this item under review is the seventh installment of an enterprise founded by the so-called Mandarin Pop prince. he is so highly revered in the Madarin-speaking world that his album, best-selling in recent years, is regarded as the "key indicator" of Mandarin Pop industry. nevertheless, six years after his successful spotting of a niche by luck, further innovative ideas he has to offer are apparently depleted. he, like Einstein after completing special and general relativity, is now working on his grand unified theory that is appealing to common people but in fact illusive.
uncivilized Sinitics are likely be bewildered by the first track titled "Twilight's Chapter Seven", a fanciful yet hollow ragbag of Sherlock Holmes, outdated European melodies and machine-made rhythms/beats. this song, like its Italian predecessor "In Nomine Patris" (2003), presents a layman's view of a stereotyped European Proper. he, who hardly patronizes his own Taiwan Central Library, spent a huge amount to rent the main hall of British Library just to shoot a couple of scenes for its music video. his intention to humbug the Chows with superficial bravado obviously contradicts his initiative to give lessons to his pro-Western fellowmen proposed in the following song.
in the fourth track "Compendium of Materia Medica", a chauvinistic flatter of Chinese culture, he made a checklist of some common medical herbs, and went on to argue that all earthlings should embrace the superior millennia-old enterprise, despite that the culture is replete with a catastrophic series of shortcoming in multiple fields: natural sciences, social sciences and arts, including the very item of music boasted by our great composer, who is fond of R&B and Rock & Roll.
he then revealed his egocentric psycho in the ill-minded piece of "Moulin Rouge" (literally "popular copycat"), the sixth track. his folks in the mainland are likely to be puzzled by the term "China style" (literally "China wind"), coined by the lesser mortals educated by the exile Nationalist government on Formosa island out of nostalgia or self distinction. other than the negligible use of Chinese orchestra musical instruments newly formalized in the past century, his works exhibit no genuine China style whatsoever. to a countryman in inland China, his alleged oriental innovation is as alien as classical music and American oldies alike. his effort to pursue his identity, the uniqueness of Chinese music, or the elements of "Chineseness", is to be appreciated. however, being a tiny component of the inferior macro-ecosystem, his endeavor to outperform the Westerners, or even to win ahead of Japan, has been proved futile.
as a musical album released in the turbulent post-modern year of 2006, when plagiarism and bureaucracy have become integral parts of China's academic field, while corruption and overdevelopment have dominated and ruled China's politics and economy, we would be more than pleased to welcome the birth of this meticulously decorated commodity not very different from its courterparts in overpaced microchip and automobile industries.
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