Collected Information about the Bangkok Concerts
This is a post collecting information and sources about the concerts held by the Zhang Sanjian scam gang on May 10th and 11th. I will keep this updated as more information comes out. Please let me know if you have any questions, corrections, or additions.
[Masterpost of my informational posts about the situation]
Lead-Up
The earliest account to promote the concert was a planted fan trying to collect information from other fans in group chats, not an “official account”. This was on April 10th, only a month prior to the day the concert would be held. Accounts officially associated with the scam would not start promotions until April 20th.
Someone who contacted the venue on April 20th was told that the hall had been booked for 05-11 but that the venue could not disclose who it was for.
On April 22nd, the Instagram made a post announcing the ticket sales using a promotional photo from 2021 that had been made for the concert the real Zhang Zhehan had been planning prior to 813. This post did not include a link for purchasing; including links to purchases increases the chance of Instagram checking an account for fraud activity.
The production company for the concert is partnered with CAPA.
Seat prices went up to 16,000 baht ($465 USD / 3200 RMB) and went on sale on April 22nd. As a comparative, the BTS member Suga held a concert with VIP tickets pricing at 6200 baht.
Within hours, scam believers were saying that tickets had sold out, but on the actual purchasing site they were instead listed as not available (ie. reserved for sale by scalpers). On May 3rd, these reserved tickets that had not been sold were made available again with less than half sold.
On April 23rd, it was announced via the Instagram that an additional concert would be held on 05-10 due to “popularity”. (As I write this, I realize that it’s odd for them to book 05-10 rather than 05-12 since it means those first comers who bought tickets for 05-11 would not get to be the first ones to see “him”.) Tickets for this became available the following day and “sold out” within ten minutes only to become available again; it’s likely this was just a glitch.
On April 24th, a promotional video was posted for the concert using only footage from 2021 (same context as mentioned above).
Some tickets had been available as a “tour package” through a company that had a history of scamming customers. On April 26th, the tour package’s name was changed then deleted from the company’s website. On April 30th, the Taobao shop selling these packages was closed without refunds and over 400 people who had made purchases had their information leaked. Some people who purchased these packages were later left stranded at the airport for hours when they arrived.
On May 5th, the Weibo Supertopic used by scam believers, which had been filled with people reselling tickets and encouraging others to fake information for travel visas, was deleted. The following day, “official” accounts directed users to a new Supertopic that was created less than 15 minutes after the previous one disappeared despite it taking 1-3 days for Supertopics to be approved. This new Supertopic was made private on May 9th then deleted as well on May 10th.
On May 6th, photos were posted to the Instagram of “Zhang Zhehan” in what appeared to be Thailand. The following day several photos and a video were spread of “chance encounters”, originating from accounts that did not belong to fans.
The scam gang requested that people who had bought VIP tickets provide their home addresses so they could be sent tshirts and light sticks, four days prior to the first concert date. Have fun getting doxxed, I guess.
On May 8th, a new song was released to streaming sites by the scam gang despite it being only two days before the first concert. As a comparative, for his mini-concert to promote his Another Me EP in October 2020, Zhang Zhehan released only two of the three songs for streaming prior to the concert, leaving the third song 不说 to be debuted at the concert before releasing for streaming.
On May 9th, several photos and a video were posted by paparazzi of the venue being set up. It was noted that workers present in these photos were fully dressed despite there being a heatwave with outside temperatures climbing to over 40°C; it’s uncommon for AC to be on during set up, though not impossible.
On the same day, a figure fully covered in sweats and a hoodie was filmed entering the venue for rehearsals. Again: heatwave.
May 10th
The venue looked less than half full less than ten minutes before the set start time.
A collection of some photos that look obviously off: [1] [2] [3] [4]
Chinese CPFs keeping track of things concluded that three different impersonators were likely used, with one possibly being a woman. There were visible differences in the nose, jawline, eyebrows, Adam’s apple, butt, and stature. Furthering this, people watching reported that the costume changes were remarkably fast and there were no breaks over the course of 20 song performances (3 hours).
It’s quite likely that the cameras used for the screens inside the venue were using deepfake tech to correct for these mistakes. Yes this can be done live. It was noticed that the screens seemed to noticably lag more than is standard (example, comparison to another concert) and occassionally jumped.
