The Asian Economist

On Saturday night of April 19, 2008, I went the second concert of my life. The first concert seems like a little kid birthday party compare to this one. With a crowd of approximately 20,000 standing in the rain, in the sold-out Olympic Stadium, in Nanjing, China, Jay Chou gave a performance that is worth the money and the time spend standing in the rain. And yes in the end of the night, he threw his nun chuck at me.

Arm with two VIP tickets and my girlfriend, I head into Olympic Stadium not knowing what to expect since this is my first concert in China. Each of our ticket cost us Y1580, that’s about $225 US dollars each. That is not a bad price compare to US concerts. Our seats were about 20 rows from the front and we were smack in the middle. Every seats were sold out, the Stadium was pack and just right before the concert start, the rain started to pour. Fortunately they gave us some plastic rain coat. It was very thin but it did the job. I was too smart to check on the forecast so I didn’t bring an umbrella, and yes I got an earful from my girlfriend for not bringing the umbrella when she told me to.

Some moments that was unforgettable that night involve two kids. Both pretty chubby, both about the same age, but both did not have the same amount of fun though. There was one kid to our right who couldn’t see the stage because when the concert started, everyone stood up, no not on their feet, but on the chairs. The dad got pretty upset that he paid so much money for the tickets and his kid couldn’t even see Jay Chou, he tried his best to get people to sit down but it didn’t really work. By halfway through the concert they were gone.

This other little chubby Chinese kid on the other hand had the time of his life. Even though he couldn’t see anything but the top edge of the TV screen, he sang, to the top of his lung, along to every, I mean every songs that Jay Chou perform. He knew every song, every words, every beat, and did not care that he was getting rain on and that he couldn’t see Jay Chou. He had a blast.

For us, my girlfriend and I, we were kind of in between. There were moments when people in front of us had their umbrella up and we couldn’t see but when that happen we just scooch to the left (two of the seats to our left were empty), and when we couldn’t see there we scooch to the right. We didn’t know all of the words to the songs but some clever dude decided to put lyrics up on the big screen so all 20,000 people could sing along. Who ever thought up that idea needs a bonus in his next pay check. Other then getting hit by the light saber look alike thing about 5 times by the girl who was standing behind me, the night was violent-free until Jay Chou decided to throw his nun chuck at me.

No that is not a typo, during the last song Jay Chou decided to dance around with nun chuck and when he finish dancing, he threw it into the crowd. Guess where it landed? Yes, right at me. I caught one end of the nun chuck and within milliseconds, this other girl grab the other end. We stare each other down. It was a face/off. Time froze. If there were not 20,000 crazy Jay Chou fans around we could’ve work it out and split the nun chuck in half. I saw it in her eyes, she saw it in my eyes that we could just split it up. About three milliseconds later a crowd of nun chuck hungry Jay Chou fan came crashing down on it. The chairs that we were all standing on were now on top of people. As I saw the crowd coming in, I let go of the precious nun chuck. My precious nun chuck that Jay Chou wanted to give me was not gone. I grab my girlfriend and we moved away from the hungry crowd searching for a nun chuck. We never found out who finally got the nun chuck.

Out of 20,000 people in the crowd, Jay Chou threw his nun chuck at me but I didn’t want to die that night so I let go. You can see in this first picture, the nun chuck that he threw at me.