SHINee fails to shine

My eardrums, already protected by the makeshift ear plugs I had fashioned out of tissue paper, were throbbing. The music, emanating from every corner, made me half-deaf. The screaming of Chinese girls “singing” along to Korean music didn’t help either.

Last summer, I went to the SHINee concert at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center. I had been there since 6 p.m., but the concert wasn’t scheduled to begin until 8. To a certain demographic (basically everyone there except me and my friends), SHINee is beauty manifested in five extremely pretty Korean men. 

SHINee fans, ages ranging from 10 to 60, waved their glowsticks and fansigns around my friends and me. We weren’t big SHINee fans, but we had expensive tickets because my friend’s 50-year-old aunt was a huge SHINee fan and a generous spender. In the midst of all the fangirling and excitement, I asked my friends a valid question: “Wait, what are their names again?”

Even though I posed this question in English, I could feel the glares of hundreds of English-studying Chinese girls aimed at me. In my defense, I had never even listened to Kpop music before last summer. How was I supposed to know the names of five grown men who sing songs with titles like “Ring Ding Dong?”

The fives members of SHINee, Onew, Minho, Taemin, Key and Jonghyun, came out wearing their rainbow tie-dyed three-piece suits and flipping their blonde hair. The fans immediately started screaming, and SHINee started to sing. I made out a total of one word I understood: “Hello,” which they repeated 26 times. Hellohellohellohellohellohello … I later found out that, fittingly, the song’s name was indeed “Hello.”

As the concert progressed, I started getting more annoyed. Since the average temperature of Taiwan during the summer is basically 100 degrees, the inside of the concert hall stank of armpit sweat. 

In the middle of the concert, the announcers let the members talk and rest for a while because they too were dripping in sweat. They played a game, and picked five raffle tickets out of a hat. If you were picked, they would hug you, give you a signed CD and take a picture with you. It was the dream come true for all the fans there. 

Because I could barely understand the Chinese they were saying and really didn’t care either to listen either, I spaced out a bit. I thought they called my number, but I wasn’t sure because my ticket had about 23 numbers on it. Confused, I asked a 12-year-old in a Hello Kitty shirt next to me, “Is it me?” When she ignored me, I turned to the other girl next to me, a 20-something girl wearing a microscopic skirt and thigh-high boots. “Is it me?” I asked again, this time getting anxious. She just laughed.

By that time, the announcer was already telling Minho to draw the next ticket. When I finally decided that they really were calling my ticket number, Minho was waving another ticket around in his hand.

I’d like to say he broke my heart, but, in reality, I really couldn’t care less about a Korean man whose name I had known for about an hour and a half.

As the concert came to an end, many girls around me started to sob. “Bie ting! Don’t stop!” they yelled. The members of SHINee, with sweat dripping off their faces, looked incredibly flustered, as they couldn’t understand Chinese anyway. With that, they walked off the stage, the lights turned on, and the concert was over.

I tried to look sad too, but inside, I couldn’t help but cheer. I knew what I would do as soon as I got home — revel in the lack of body odor, the breeze of the air conditioning and the soothing voices of One Direction.