This year’s Easter coincided with the Qingming Festival, creating a five-day “super long weekend.” The mainstream news reported the number of people traveling abroad with a celebratory tone every day. Final statistics showed that during the five-day long holiday from April 3 to 7, a total of 2.36 million people departed Hong Kong. Among them, 77%—more than 1.81 million people—headed north, over-fulfilling the “integration KPI”. No wonder officials were so self-satisfied; meanwhile, Hong Kong’s shops and streets became deserted—but who cares? As for me, who is accustomed to “staycations” in Hong Kong even on weekdays, I was happy to take advantage of the long holiday to eat, drink, and have fun in this low-density big city.
I have rarely attended concerts in recent years. Without checking social media, I often miss the news, and even if I knew, tickets are too hard to buy. Entering middle age, I have lost the drive to “hunt for tickets” just to get in. However, after making an exception last month for Stefanie Sun’s Just Before Sunset tour, it felt like opening Pandora’s box, and I began paying attention to other concerts again. One morning, while listening to Vani’s Choice on Commercial Radio, I learned that Shino Lin would be coming to Hong Kong for a concert on April 4, and I bought a ticket without hesitation.
In 2021, a young person in mainland China posted on Weibo: “Recommending a niche Singaporean Mandarin female singer—Stefanie Sun,” which became a hot topic among “elders.” Some mocked the ignorance of the poster, while others lamented the changing trends. Five years later, Stefanie Sun’s world tour came to Hong Kong, and tickets were incredibly hard to find. After much effort, I managed to buy a ticket and squeezed into the Kai Tak Main Stadium for the first time. I discovered that Stefanie Sun being “niche” was fake, the “home” court was fake, and even asking the “Hong Kongers” in the audience for requests was fake; the only thing real was that the species known as “Old Hong Kongers” becoming niche in their own home court.
There was nothing wrong with the quality of the concert. Just Before Sunset was the real deal—Stefanie Sun’s singing, the production of the show, and the facilities of the venue were all first-class. The whole experience was like having a buffet in a five-star hotel (crowded with mainlanders): very expensive, very high-end, and the food was fresh and delicious. The only problem was that I am still more accustomed to and prefer Cha Chaan Tengs and Dai Pai Dongs.
This Shino Lin concert was titled Tempting Heart Coordinates, and the poster displayed “East Longitude 114.1372, North Latitude 22.3453.” The promotion said those were the coordinates of the venue, Queen Elizabeth Stadium. It sounded reasonable, but being curious, I checked repeatedly and found that those coordinates actually point to the Mei Foo area. The coordinates for the stadium should be “East Longitude 114.1788, North Latitude 22.2753.” I don’t understand why the organizers made such a low-level mistake, but I suspect there wasn’t much of an “organizer” at all. Not only was there little promotion, but the poster also looked like it lacked a production budget. Holding it during a long holiday when half of Hong Kong had left was an even more ill-advised arrangement. It’s a great pity.
Compared to Stefanie Sun’s concert, which held two shows at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Main Stadium with tickets selling out instantly, Shino Lin’s concert was a single show at the 3,500-seat Queen Elizabeth Stadium. Tickets were not only much cheaper but could be bought at any time, and by my observation, a third of them remained unsold, leaving large patches of empty seats. However, the resonance and emotion brought by Tempting Heart Coordinates stood in stark contrast to its scale and production budget.
In this era of fragmented audiences dominated by short videos and algorithms, where even Stefanie Sun can become a “niche singer,” I think it’s appropriate to “popularize” who Shino Lin is before I go on.
Born in 1973, Shino Lin began singing in Japanese hot spring hotels at the age of 17 under the stage name Shino. After returning to Taiwan in 1994 to sing in pubs, she debuted in 1998. Her first album, Shino Lin, was an instant hit, selling 700,000 copies. With a style rooted in rock, Shino made no effort to hide the large tattoo on her upper right arm and later admitted to working in a hotel to make ends meet—she was considered very forward-thinking at the time. Over the next few years, albums like She Knows and This is Shino 3 continued to sell well, and she held large-scale concerts. Just as her career was at its peak, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2003 and temporarily left the music scene.
