In spite of its gimmicks, the 10 year old Chinese reality singing competition, Sing! China, maintains its calling power with its earnest performances.
I am of the dying breed of consumers unable to follow any television series to completion, even with Netflix forcing the next episode on me. I have little patience in particular, for overwrought reality shows driven by needlessly hysterical scripts. And yet, every Friday at 9pm sharp, you’ll find me watching Sing! China, a reality singing competition with a blind audition concept.
Sing! China is replete with the foibles of reality television. All are welcome, but most contestants have professional training, and everyone on the first episode mysteriously succeeds. Product placement is as subtle as a giant milk bottle mascot dancing in the stands. All media is political; this is no exception. Contestants returning from abroad declare their renewed national pride and the finals begin with a patriotic song. That this season was filmed at all, with an unmasked studio audience no less, declares the Chinese success in managing the coronavirus while other countries grapple with lockdown.
But despite the show’s affectations, the sincerity of the performances prevail.
Zhao Zi Hua (赵紫骅), a thirty-three-year-old independent musician, looks utterly unassuming, as he takes the stage to sing his composition, Because You Came By. He does not sing as much as speak in his warm tenor, asking the audience “what hurt do you carry? ”(你带着什么伤) with a forthrightness that cuts to the quick as he sketches the uncertain road through adversity to aspirations. The conversation turns inward into an interrogation, and his answers are devastating in their unflinching truth. Though many have spoken to this subject, he is distinguished by his genuine delivery. When he says he is searching for a path through life’s uncertainties, you believe it, because he sings with his voice so charged with vulnerability and stripped of pretense. He does not belabour the point, but narrates with a calm, unblinking honesty what feels like hard-won truths in a few sparse lines of life-affirming poetry.
If Zhao’s calling card is his time-weathered wisdom, his competitors, Zebra Forest (斑马森林), a three piece band of twenty-somethings, are the youthful exuberance of big dreams and beginnings. In their composition Lighthouse, they’re easy on the ears with their radio-friendly hooks and guitar-heavy pop sound, if a little generic. Their appeal doesn’t derive from the technical complexity of their performance, but their candour. The lead vocal croons with an uncomplicated belief about summer evenings sprawled on the grass and chasing dreams in a big city far away, and you nod along in spite of yourself. Their writing and delivery needs fine-tuning, but still they moved the most serious judge to grudgingly groove along. I’m hopeful that I’ll hear them on the radio in a few years, topping the charts.
Like most other televised singing competitions, Sing! China is plagued by advertising spectacles, tacky branding and all the other uncomfortable accoutrements of reality television. But the sincerity of its contestants and their music will keep me coming back, week after week, and for seasons to come.