Some of the audience members visible in photos look quite unexcited to be there. It’s possible that people were hired to fill empty seats, especially given that so many were left unsold that they decreased the number of seats physically present in the venue. A number of people looked to be in quite a hurry to leave afterwards. There is hearsay that some of them may have been students who were paid to attend. [translated chatlog between Chinese fans]
About an hour and a half after the concert started, the bought hashtag #Primordial Theater# suddenly appeared on the general Weibo hotsearch, reaching #14 before completely disappearing ten minutes later. Coincidentally, the Weibo administration account made a post shortly afterwards warning about celebrity impersonation fraud.
Around this time, all photos of the concert posted by Ranyi, one of the “official” accounts, were removed by Weibo and the account was later banned for violating community rules. Similar photos and a video were also removed from Xie Yihua’s Weibo accounts.
A whaler who made a post that she shook hands with him at the concert forgot to change her VPN to Thailand, with it instead saying she was in Japan. 🤡
There are rumors that some whalers who attended said it was fake and closed their accounts, I haven’t seen direct evidence of this yet. Also a rumor that one went to the police. Some whalers were reportedly afraid to speak out about what they had seen at the concert because they had given the scam their personal information.
May 11th
There was significantly less posted footage and discussion of this day. Many people who had attended gave excuses such as phones being too low on battery to film, only having blurry photos, wanted to capture the moment with their own eyes, etc.
Additional photos that look distinctly off: [1] [2] [a whole collection] (Here’s an example of full-face prosthetic makeup btw)
Videos show that barely anyone in the audience appeared to be singing along to some songs, including Surround.
Comment about the vocals from a trained musician: “The voice doesn't feel open, it feels like it's covered with a layer of veil. Generally speaking, the voice is not clean, and secondly, the breath is not stable, and the voice is obvious. Trembling, as well as out-of-tune and treble, the treble sounds very laborious, and the out-of-tune is also sandwiched between the two notes, and the way of vocalization is not right, it is all in the throat, singing like this is easy to hurt the throat and make it hoarse.” (mtl)
[Video comparing the singing to Zhang Zhehan’s]
A video and group photo showing Xiao Yu were passed around, with him being visibly too short in relation to “Zhang Zhehan” in the photo.
Again, many of the photos posted by Xie Yihua were removed by Weibo.
VVIP ticket holders (on both days) were able to take photos with Zhang Sanjian afterwards: - Reports from them say that Zhang Sanjian was quite touchy-feely and eager with hugs (😰). If you look at old photos and video of the real Zhang Zhehan, he was always very polite and often kept his hands clasped when taking photos with unfamiliar people. - The attendees were assigned a number so the photos could be sent to them afterwards. Standard practice for celebrity photo ops is that the photos are printed there; being sent later allows time for editing to be done. - It took two weeks for people to be sent their photos. Despite this, some of the editing is... not very good.
Followups
Yahoo! Taiwan published an article talking about the concert, referring to Zhang Zhehan as an “artist who insulted China”.
[Written notes] from a Twitter space discussion about the concert. Main points not previously covered here:
It was learned by Chinese CPFs that any Chinese person who wants to hold a concert outside of China needs to get written permission to do so. There is no evidence that the scam gang did this, and it’s doubtful that someone in Zhang Zhehan’s situation would do so.
If you watch the videos of Zhang Sanjian talking at the concert, it looks very performative, not a real emotional response like what you can see in videos of the real Zhang Zhehan at his past concerts. Especially at a concert after 813 and not seeing his fans for two years, wouldn’t you expect him to get quite emotional?
Likewise, there are enunciation differences and dialectic differences in how Zhang Sanjian spoke.
If the point of the concerts was to make money, they would have started promotions much earlier, it doesn’t make commercial sense to announce it at such short notice. The intent of the concert was to get attention.
Another intent seems to be to try to divide CP fans, similar to how last year they succeeded in dividing haizhe and whalers.
Following the concerts, there was a significant uptick in fans of other celebs harrassing those saying the concerts were fake—especially in c-ent fan culture, fans of other celebs can and will happily take advantage of the scam to eliminate their bias’s competition even if they are aware that it’s a scam.
This post was last edited 2023-05-24.