An even bigger turning point was yet to come. Originally scheduled to release a new album in late 2007, Shino committed a grave mistake mid-year by driving without a license while intoxicated and hitting a nurse, resulting in a fatality. She was sentenced to six months in prison (suspended for two years) and reached a settlement of 8 million TWD with the family. Although Shino continued to have occasional singing and performing opportunities, she remained largely quiet overall. She could never return to her former popularity. As she revealed in recent interviews, in addition to spending 11 years paying off the 8 million in installments, she has blamed herself for over a decade, not allowing herself as the perpetrator to be happy.
With this background supplemented, it explains why I am so forgiving of the mistakes on the poster and the details of the production—because rather than “consuming” Shino, I am here to support her. Rather than demanding a visual and auditory experience commensurate with my payment, I hoped more to see Shino pick herself up, walk out of the shadows, and perform with the same confidence she had over twenty years ago. To this, Shino succeeded. I believe the over two thousand fans present could feel it and were moved by her.
Furthermore, a concert is not necessarily better just because it is larger. A smaller venue, shorter distance, a simple stage, no dancers, and no environmentally unfriendly glow sticks were not deficiencies to me; they were pluses. After all, I just wanted to appreciate a singer performing live with full concentration.
Regarding the song selection, Tempting Heart Coordinates was solid and steady. Although Shino has been in the industry for a long time, her peak was followed by nearly twenty years of silence. Her popular repertoire isn’t vast—just enough to support a full concert without leaving fans lamenting that many signature hits were missed. Familiar songs like “Her Tears,” “So What,” “She Knows,” “Irritated,” “Doll Loves the World,” “This is,” “Music All Night,” and “Slow”—a Mandarin cover of Beyond’s “Cold Rainy Night”—were all included as expected. It ended, unsurprisingly, with the most popular song “Tempting Heart,” satisfying the fans’ expectations.
What surprised me slightly was my own memory. Although I haven’t listened to much music in recent years, as soon as the singing started, I realized I hadn’t forgotten anything. I remembered all of Shino’s songs and lyrics perfectly.
The part of the concert that best showed Shino’s heart for her fans and her respect for the Hong Kong music scene was the Cantonese song segment in the second half. After thanking the two guests, Sammi Cheng and Joey Tang, Shino stated she wanted to give back to Hong Kong fans with songs from her idols. she began performing Anita Mui’s “Bad Girl,” followed by consecutive performances of Leslie Cheung’s “Sleepless Night,” Sandy Lam’s “Tilt,” Sammi Cheng’s “Every One is a Super Star,” and Alan Tam’s “Love Trap”—a total of five Cantonese songs from the 80s and 90s. She invited the fans to sing along, pushing the atmosphere to a climax.
Many foreign singers come to Hong Kong for concerts. To please the fans, they often say a few words in “broken” Cantonese or express how much they love Hong Kong food. Hong Kongers, understanding themselves as a minority, are quickly satisfied. Occasionally, some singers like IU sing a Cantonese song every time they visit—from “Wedding Invitation Street” to “Solitude”—which is already over-delivering. But someone like Shino, who already has an original Cantonese song “Doll Loves the World” and sang “Looking at the World through a Doll’s Eyes” with Sammi, and then practiced an entire segment of Cantonese songs to pay tribute—in my knowledge, this is unique.
To be honest, if Shino’s career had been smooth sailing and she had broken into the mainland market, I don’t know if she would still, for the sake of a mere two thousand Hong Kong fans, practice multiple Cantonese songs. Just as we don’t know if Anita Mui or Leslie Cheung were still alive, whether they would be like some artists today, forgetting their original intentions for the sake of the market and abandoning the people of Hong Kong.
I will not dwell on these hypothetical questions that have no answers. The point is, right here today, these singers, actors, directors, creators, and artists before us do not just single-mindedly pursue the largest market. They choose to walk with Hong Kongers, using our language to tell our stories. That is enough.
p.s. Besides the concert, I also went to see Gamer Girls and We’re Nothing during the holiday. I liked both very much; the latter is my favorite Hong Kong film in a year. Herman Yau, who self-financed the production, is very sincere and has incredible execution. After Gamer Girls ended, one of the directors, Bassetto, rushed into the theater for a stage greeting. It wasn’t a traditional Q&A session; she just said it was already the fourth week of screening with very few sessions left and thanked everyone for taking the time to support. Her speech, which lasted less than a minute, was neither impassioned nor intentionally sentimental, yet you could hear a slight tremble in her voice. It seemed as if the audience filling half the small cinema was enough to move her to tears.
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