Thirty Years Ago, in 1985, Wham! Visited Guangzhou and Beijing. They Changed China
Original source: WeChat article
Originally published December 3, 2015 · Zhang Fengming
On April 10, 1985, about 15,000 people gathered at Beijing Workers’ Gymnasium to see the first Western superstar band ever to perform in China: Wham!
Wham!: George Michael (left) and Andrew Ridgeley (right) in China, 1985.
At first the entire venue was silent because no one knew how to respond. When George encouraged the crowd to clap along with the music, they did not understand what he meant and politely applauded for a long time…
There were special seats for officials in front…
Quietly watching you up on stage…
Halfway through the show, some people got so excited that they started dancing along with the band. Some were later held by police and escorted out of the venue…
At first, the people around the die-hard fans resisted.
Then the die-hard fans got everyone moving.
The band’s manager, Simon, recalled: “There were 7,500 people downstairs, as if frightened by the cameras and flashbulbs, while half the audience upstairs was dancing and shouting. The atmosphere was so strange.”
Who Were Wham!?
Many younger readers may not know the band Wham!, but you have surely heard their song “Careless Whisper.” It still appears on the background-music playlists of many restaurants and hotels. Listen to this live recording from thirty years ago and you will see:
The organizers worried that Chinese audiences would not know Wham!’s songs, so they selected five hits, commissioned Chinese lyrics and invited Cheng Fangyuan, one of the country’s most popular singers at the time, to perform them.
Cassette released by White Swan Records.
Auntie Cheng still gets excited when she remembers the concert.
Let’s hear her cover from back then:
The style from thirty years ago seems a little strange, doesn’t it? China had only just begun to have what people called “pop music.” Besides Cheng Fangyuan, musicians such as Guo Feng and Cui Jian were at the concert. Guo Feng recalled: “I will never forget that scene. The Chinese audience was completely stunned, stiff with shock.” The musicians were deeply moved, but soon found their footing. The next year, Guo Feng wrote “Let the World Be Filled with Love” and organized a concert featuring a hundred singers on the same stage. At that concert Cui Jian sang his breakthrough song “Nothing to My Name,” opening a new era.
So It Was Just a Business Deal?
Looking back thirty years later, the concert had profound cultural significance. But in the eyes of Wham!’s manager at the time, Simon Napier-Bell, it was simply a business deal.
Simon Napier-Bell
In 1985, Wham! had been together for only three years and had already become major stars in Britain. They urgently needed to break into the American market. Another world tour would take too long, so they needed a quicker way to raise their profile internationally—for example, becoming the first Western pop band to perform in China.
Simon therefore came to China. Through contacts at the British Embassy, he called every government office he could find and asked whoever answered to tell the person in charge that a man named Simon Napier-Bell wanted to take them to dinner. He spent eighteen months making thirteen trips to China and dining with more than a hundred officials, senior and junior…
Simon’s memoir, I’m Coming to Dinner
Simon’s strategy was simple: nothing would convince the West that China had truly opened up more than holding a concert like this. Queen also wanted to make history in China. Simon made a small maneuver and gave the relevant officials two photos for comparison: Wham!, clean-cut and dressed like young middle-class men, and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, flamboyant and artistic. The Chinese side chose Wham!, just as he expected.
Simon invested heavily in the plan. He also invited Lindsay Anderson, one of the leading figures in Britain’s Free Cinema movement and a director of films, theatre and documentaries, to film the entire China trip, hoping to make an idol documentary to show fans back home. Anderson had his own ideas: this was a historic event, not just a commercial concert. Through his camera, the documentary showed more human warmth and unexpected details.
Wham! and Lindsay Anderson in China.
Ticket Prices and the Audience
Some people recalled that tickets cost 5 yuan and came with a Wham! cassette. That did not sound too expensive: eggs in Beijing then cost 1.29 yuan per half-kilogram. But the footage of people lining up to buy tickets suggests they actually cost at least 30–40 yuan, and buyers also needed a letter of introduction from their work unit. In 1985 the average monthly wage for employees nationwide was 96 yuan.
Four “Great Unity” 10-yuan notes and a letter of introduction are clearly visible.
In fact, many people still could not get tickets because most were given away free to employees of certain work units, such as the Ministry of Culture. Audience members recalled that many spectators were quite old and clearly not pop-music fans. Still, plenty of people really did line up to buy tickets, and the police had to keep order.
Moments from Beijing
On April 7, 1985, Wham! flew from Hong Kong to Beijing. The people at the airport were almost all foreign media, so Simon had achieved half his goal. The group stayed at the Sheraton Great Wall Hotel, China’s first international-brand five-star hotel, which had opened in 1985.
The Sheraton Great Wall Hotel had a distinctly futuristic look.
This time the Chinese side hosted dinner at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, a very high-level venue. Before the meal, Wham! said their performance had something in common with Chinese theatre: its vitality and its generous use of color.
Dinner at Diaoyutai.
During their few days in Beijing, they saw Tiananmen Square, climbed the Great Wall and went shopping. Anderson used the camera cleverly to contrast Wham!, surrounded by people aiming long lenses at them, with ordinary Chinese tourists standing nearby and posing for snapshots.
There were fewer visitors at the Great Wall in those days, and ordinary Chinese people were very curious to see foreigners.
As they walked around the city, passersby gathered to watch them.
They came across an older man with a cassette player and played their own tape. The onlookers listened happily.
The child below brings to mind a famous photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Moments from Guangzhou
The atmosphere in Guangzhou was much better than in Beijing, both in people’s spirit and in the city’s economic conditions. Anderson seems to have loved this vibrant city and filmed many beautiful scenes there.
People in Guangzhou looked stylish in suits and leather shoes, even when riding bicycles.
On the Pearl River, small fishing boats, ferries and sand barges moved alongside one another.
The sunset over Haizhu Bridge in the photo below is stunning…
They also visited Liurong Temple, where incense burns constantly.
Lindsay Anderson (right) watches worshippers at Liurong Temple.
In Guangzhou, where the food is famous, the group first visited a market selling “strange” ingredients and then went to a restaurant, where the head chef gave them a warm “welcome.”
They also held an England-versus-China football match on the lawn in front of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.
A British football hooligan showed up!
Guangzhou’s very own Löw.
A future Evergrande fan.
After hearing the Cantonese opera tune “Step by Step,” the musicians were itching to play.
Beyond the Sky
Anderson’s footage was considered too “arty,” and he was fired during post-production. Wham! hired someone else to edit the version best known today, Wham! in China: Foreign Skies. It premiered at Wembley Stadium and set a record for a film premiere, with 70,000 people in attendance.
Fortunately, Anderson had kept a copy for himself. He called his edit If You Were There. It was not screened publicly until about ten years ago, at a university archive. Some critics consider the documentary a match for Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, Cina.
Wham! also cut a shorter version for the “Freedom” music video. Thanks for sticking with us to the end. Here is the so-called “highlights” cut—a little nightcap before bed.