I have to admit I love most of Nanewee’s work except when he really goes to far.
I really enjoy the melody of the song, especially the part sung by Sean Lin. I have a few questions regarding the symbolic meaning of the characters.
I take Namewee and the girls to be the ordinary natives of the Island. But who is the Sean Lin character dressed in that immaculate suit? He looks so clean that he looks like he could walk on water. He looks like stepped right out of a Chinese medicine advertisement from a 1960s magazine.
Is he supposed to represent the Chinese version of privilege?
What language is Namewee signing in? I know it should be the indigenous language of the island but it sounds sort of similar to Taiwanese.
Hainanese, like Taiwanese it’s a form of Minnan. It’s supposed to be mutually unintelligible according to Wiki but I could pick up a lot of words easily. The women presumably are Li which is an ethnic group speaking a language related to Lao and Thai, they mentioned them a couple of times. I guess that’s what the additional romanization was.
I don’t know if he is from Hainan or what his connection is with the theme of the video, but he seems to be a Fei Yu-ching impersonator. Fei is a pretty popular Singer from the 70s.
Yeah, it’s especially similar to Taigi spoken in Yilan. Most of the -ng in standard Taigi are replaced with -uinn
By the way, Hainan’s linguistic makeup was really similar to Taiwan despite being next to Guangdong. The original inhabitants spoke an Austronesian language, before Holo speaking people from Fujian settled the coastal areas.
I don’t know this one.
I’ll look at it later. I meant the one he did for the Chinese Year of the Dog. What a waste of Talent for such a kind of Smutty song. I see enough of the real thing.
The video could have been better. Much of this stuff is appropriate for older kids. But not that.
incidentally Sean Lin as a singer is pretty good.
He’s kind of like a Chinese Boule who sings old standards.
If you go to YouTube, you will see the description (in Chinese) that has your answers:
Namewee wanted to pay tribute to Fei Yu-Ching after learning about his impending farewell concert, so he invited the renown Fei impersonator Sean Lin to sing in this MV with him, hoping that Fei would be willing to work with him when he sees the video.
Namewee is Malaysian – his grandparents emigrated from Hainan 80 some years ago, and he spoke Hainanese at home growing up.
He’s a great entertainer. Some of his work pushes buttons, but it’s rarely as direct as other music. He uses indirect comedy, where other artists just blatantly say it.
But I know Fei Yu Qing, he’s popular with older ladies and he’s the brother of the equally famous Zhang Fei of beard and sunglasses and saxophone fame (he’s also mainly retired and living in hualien I think ).
They grew up in some kind of all singing family, getting red envelopes in their teens at those dancing restaurants and clubs. Both went on to be mega successful.
Fei Yu Qing was super attached to his mother so when she died he seems to have wanted to retire. Of course there could be other things in the background going on.
The main reason I know Fei Yu Qing is he has an uncanny resemblance in presentation and singing style to a singer from Ireland , Daniel O’Donnell.
Nanawee has a lot of cross-cultural videos. Very entertaining. He draws from different cultures issues, frequently including an artist from the culture.
Since he grew up in Malaysia, his early works revolved around Malaysia. I first heard of him from a song called 麻坡的華語 Muar Mandarin.
As Malaysian politics became increasingly hostile towards minorities and non-Muslims, Namewee wrote songs criticizing the Malaysian government by poking fun at them. He got arrested multiple times for being critical of the Malaysian government.
He graduated from Ming Chuan university in Taiwan, so he also wrote plenty of songs about Taiwan.
Just curious. What do Taiwanese musicians do after they retire?
Do they disappear entirely or could they be found jamming in some hole in the wall bar or karaoke shed in
Hualien?
I haven’t watched the video yet,. But I think it may be a bit disrespectful to use an impersonator when the real guy (fei yu Ching) said no I don’t want to do it. And he then still trades off the singers image and style.
Namewee did not ask Fei. He wrote the song as a tribute to Fei, and had Fei in mind to sing it, as even though Fei has an immaculate image, he is known to be a master of dirty jokes. But after the song was written, Namewee was worried that the song would be perceived as a dirty song, and Fei would reject the idea of working with him, so he asked Sean Lin instead. I don’t think Fei would mind at all.
That’s a good question. The only Taiwanese pop singer who ever announced their retirement and had farewell concerts beside Fei that I’m aware of is Jody Chiang (江蕙). Apparently both are wealthy, and can do anything they want. The Google results may surprise most people:
Back in the 80s and before that, female stars used to retire after they got married. I guess some still do that now. Although, often times they would come out of retirement a decade later.
