn't have much time. As such, ben tan wanted to stay overnight at IMM. I
was apprehensive at first but thought it would be okay. My dad didn't really
like the idea but he still let me go. Hm... thinking about it now was it really
necessary to go queue so early? It's quite interesting why our minds want to go
yet if we think about it logically, there's really no point. Is there really a
need to do this for a few signatures? What makes us want to do that?
Anyway we waited for some time for a bus but realised we were waiting at the
wrong bus stop (only had bus 16 but we need 11 to get to a MRT station). Anyway,
the bus service had ended by that time (ended at 11:37 pm) and so we hired a cab
instead. Mid-night charge is so expensive! (50% more.. ended up $19) But there
was no other way to get there. Astonishingly, Giant (a big supermarket) was
still open (they close at 1am) so me and ben bought some tuna puffs (1.95) and
bread (1.15), for dinner and breakfast. I was surprised at the number of people
still doing shopping there! I didn't expect even a single shop to be open. (We
got there at around 12:30). So anyway, we walked toward this place there the
autograph session would be held but we saw some people talking to the security.
Apparently they security didn't let us stay over inside the IMM building, so we
slept outside.
The whole SHE fan-club was there already so we slept on the pavement outside IMM.
It was quite clean actually and lucky it didn't rain. McDonalds was trying to
clear it's stock so some people bought food from Macs, but since we had stuff to
eat already, we didn't buy more food. I slept at around 1:30am I think. Woke
once at 2:30 and 3:30 and 5:30, then finally at 6:30 (doors opened). Wasn't that
bad actually. My sec 3 Outward Bound School camp had worse sleeping conditions.
So we went in and queued for some time. To pass time, I was sleeping and
revising Chinese and ben was studying biology. We also played cards (taiti) with
ben's friend also. We waited until around 11pm like that then the security guard
came and distributed the numbers. This signing session is limited to 1000 people
so they give out the numbers. I got 0100! Nice huh. Anyway, ben had to sign
another album for his friend so he sneaked to the back and got another number
(0472 or what..) to queue up again. Not good but quite smart haha. We were free
to roam around after we got the numbers. So actually sleeping overnight was okay
because we didn't queue for very long anyway, just sleep. There were a LOT of
people and the 2nd and 3rd levels were becoming full (as it got closer to 3pm).
Of course those who came later didn't manage to get a number so queuing early is
good (besides you get an excellent view).
This time they signed only the Encore VCD or the Encore DVD. The fan-club told
me that they will only sign original Singapore albums and you need the PG
sticker. However, mine was pre-ordered and imported from Taiwan so the album is
slightly different and it doesn't have the Singapore Censorship board PG
sticker. So on Saturday I used Zippo Lighter Fluid to take out the sticker off
another album and stuck it on my album. However, they didn't check that so there
wasn't a need to do that anyway. I also bought the Encore VCD because I don't
have a DVD player on my computer and it comes with a nice poster and the CD is
nice. The price varies from different CD shops.
So me and ben went roaming around and we had lunch at KFC (the 2.95 meal because
it was one of the cheapest around there). The food courts were too expensive. We
went back at around 2 if I remember correctly. and waited until 3. SHE came from
the 3rd level and everyone got mad! It's kinda like a mini-version of the
concert. I thought Selina looked really nice. They sang 痛快 (Which happens to be
at the top of the charts at time of writing) and then started autographing. It's
a totally different experience to see them singing so close up. Again I say it
seems so unreal. I see them all the time on the CDs and yet they are now right
in front of me singing. Got my album signed fast, shook their hands and then
went down. Another special experience. I passed them something I drew. Hopefully
they like it. I suppose the 1000 albums were autographed quite fast, so my dad
took me home at around 4pm.
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