任是无情也动人

It's that time of the year again. Though this year not gonna stay up overnight to watch all the different galas for the various TV stations.

The CCTV gala has already come and gone. Zhou Shen made... 1 + 0.5 + 0.1 appearances? LOL. I actually liked the last one the best, because the dance is a feast for the eyes. Note 1: Zhou Shen's voice makes an appearance near the end of the BGM track. Note 2: Apparently this is a new version of the BGM he specially helped record for the gala. I thought it sounded different from what I remembered. XD


His other solo performance is also ok but not worth a post about. The song is kinda meh, but the panda and the kids doing qigong are cute. In any case, Zhou Shen can tick off the following on his list of CCTV CNY gala performances: duet song, solo song, group song, martial arts, dance. What do we have left? (Acrobatics, magic show, comedy skit...)

Hahaha, guess I got distracted and forgot to recap Zhou Shen's performances for the CNY period. Compared to last year he had less performances in number, but more in...eh, status? Same number as in 2021, probably because both of these years he had a performance on the official CCTV gala, which means having to put aside a lot of time for rehearsals in the month leading up, and thus less openings to record for other galas.

Though compared to 2021 and 2022, there's no... I guess more comedically-toned performance this year. It's all srs bsns, but at least very beautifully performed srs bsns. However, there was one performance *before* the CNY galas, which was light toned, and that was in the episode that aired the Friday before for the Time Concert 2 show: 《好春光》. Very jazzy, very light hearted, well picked for the "new years episode".


Next up is my personal favorite among the CNY galas, a medley of 《望+故乡的云》. Now, 《望》 he's performed before and nothing new there, and besides only half of it features in the lead up to the real meat of the performance: 《故乡的云》. I really really liked his vocals in this one. *squee*


And then of course we have to mention the fact that Zhou Shen had his first solo performance on the CCTV CNY gala this year *clapclapclap*. (Actually this year I hear there are many more solo performances and by the younger generation of performers, than many recent years.) In addition, this solo performance is also of his single (no-OST, non-collab, non-dedication) 《花开忘忧》. (And then a few days later, CCTV also released an animated MV for the new edition; which even the original track didn't have, lol.)


And then there's the runner's up performances, which are still great but unfortunately can't compare to the above:
- Collaboration with 阎维文 of 《我的祖国》
- Performance of the OST 《人间星河》 for SMG, one of my recent favorites as well among his songs.

This show is nearing the end, just 4 episodes left. Zhou Shen didn't perform in EP4, so that leaves 4 performances in EP 5-8...something of a halfway mark, so I figure I'll put up another post now rather than leave them all til the end.

First, a small look-back:
EP2 《算你狠》 just recently hit 1M views on youtube, which is really good progress.
EP3 《玫瑰少年》 is close to hitting the 2M mark on youtube, which is outstanding! Its numbers on the various music apps are also pretty consistent after all this time. Just goes to show the haters water army that popped up on weibo when it released certainly had good predictive abilities, lol.

Newer songs:

EP5 《哭砂》 is probably the song that had the lowest scores on various platforms, and the most criticism surrounding it. A lot of the response is that the two singers don't match well together. I thought it was fine. A pretty standard fare work that didn't sound bad, but isn't outstanding either. But then, it's infeasible for every work to be top, so eh.

EP6 《冷酷到底》 had better marks but also some mixed reviews. The part at the climax where they sing two stanzas in 16 sec without taking a breath is a spectacle to watch, but just for the first few times. I liked the bit of gothic overtone in the first half of the song better; pity that changed into soft rock later on, and the overall piece does feel a bit short at only 3 and a half minutes.

EP7 《调查中》 trended on bilibili for about 2-3 days, though partly because the trending board doesn't support special characters, so "周深 胡梦周《调查中》" became "周深 胡梦周 调查中" and attracted all sorts looking for gossip, lol. Partly also because it's an OST from 《开端》 which was pretty hot, including on bilibili. It's too early to tell what the long term numbers will look like on the various music apps, but I'm optimistic since it's a good collab of a song that was catchy to begin with. After all, this was originally just an instrumental piece in the show, that got lyrics written for it by fans, which was then bought by the production team and officially released as OST companion piece, and now re-sung by the guy who sang the show's actual main theme (yes, referring to Zhou Shen =P). Also, want to add Zhou Shen's studio's Behind the Scenes VLog for this ep, for the bel canto segment at 3:55, which is much more clearer than the official release.


