Joyce Jonathan is popular in China. This Thursday, June 27, 2024, the singer even won the final of Cheng Fenga show related to Star Academy which is followed by millions of viewers on Mango TV or on the Internet. The Frenchwoman confided in the audience about this Chinese adventure Parisian.
Joyce Jonathan has been working in China for 15 years. Her albums are broadcast in the country and she goes there every year to give concerts. “I have been passionate about this country since I was little”confided the singer whose mother owned “a pioneering tourism agency in exchanges between Chinese and French, at the very beginning of the 1990s”. The one who first went to China at the age of eight lived in Beijing.
A demanding pace
To participate in the telehook Cheng Feng which totals 13.5 billion views per season, Joyce Jonathan stayed almost four months in China. It wasn’t easy. “The pace is twelve days in China, a week in France, twelve days in China… It’s extremely intense and trying. We work 22 hours a day, we sleep two hours a night. I cried more than once from exhaustion, I got sick just before a performance, I saw white, I vomited…”said the singer. “Of the 36 candidates at the start, I am the only European still in the running”Joyce Jonathan said at the time. But the singer didn’t do things by halves. It’s “a competition that is both individual and collective” with solo passages or two, three or four. As she told last week on her Instagram account, she chose to sing a duet with Shang Wenjie, a Chinese woman she compares to Clara Luciani. For this song, half in Chinese, half in French, Joyce Jonathan sat down at the piano and sang in Mandarin.
Singing in Mandarin
“I had already done singing in Chinese, dancing and singing too, but playing the piano live + singing live in Mandarin on a new song was an opportunity to challenge myself.”wrote the singer on Instagram. A winning move, since she won the finale which will be broadcast on July 5, 2024. This participation in the show increased the singer’s notoriety. “Fans are waiting for me downstairs from the hotel, it’s crazy! At the airport, the police ask me for autographs, the flight attendants recognize me, it’s funny”indicated the Frenchwoman.
Joyce Jonathan will tour France before returning to China in September 2024, in Chengdu. A seven-date tour is planned for the fall of 2024.
