Celebrating the Celebra-Hound

Saturday, August 29, 2009

My second day back in Hong Kong fell on a Saturday, and while my sleep pattern was a bit wacky (10pm to 2am; 7am to 11am), surprisingly, I actually woke up while there was still daylight. I wasn’t sure what to do – stay in and “work”, camp out at a café and “work”, or forget about “working” and just go out and play. I opted for playing, and hit up my go-to “what to do” website for Hong Kong, Time Out Hong Kong (http://www.timeout.com.hk) to see what the cool kids were doing this weekend. Several things sounded interesting, but required money, and as I am still in starving student mode, I had to regretfully reject those options. One event looked promising, however: The Torch Relay for the 2009 East Asian Games, which Hong Kong is hosting in December. I attended the one year countdown for the event in 2008, where a bunch of local Hong Kong pop stars made an appearance to promote the Games with performances that culminated in a group-sing of the theme song. Hey, it was free, and there was a promise of celebrity spotting. So of course I was going! Unfortunately, the only celebrity worth seeing, Alan Tam, made a too-brief appearance, only joining in to sing the theme song during the finale. However, it was interesting to see Hong Kong fangrrls in action, though. They brought some handmade signs, and did some light screaming for their pop idols, but it felt half-hearted, especially after I witnessed the power of Japanese fangrrls at the Arashi concert in November. Arashi! Squee!

But I digress. Back to the Torch Relay. I hopped online to see the roster of torch bearers, and where they would be on the relay route, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Hacken Lee, one of my favorite Canto-pop singers, would be participating, along with Alan Tam, and other pop singers like Eason Chan, Richie Jen and Joey Yung. The singers were spaced out along different points on the relay, so I had to make a tactical decision as to where to camp out. Naturally, I picked the area where Hacken would be, which was along the lovely Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, near the HK Cultural Centre. It was near the latter end of the relay route, so that gave me a little time to get there.

I arrived at the waterfront at about the time the relay was commencing at the starting point in Kowloon Park. I thought I’d walk along the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront until I found the Hacken fangrrls, but that plan was thwarted by the presence of police officers and security barriers that cut off chunks of the waterfront, so there was basically no way to smoothly walk along the waterfront promenade. Instead, peeps had to weave in and out among the buildings along the waterfront to get to different points along the promenade. On the waterfront, there were designated “cheering” areas where little uniformed school children waving HK flags and various paraphernalia stood, but members of the public would have to stand along the metal barriers lining the route.

I was not able to locate the presence of any sign-toting Hacken fans (dudes, where were you?!!!), so I camped out where I thought he was supposed to be based on the route map…and well, you know me and maps. However, the presence of sign-toting fangrrls for some other celebrity (some dude I didn’t know, so as far I as I was concerned, not a celeb!) alerted me that I was in the wrong place. So I backtracked along the route, and noticed a cluster of peeps clamoring over each other to take pictures of…Hacken!!! Whee! I pushed my way in and started snapping pics with my crappy cell cam, too. I also shamelessly squeezed into a tiny open spot on the barrier between a little girl and this older dude, so I had a clear, unobstructed view of Hacken…A metal police barrier, a cop, and ten feet separated me from dearest Hacken.

Now I must admit, generally, I’m the sort fan who doesn’t make a fuss – I won’t scream to try to get an idol’s attention. I admire, with silent dignity, and much respect – I won’t do anything crazy just for a split second of eye contact, a smile, a wave, a nod, basically ANY form of idol acknowledgment. The one exception would be for my beloved Arashi. I would scream my head off for them, cluck like a chicken, moo like a cow, flash ‘em (and yes, risk indecency charges), anything, if I was within ten feet, heck, a hundred feet, of them. Oh, the magic of pretty boy bands… Arashi instills within me an unreasonable, inexplicable fangrrl obsessiveness, while Hacken, unfortunately, does not. For Hacken, I have great admiration, but not of the squeally fangrrl variety.

All that aside, Hacken was looking pretty damn good considering that he’s pushing into his 40s – he had on the standard torch-bearer uniform of East Asian Games t-shirt and shorts with sneakers. He looked quite fit, almost as fit as when he and Alan did their February 2009 concert (read my con report here).

Here are the pics of Hacken, and the surrounding area, that I snapped while waiting for the torch to arrive. Click slideshow player to zoom in a new window:



While the day was sunny, thunderstorms were a-rumbling, and it even started to rain lightly while we waited for the torch. Hacken didn’t have a whole lot of spectator interaction, despite some of the peeps screaming his name, or yelling “Go for it, Hacken!” in Cantonese. He smiled occasionally when spectators yelled, but other than that, he avoided eye contact with the spectators while waiting for the torch, probably because of the blatant celebra-hounding picture snapping. Really, it must kinda suck to have peeps always rabidly snapping pics of you like you were an object, and I felt kinda bad about being such a celebra-hound myself…but I guess it is all part and parcel of being a public figure.

The torch arrived, preceded first by a cop car (a Prius!) then the camera truck, which went slowly in front of the runner . I have no idea who the runner before Hacken was (the website list says he was Wong Fai, an athlete in the shooting/marksmanship category), but Hacken began running ahead before the torch was officially passed to him, so my view was obstructed as he ran away from where I was located. So yeah, I was a little bummed that I did not get to see him running with the lit torch. It was funny how the second the torch passed us, all the spectators, me included, began running alongside the barriers, trying to follow Hacken as he ran. It was pretty crazy and chaotic. His torch bearing run was very short, maybe a three-minute sprint of 100 meters or so. Then he passed the torch on to the next bearer and hopped onto the support mini-van that carried all the “finished” torch bearers, and disappeared from our sight.

All in all, it was a nice little interlude, and definitely a bit of a thrill to see a singer I admired up close, in a different light, and of course, it was lovely to revel in the shared celebra-hounding that seems intrinsic in HK and Chinese people. You know the stereotype of how Chinese people love taking pictures of things and people? (And perhaps to the detriment of being able to fully enjoy an experience?) There’s a lot of that going on here…though I think we all certainly experienced the excitement of the moment, too. It’s hard to explain why we get so excited when we see celebrities and why we start snapping pics wildly…a lot of it is bragging rights, yes. And of course, the picture not only helps substantiate the bragging rights (Look, I really did see him!), but also, at its very fundamental core, helps us remember an exciting memorable event. We all perhaps have the desire to capture that moment in time forever, in a tangible form…this desire is a little greedy perhaps, but definitely human, relatable, and understandable. Kinda like how I want and keep copies of everything and anything (ticket stubs, programs, pics, video, audio), in order to help me remember, to prove that dammit, I did things and experienced things beyond Tivo and couch-potato-dom. So what is the takeaway from all of this? Well, try to remember to fully experience and enjoy every moment, and not just focus on recording or documenting these moments. I mean, what’s the point of having a picture of something if all you remember is how frustrating it was to take the picture rather than how awesome the moment was? Also, celebrate your inner celebra-hound – it’s ok to be one, really. Just remember that celebrities are peeps, too, and respect their boundaries. Unless of course, it’s Arashi, in which case, all bets are off, and I’m rushing the police barriers and bulldozing security in my crazy, rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth, fangrrl, obsessive mania to get me some Arashi. Yes, they are that awesome, dammit.