EP8 《City of Stars》 is the most recent performance, and IMO one that is better watched as video rather than just listening to the audio. I guess it's partly because singing in English isn't something that wows me personally, and Zhou Shen had sang this before on his birthday livestreams, which isn't too different from how he sang this time, so the vocal part didn't really have any surprises. But the performance, especially the small dance bit near the end, is... *adorable*! ^_^

And just to further express my love for the dance segment, here's also the Behind the Scenes VLOG from Zhou Shen's studio for EP8. Complete with the dance tutorial, and various official & unofficial rehearsal scenes. *squee* Also squee-worthy is his interaction with his collaborator, who just entered the Chinese entertainment industry in last year's Chuang2021, where Zhou Shen was one of the proctors and vocal tutor. So yeah, a rare time he's partnered with a younger person where he's in the mentor's role.

This is the music variety show that Zhou Shen is currently participating in. There's 12 episodes total, recorded in batches of 3. Two recording sessions have already been completed (6 eps), and 3 have been broadcasted. The next recording session scheduled for the middle of the month (running a little tight there). Zhou Shen is one of the permanent cast members this season, meaning he gets 1 performance per episode (except for sitting out on ep 4, due to scheduling issues). All of the songs on this show are collaborative stages, and the songs are mostly covers of other well known or popular songs.

The first batch of 3 eps are predicted to be the better works of the season, by dint of the fact that the temporary cast members who participated are of higher quality (and higher fees/position in the industry, which is why they're all going first). So I figure I'd do a listing of the first 3 songs now.

EP1.《克卜勒》 (aka "Kepler") - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEY-zmrRVs
Very pretty song and a good opener. Zhou Shen creates the imagery of "outer space" with his voice very well, with previous well known works in the genre like 《末日飞船》 and 《卡西尼/Cassini》. Though, I guess it's precisely because he has excellent (I would even say, better) works in the style, that this one feels a little...standard fare, I suppose. It still stands alone very well as a good song.

EP2. 《算你狠》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlGn6ifnXg4
Or as I'd like to think of it: "The Artist While Drunk", LOL. This was obviously a work where ZS went in to play with music, and you can tell he had fun. There's so much elements crammed into it, but none of them feel like they're out of place. The small opera portion skyrocketed in popularity on douyin. The parts where he sang in Guizhou and Hunan dialects makes me just a little jealous cuz I can't even speak in Nanjing dialect anymore. On first impression, you'd think this was a one time curiosity stage performance, but surprisingly the underlying music is very catchy too, and I was able to enjoy listening to just the pure audio of it on loop.


EP3. 《玫瑰少年》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGc7N1oQJF4
The most meaningful performance to the artist himself, and possibly the biggest challenge to his skills. Zhou Shen's rap ability is...self-admittedly mediocre, but he managed a lot of improvement here. I didn't think I would enjoy this, since I'm not a fan of rap in general. And just watching the stage performance at the time of the broadcast, I did think it was just ok. But later on, again, started looping the audio on QQ and...it was pretty good.


Unfortunately, the last performance seems to raised something of a storm of controversy...( gossip )

Got up at 3 AM to watch the 4x provincial spring festival galas.

I regret nothing. XD

The experience:
东方卫视 gets major props for having the best quality youtube livestream. (and fastest to update youtube with individual vids)
北京卫视 gets a + point for having a youtube livestream, but then a - point for laggy/choppy quality.
江苏卫视 does not bother with youtube as always, but picks the prettiest songs
百花迎春 ...eh, s'okay stage I guess. Point for releasing the whole show early on weibo?

The songs:
百花迎春: The nth performance of 《生活总该迎着光亮》 so nothing new there.
东方卫视: A happy-go-lucky medley collab w/ some operatic showoff. Then a very very "spring" song in 《和光同春》 with very beautiful CGI SFX.
江苏卫视: 2x Beautiful songs and stabs you in the feels.
北京卫视: Kiddie channel comedy hour, excellent coda for the "night". XDXDXD

Oh and also:
浙江卫视: Zhou Shen is not in our gala but we're gonna name-drop him anyway as going to be in our upcoming variety show.

In other news, happy new year!

