Why I think Papergames made the right choice of having Angela Zhang Shao-Han to sing for LADs.
“Please have a listen to my story, and maybe you’ll realise that you’re in a good place.” -Angela Zhang
I have listened to Angela’s song when I was in my schooling years, of course I was at the teenage years where I would read pop magazines, and Angela’s name and news were not foreign to me.
A little background, she was born in 1982, in Taiwan. She’s the eldest daughter of 3 but her family was not well off, her family briefly moved to Singapore but returned to Taiwan. When she was 12, her mother caught up in some troubles and lost all her savings, with a bit of help from her paternal grandfather, the family moved to Canada.
Her father was unable to work due to his heart condition, on top of that she has a younger brother with a 9-year age gap to look after, she had no choice but to work while studying when she was 12.
1997, she started joining all kinds of singing competitions. After 20 plus failures, she finally won her first prize in 1999. A music producer saw the potential in her and proposed that she returns to Taiwan to pursue her singing career. However, it wasn’t an easy journey, as she was rejected by countless record companies. She recalls wandering on the streets with her mother, waiting for phone calls. It wasn’t until 200, after struggling and waiting for a year, a company called her, and they signed her as one of their artists. However, she didn’t have jobs or roles until 2 years later.
In 2008, during the rise of her career, possibly due to the high stress and high demand work she had, it worsened her heart condition, and she had no choice but to seek medical help. All alone, she flew to Canada to get her heart surgery.
“Honestly at that time, my body was not in a good state. It was quite bad, I had some issues with my heart. When I called my mom to ask for money to cover the medical bill, she said we don’t have money, I said, that’s impossible, since I wasn’t the one in charge of finance, at most I only have one month worth of allowance on me.”
Due to the urgency of the situation, she had no choice but to ask help from her record company, to collect just enough funds for her surgery. By the time she returned to Taiwan, all has changed for worse.
“When I came back to Taipei, I saw a closure order on the door of my house. Could you imagine how shocked I was? I went to the payment centre to understand what had happened. The lady at the counter took out a huge stack of evidence, she said none of which were under my name, it was under my mother’s name.”
Her mother, Madam Jiang moved out of the home where the two of them stayed, took one hundred million from her saving (assuming it was TWD, in 2008, should amount to 3.17 million USD). Mdm Jiang later told the press that Angela abandoned her parents, chased her out of the house, never paid her parents the alimony of 15 million (again, assuming it was TWD, in 2008, that should amount to 474,440 USD. Yes, it’s an insane amount, allegedly numbers that her mother came up on her own.) Mdm Jiang cried in front of cameras, during interviews, it worked. In Chinese culture, filial piety is the utmost importance of one child, the public was scolding and bashing Angela.
Angela attempted to clarify the accusation thrown at her by her own mother, this angered Madam Jiang even more. To retaliate, Madam Jiang took photos of Angela when she was unwell, manipulated the photos to make her look worse, and sent it to media, “exposing” that her daughter has a messy lifestyle, taking illegal substances. Once the news made it to public, Angela’s idol image was completely trashed. Her record company forced her to make a public apology, while her sponsors all cancelled contracts, dropped her as a brand ambassador. Even though, she made a public announcement with all the evidence to prove her innocence, the damage has been done. Her company stopped giving her any projects, resources that were meant for her were distributed to other artists, even her own manager was reassigned to her good friend at the time, Christine Fan (aka. FanFan, a Taiwanese-American singer).
On Angela’s birthday during 2011, after her parents have used up all their savings, they wanted to ask for more from her. In an attempt to reach to her after she cutoff contact with them, they frequently showed up to the army camp that their son was serving. Their son does not want to trouble his sister, so he often came up with excuses not to meet his parents. After their persistency, he caved, but he brought two friends with him to meet his parents. The two parties ended up in a brawl in public, this was reported in the local news. After the incident, a friend of Angela told the news that Angela grew up in an abusive household, her parents demanded their daughter to buy them one house each and an alimony of 10 million TWD each month. Her maternal uncle and other distant relatives would call into news station to accuse her, but since their narrative are often repetitive, slowly the public started questioning the trustability of these accusations, and maybe began to switch side to Angela. Mdm Jiang sued Angela for instructing others to attack them, the court dismissed the case.
Christine Fan, the once friend too, betrayed Angela, robbed Angela of her resources. She even subtly pushed her fans to attack Angela on Weibo. Angela was feuding with her company over contracts, and also breaking up with her then singer boyfriend of the time.
“Whether it’s career or family, I have gone through ups and downs. There’s a saying that tells you to be thankful for those who hurt you, because they make you stronger.”
In 2018, Angela had her comeback moment on a Chinese singing show called “Singer” broadcasted on Hunan Television. The song she chose to sing is named 《阿刁》’Ah Diao’, it’s a song written by Zhao Lei, about his time in Tibet and an older girl he met named Ah Diao.
“All these years, she wished that she can break through the frame that she puts on herself, and the frame that others put on her…I was deeply moved by the song, including this girl named Ah Diao. In the describe environment, this girl is very strong, it reminded me of myself. In the lyrics, there’s a line that goes ‘甘于平凡却不甘平凡的腐烂’ (it means accepting to being ordinary, but against the rotting of being ordinary). This line resonated with me very much, I felt deeply touched, who doesn’t wish things to be as such. Although the story of this song is very distant away from who I am, however our spirit of powering through, even more so when we are stuck in certain situations, it’s roughly the same. You’re very reluctant to submit yourself to fate, even after you were greatly hurt, you can still be just as strong.”
Those who knew of her story, can hear it in her singing – the Ah Diao in her song, the strong, unwavering girl is Angela herself. Since she was singing the song for herself, she changed the lyrics from ‘腐烂’ (rotting) to ‘溃败’ (meaning frantically running after being severely attacked and destroyed)
For a long time, I stopped listening to Taiwanese pop, and recently I see Angela again, attending singing TV shows from mainland China. She still sounds like she’s in her prime, or even better. Her comeback was inspiring, her grit, her attitude to life is admirable, hence I feel it was definitely a good call on getting Angela to sing for LADs.
If Angela can survive her hardships, our amazing Miss Hunter will sure sail out of your own battles too! Take breaks when you're tired but don’t give up yet!
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