William Davis
Woah! Let’s go down memory lane. The Originals. The men who started it all for most of you in 2001.
Almost two decades ago, Jerry Yan, Vaness Wu, Ken Chu, and Vic Chou starred in the iconic drama series, Meteor Garden, which led to the birth of the Taiwanese boy band, F4.
The slated reunion of Taiwanese pop group F4 on China’s Jiangsu TV’s “1001 Night Festival” broadcast was announced earlier this week, there was a palpable wave of excitement among longtime fans. The quartet composed of Jerry Yan, Vanness Wu, Vic Chou and Ken Chu was formed and signed to Sony Music Taiwan after they starred together in the 2001 Taiwanese hit drama Meteor Garden which erupted in popularity across Asia.
On friday, Oct 30, Jerry Yan, Vanness Wu, Vic Chou, and Ken Chu were seen performing their hit 2001 song “Meteor Rain” together for the event, shown on Jiangsu TV and streamed on Chinese video-sharing app Kuaishou.
The “1001 Night Festival” concert hosted both live audiences in China and thousands of viewers tuning in via live stream from around the world to catch the boyband behind award-winning Mandopop albums like Meteor Rain and Fantasy 4ever. While the four members seemed to appear onstage together during the live stream, only the Los Angeles-born Vanness Wu (wearing a green jacket) was actually singing live at the venue. For the online broadcast, his bandmates’ pre-recorded performances were projected virtually like holograms to “share” the same stage as him.
The number was met with a collective swooning from “Meteor Garden” fans all over the world, though there were some among them who pointed out that something wasn’t quite right.
It soon surfaced that it might have been that Wu was the only one performing live at the event, while the others were prerecorded ones and they were shown alongside Wu only via hologram technology.
A photo from a fan apparently at the event showed Wu standing alone onstage. There’s also a video going around of Wu singing by himself.
Nonetheless, the virtual reunion marked a special moment for F4, as well as the group’s followers: this was F4’s first public appearance “together” since 2013 — which coincidentally also took place on a Jiangsu TV program. Since then, they have continued to grow in their acting careers. For example, Jerry Yan starred in this year’s Chinese series Count Your Lucky Stars alongside actress Shen Yue. Over the last decade, Vanness Wu has starred in Ip Man 4 (2019) alongside Donnie Yen as well as in Taiwanese drama series Autumn’s Concerto. Autumn’s Concerto constantly broke records for domestic viewership ratings when it was shown from 2009 to 2010.
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