Sweet tones and happy memories

Taiwanese diva Tsai Chin was back in Bangkok last weekend staging her second concert “Tsai Chin Good Sign” at Royal Paragon Hall of Siam Paragon in front of an audience from all walks of life.
    Making her entrance clad in a gold evening dress, the same one she wore for a show at the 50th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, the diva swung into “Leaving Home” and “Tell Me You Love Me”.
    She greeted the audience in Mandarin, lifting her dress slightly to reveal a splint on her left leg. “I’m sorry if my dancing isn’t as good as it should be. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you so I will do my best to stand until the end of the concert. I want you to enjoy yourselves,” said the 60-year-old singer as the audience broke out in applause.

Tsai Chin’s concert featured more than 20 songs, separated into different periods of her life – both happy and unhappy – and started, appropriately enough, with the beginning of her singing career in the 1980s. She recorded her first album during her first year of university, and all the tracks became hits, among them “Choice”, “Ferry” and the ever-popular “Love Me One More Time”.
    After a short break and a quick change, Tsai Chin was back on stage this time in a pretty pink gown to sing “The Spirit of Your Eyes” and “Reading You”. She paused to talk about the efforts she makes to look younger than her age, explaining that she still does 250 situps every day.
“I would like you to clap your hands if you are happy with my show. It isn’t easy for us to have a chance to meet each other, and I don’t know how long my singing career will last. That’s why it’s important to me that you are happy with my songs.”

    She laughed fondly as she recounted her biggest success, saying: “The record label founder purchased a new car just three days after my album was released. A week later, we moved into a new building!"
    She then performed “Forgotten Times”, a soundtrack from the Hong Kong blockbuster “Internal Affairs” starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, then segued into “Brassica Napus” and “The Last Night”,
    It was time for another quick change and this time Tsai Chin reemerged on stage in a red evening dress to sing “Butterfly Clothes” before talking about a part of her life that still brings her pain – a downtime in her singing career, her father’s death, and her divorce from her husband of 17 years. She found fame again with the album, “Golden Voice Concert Hall Series” released in 2007.

    Tsai Chin took the audience back to her childhood with a set of songs, which she recorded for her mother to listen to while she was doing the housework. They included “Autumn Cry”, a cover of “Donna Donna”, “Flower on the Sea”, “Just Like A Game, Just Like A Dream” and “Well-Intentioned.”
    Tsai Chin, now dressed in a sparkly silver gown, closed out her set with “Nanping Evening Bell” before thanking the organiser and the audience for a wonderful evening. 
“I love performing live. The stage is like my home. A live performance is entirely different from watching TV and listening to a CD. I really hope we will see each other again,” she said. 
    Tsai Chin returned briefly to the stage for an encore of “Just Like Your Tenderness”, proving yet again why so many fans regard her as a living legend.