The Voice of China

I was lying on the bed comfortably and drowsily this morning when I noticed Gang watching something in his laptop with great interest. I made a little noise. He took off his headphone, "You should check this out", he said as he pulled the headphone out of the laptop, "it's incredible!" I jumped out of the bed and trotted to the table. He was watching a singing competition called "The Voice of China". It's different from its peers in the sense that all the judges cannot see candidates until they decide to accept him/her as the apprentice. Judges are sitting in swiveling chairs with high backs. When the singer is singing on the stage, all four judges are sitting with their backs to the stage. Thus the only basis for their decision-making is the voice they can hear. As the singing goes on, some judges decide to turn around if they want to accept the singer to their teams. If several judges have turned around by the end of the singing, the singer can choose to join one of them.

It's the first singing competition ever in which candidates are not wearing heavy make-up or exaggerated dresses. They stand on the stage, in T-shirt and jeans, just like ordinary people, though you know they are different as soon as you hear their voices. Some judges are really surprised when they turn around and find out how the candidates look. There is a guy from a poorly educated village in Northeast China who sang an excellent English song, and a 23-year old girl with a lovely baby face who sang a grief love song. But the most surprising candidate is a blind lady from Taibei, who not only vividly imitated a classical song by Teresa Teng, but accompanied it with a keyboard. The program director offered close-up shots of judge's expression as they turned around, they were absolutely shocked.

Imported from "The Voice" in Holland, the "Voice of China" won a big success of its kind after its first show on TV. It conveys the idea that singers shouldn't be judged by their looks, but their voices. It also creates a fairer game rule in the sense that judges need to make decisions without knowing who the singer is. (Well if they're good enough to tell the singer only by listening to his/her voice, that's another story.) In addition, the "Voice of China" makes a good selection of the four judges, who are Chinese top pop stars with very diversified background and musical styles, but provide wonderful and humorous comments from different perspectives through their tacit interactions.

Recently TV producers realize that shows able to get ordinary people involved are more likely to receive high ratings. A few years ago, a dating show called "If You Are The One" became very popular, and attracted many young single people to try their luck there. But soon it became controversial because some of the guests' statements were not considered in line with the "Socialist mainstream values", and the authority required the producers to make revisions and have a professor from the Party School of the CCP Central Committee as the guest to make comments. The ratings of this show dropped immediately as it's no longer down to the earth, but a awkward mixture of communist propaganda and entertainment.


Thus I sincerely hope that "The Voice of China" can escape from the Big Brother's censorship and maintain the high quality in the following shows. As the internet sweeping the world, and TVs becoming less and less popular, it's rare to have good TV shows like this. It's always encouraging to have a sort of "Chinese dream" in which ordinaries become successful because of their talents and efforts.