Haha, yeah, I ended up not sleeping last night in order to watch the multiple year-end galas in China where Zhou Shen was performing. I did try to get some sleep in between 10 PM and 3 AM, but couldn't really fall asleep, so ended up just getting up again.

Then it was the frantic rush to flip between screens/channels to catch the performances, several of which ended up overlapping with each other due to the scheduling (and the fact that the evening news went overtime and pushed back the start of the gala for Jiangsu TV and Beijing TV). And a couple I missed sections of due to technical issues (some sites/features being flaky or just not serviced for overseas apparently) and having to hunt and watch recaps.

After that it was flipping through weibo and bookmarking the fan recordings for Jiangsu TV (the only one that was live performed of the 4 channels in question).

And then after that... I'm working on call today. Heh. So painfully waiting for the work shift to end at 5.

*sigh* Not gonna repeat this tonight for the CCTV new years gala (it's just one channel/performance after all =P).

Anyway, I want to give props for CCTV and Beijing TV for livestreaming the gala on youtube as well (although BTV was delayed compared to China, so I ended up watch it on the BTV site).

Bilibili's pros and cons cancel each other out. Its livestream kept throwing errors at me. But it was very fast in putting out each show segment immediately after the performance was done rather than waiting for the end of the entire show. However watching these means I miss seeing the commentary (弹幕) during the broadcast, and that's half the point of Bilibili.

Jiangsu TV... ugh, for a gala that it very obviously spent the most money on among the major regional TV stations, for building a spectacular stage, employing some bleeding edge tech, and inviting all the best singers in the industry... you could spend a little more on the distribution part, yeah? Your website is a mess and I had to go to Tencent to watch your livecast, and your youtube channel seems to be for show. So it really doesn't feel like you're "livecasted globally"? =_=

Not many of the performance recordings have been transferred to youtube yet, so no video links this post.

Been watching a few eps/clips on google video and found a site that has what appears to be most of the first two seasons uploaded.

http://beta.sling.com/show/18620/Lois-%2526-Clark%253A-The-New-Adventures-of-Superman/episodes

Tudou (Chinese subtitles):
1st season: http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f2537594o1p0.html
2nd season: http://v.youku.com/v_playlist/f2537594o1p22.html
3rd season: http://www.tudou.com/playlist/id/177224/
4th season: http://www.tudou.com/playlist/id/1887407/

Episode guide: http://members.fortunecity.com/lioncourt77/loisandclarktable.html

Lois kick ass - especially in The Prankster (single-handedly captures the villains) and Wall of Sound (Lois 3, Amazon bouncers 0).

Spent most of today at my uncle's place. They have net access, which allowed me to finally log online and relieve some of my net-withdrawal.

I took the chance to post the last few entries I kept, and to follow up on a few forums. Also replied to the return email from work to update my manager on the current status of my passport/VISA issue. (As an addendum to that, this morning we also dropped by the local police station in Nanjing to get our proof of temporary residence papers, which are yet another stp needed after we get our replacement passports and before we can get our replacement VISA.)

We had lunch & dinner at their place also. A little before dinner, my cousin took me out to buy some DVD's. There was one show I wanted to get this time around but couldn't find - 泪痕剑. Looks like eMule may be my only solution for that one. (There's also another show playing right now with the same actor in it - 魔幻手机, but I don't think that's even available on DVD yet.)

Also, we played around with the Zen Creative (4 GB) that I got my cousin as a gift this time. Uploaded a few songs that I had on my portable hard drive that he liked by just drag 'n dropping. Also tried to upload a video (avi) but we couldn't get it to play. Not sure if it was because of the file format or because of the dimensions of the movie. Unfortunately, the user guide is located on the software installation CD and I didn't bring my portable CD drive along.

Anyway, this was a fairly productive day for me. And best of all, Murphy finally gave me a day off. Now if only this will last...

I knew I was forgetting something. This is the last part. Previous two posts: 1 2

( Caution: Graphics Intensive )

The end.

Because I am totally heads-over-heels for the Yang Jian (杨戬) of this show and thus must share my screencaps (and probably not-so-witty commentary). Do note that he doesn't show up until halfway through the show and it's only that half I'm posting.

( Caution: graphics intensive )

OK that's probably enough for one post if I don't wanna kill people's bandwidth or something... Will continue in future posts.

Go to part 2