Wo Men Ai Ni, Avril!

Avril Lavigne played here in Beijing last night. Apparently, she went down a storm in her first China gig in Shanghai a year ago, so is now back for a mini-tour.

For that first appearance, she learned to sing her recent hit Girlfriend in Mandarin. Well, only the chorus - but still a noble effort. And (not that I'm any expert!) her pronunciation sounds pretty good to me. It's an impressive feat, too, because the syllable count usually ends up being quite a bit more in the Chinese translation, so it can be pretty hard to make the new lyrics fit the music. For this new set of shows, I gather she's Chinesed up some of her other songs too. Way to go, Avril!

Unfortunately, Avril's 'people' seem to have got an iron grip on YouTube: I couldn't find any live concert bootlegs, and embeds are disabled for all her official videos. However, you can check out her 'Chinese version' of Girlfriend (accompanying the original video) here. Quite fun.

No, I did not go to last night's gig myself. It was in the Olympic Basketball Arena: it may be a fine venue, but it is WAY out on the unfashionable west side of town, and far too far away for me to consider schlepping to on one of my traditionally apathetic, recover-from-the-weekend Mondays. Also, I'm not sure what the tickets were going for, but I rather think the starting price for the cheap seats will have been something like three limbs and a kidney.

And then...... well, you know, she's just a bit too young for me - both in terms of her music and as an erotic object. And, oh yes, isn't she married already? (In general, I try to make it a rule not to allow myself to fall for women who are: a) considerably richer than me; b) internationally famous; c) barely half my age; or d) married. I find it avoids disappointment later.)

I mean, sure, if she'd invited me personally, I might have considered going. Or if some freebie tickets had somehow dropped in my lap some other way. But adolescent pop-rock isn't really my thing. Not a thing I'd pay good money for in my present cash-strapped circumstances, anyway.