Shopping for Hong Kong's Next Megatalent

HONG KONG - I've never been one for "American Idol." I could never get too excited by a bunch of teenagers from Kentucky squaring off to win the favor of Paula Abdul by singing hopelessly sacrine renditions of Barry Manilow songs. Clearly 40 million Americans, and the hundreds of millions of others who watch around the world, disagree.

Competition does excite me. When I saw that the nearby Westwood mall would be having a "Chinese Folk Singing Competition" this Saturday, I was interested. It didn't matter that the sign advertising it was all in Chinese, and didn't list a time. I was there.

I wandered over to the mall around 1 p.m. This turned out to be the perfect time, as the concert was in high gear. The first performance I saw was two teenaged men, each with guitars and harmonizing in Cantonese. I didn't recognize the song, but they were pretty tight.

There was about 100 people in the crowd, young children, some clutching guitars and all fussily dressed, with their parents. This competition, it turns out, was strictly for children.



The next contestant was a young girl, who was maybe 7. She got up and started singing. The song was "It's the End of the World." Not the REM song, but an old standard, sung in English. Her tone was good, but it was clear she definitely didn't speak English had just memorizied the lyrics.

The judges seemed to like it. There were two of them, dressed formally and gazing constantly at the singers. They were positioned for maximum drama - only about two meters from the stage and blocking part of the audience. For the performer, they were the only thing that mattered.



The third act was better. This person was a bit older, maybe 16, and dressed very fashionably. This was fashionable in the Hong Kong sense, so that meant ripped jeans with a lot of pockets. He opened his mouth, and I couldn't believe it: out came "Wonderful Tonight," by Eric Clapton.

It's a nice song, but this guy didn't have the range or the language skills for it. I'm not sure if he knew this was about a man and his wife, or just generally about life, but by just shifting the accent from the "wonderful" to the "tonight," all feeling seemed lost. He played guitar quite well, but just couldn't connect.

After that I left; I'm not sure what the results were. My vote was with the "The End of the World" girl. But I do know that the definition of "Chinese folk singing" is much broader than I originally suspected. Maybe at the next competition I should enter. I can do a pretty mean rendition of "Crazy."