Cool Jay

(2 of 3)

But the master still doubted his apprentice could be more than a songwriter. "I didn't think Chou could make it as an entertainer," Wu admits, "because he's not so handsome." It wasn't until Wu handed over the reins of Alfa Music to his friend and fellow singer J.R. Yang nearly a year-and-a-half later that Chou would go from being idol-maker to idol.

"I asked him if he'd written anything for himself," Yang explains. Chou played him Ke Ai Nu Ren (Lovely Woman), a song he had already recorded on borrowed time—hanging around the studio 24-7 did have its advantages. "After four minutes the song finished, and I asked, 'What are we waiting for?'" The kid was living in the studio anyway. Recording the first album in three months was practically a vacation.

Chou kicks back on that leather sofa today, wearing an off-white wool cap pulled low over his brooding, brown eyes, and a black velour tracksuit. He went from being studio geek to pop star overnight, almost too quickly, and he carries the emotional and psychological vestments of that fame and success uneasily. He's all straight answers, monosyllabic responses, yes ma'ams and no ma'ams. Grunts. Nods. Evasive eye rolls. Where is the smoldering sexuality and boy-misses-girl pathos, the mannish lad who gives his soul ballads depth and feeling?

Then he begins talking about the music, and you remember, yes, the music. Take that away and you're left with this slab of a boy who looks like he wants to climb back over that sofa and hunker down in his old, creative lair. My music, he explains, my music should be like magic. It should have variety. It should be ephemeral, changing, evolving. He goes off on musical theory and Chopin and how the cello is different from the violin and Chinese five-tone versus Western 12-tone melodies. "It's my magic," he says again, shaking his head, looking at you all earnest and sincere as if he needs you to understand.

And then he opens up, revealing his yearning to find a girlfriend, his own shyness that has him growing his hair long over his eyes so he isn't distracted by his fans' staring.

Finally, he leans in close: "Let me tell you about diao."

Diao is a Taiwanese slang usually translated as "cool" or "outrageous." It literally means "penis."

"It's my personal philosophy," he explains, "but it has nothing to do with religion. It means that whatever you do, you don't try to follow others. Go your own way, you know?"

He sits back, shakes his hair out of his eyes and nods. This is serious. This is deep. This is the metaphysical mechanism that he feels explains his pop stardom, as opposed to his musical talent. "It's like, the ability to shock. The way I think of shocking people is to do things that people don't expect in my music, in my performances. Like during my first Taipei show last year, I was performing Long Quan (Dragon Fist) [Chou's favorite tune from his Eight Dimensions CD] and I took off on a harness and flew out over the audience. That was diao."

Diao is an internal process, a mystical path that makes extreme demands and forces stringent measures. It requires, mysteriously, that Chou forgo wearing underwear, a lifestyle choice that is endlessly vexing to his mother. "He used to wear underwear as a child," she sighs. "Maybe it is something he started since working with Jacky Wu." Chou himself will not elaborate. The diao that can be spoken of, apparently, is not the eternal diao.