August 26th. 2003
On Steven Ma's earlier tour of China, a rushed schedule and a great
atmosphere was guaranteed, but to gain some more memories of this trip,
he braved the rain in Xian as he looked around the night markets because
he was trying to find his ancestral roots.
Talking of these lovely memories, Steven starts by talking of some
regrets on the tour: "I thought that in going to six places, I would
definitely have a chance to see the sights but the schedule was so tight
that I didn't have any time to look around and the most annoying thing
was not being able to see the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, but luckily I
got to take a look around the night markets, otherwise it would have
really been a great shame."
Steven reckons that to understand the customs and traditions of a place,
just staying at a top class places is not enough, you have to check out
the street side stalls before you can say you know a place, so with each
place that he went to, he asked to take a look around the stalls on the
streets but because of time constraints, he didn't get his wish until
he arrived at Xian. Talking of this night time tour, Steven says quite
excitedly: "The night market is in the streets behind the clock tower
and is very famous there. As soon as I entered, I found a stall selling
'Ma Family Noodles' as it turns out there are a lot of people with the
surname Ma in Xian who come from Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. When at
school, my teacher once told me that the Ma surname originates from
Inner Mongolia, it looks like I have finally found my ancestral roots,
so I have arranged with my record company that for the next mainland
tour, I will go to Inner Mongolia as well."
In the night market Steven also tried a variety of foods, including
peanuts and 8-treasure sweetcake. However the biggest impression was
left by the streetside hotpots, because he saw that many people didn't
care about the cars driving past on the road and still had a hotpot in
the open streets and even Westerners were using a basin for a pot and
boiling away on the streets. Liking his food, Steven look on with his
mouth watering, but he wasn't allowed to try by the crew on the grounds
of hygiene and headed off to a Mutton Kebab restaurant instead.
As well as the stop at Xian, Steven also went to Kaifeng and tried some
soup dumplings from a restaurant of a hundred year history and in
Zhengzhou as well as attending the Kwan Kung temple, he saw some mini
quad bikes that some children were playing on and handed over his 3 Yuan
rental to take a spin himself. Later he headed to Shaolin to practise
Kung Fu with some young monks as he summarises how much fun he has on
his tour, but there was something that he missed out on. Steven smiles:
"I want to buy an apartment in Shanghai and originally I had planned to
go and take a look, but I didn't have enough time in the end so will
have to leave it until next time. I am confident that my wish to buy
property in Shanghai will come true, in fact my biggest wish is to have
property in each of China's provinces, so hopefully one day I will reach
this."
Translated by Em at http://tvbspacenews.blogspot.com/
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Steven's news on August 22, 2003
Steven Ma has now completed his promotional tour of China for his first
Mandarin album, having visited six cities including Zhuhai, Beijing,
Tianjun, Xian, Shanghai and Zhengzhou. At each place was held fans
meetings and album signings as well as an interview with the local
media.
The happiest thing for Steven on this tour was to find that many of his
television series have been aired in many different areas of China, so
as he arrived at each place, the fans would refer to him with different
character names. For example in the North where they have just aired
"Healing Hands" and "Duke of Mount Deer" they are referring to him as
"Xiao Xuanzi", because his series have gone down well with the local
viewers the record has sold extremely well and together with the
proposed airing of his series "Where the Legend Begins" in Shanghai in
September, this has all contributed to his confidence in the
distribution and he is now working on promoting a second Mandarin album
on the Mainland. There will be a whole new image for his audience in his
new album.
The tour has been very tightly scheduled and at the first five places
there was little time for him to look around, but at the last stop
Zhenzhou, after he finished his work, Steven decided to stay for a
couple more days to do some sightseeing. Steven first went to Kaifeng to
try their famous soup dumplings and see the Shrine of Judge Bao. He
also visited the ancient historical imperial temple "Dashang Imperial
Temple" to look around and request a blessing for his family.
News from Steven-channel
Translated by Em @ http://tvbspacenews.blogspot.com/
all news reposted from steven ma thread @ spcnet
**************************************
Steven's News on September 4, 2003
Steven Ma has been busy recently, after returning to Hong Kong from his
mainland tour, he has been invited to take part in a DJ contest in
Guangzhou as a guest performer and judge. Steven feels he does not have
much stage work experience so he felt the pressure in this show. He
says: "I had to choose a winner from the 16 contestants but their
standard was so high it was quite difficult to choose." However he says
that he made a small blunder when he gave the points because he thought
that the highest mark was 20, but when he looked at the other judge's
scorecards, he found that they were much higher than his before he
realised that the top mark was 40. Luckily it made no difference to the
result apart from bringing the average mark down.
On stage, Steven performed two songs and received a warm reception from
the audience and he wanted to shake hands with some of his enthusiastic
fans, but as he stepped forward, he was stopped by the security guards.
He says that he had some good news on this trip in that his show "Better
Halves" had great ratings in Guangzhou and the sub-theme that he sings
"Love held by a string" inspired the local radio station to have a
section in a program by the same name that helps bring together men and
women on the air. This has been very successful and brought together
some couples. Suddenly becoming a modern matchmaker in this way, Steven
was very happy indeed.
News from Steven-channel
Translation by Em @ http://tvbspacenews.blogspot.com/
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