Can the Taiwanese beat the Koreans at their own game?
Vanness Wu and Machi can.
These Taiwanese-American boys showed that they could steal the kimchi from K-pop biggies jtL and Shinhwa - what's mor, on the Korean stars' home turf.
At the MTV Asia Buzz concert at Chamsil Stadium in Seoul last Saturday, the loudest screams from the 15,000 crowd were divided fairly equally between the homegrown celebs and the foreign boys.
One fan, Ms Jenise Park, 32, who was wearing a Vanness T-shirt, said she went for the concert just to see the F4 member. She doesn't understand Hokkein or Mandarin but she thought the men were hot.
"I especially like Vanness... I can't explain it, he's so handsome," she said, clearly flustered from screaming for her man.
Any time a Machi member or Vanness bent down to touch eager hands in the mosh pit, even the fans up in the stalls stood up to check out who the lucky person is.
So you can imagine how crazy the crowd went when the boys pulled their T-shirts off to reveal those glistening toned bods, and the scramble for their sweaty tees when they threw to fans.
Hip-Hop Moves
The hugely popular Vanness has been helping his hip-hop buddies earn extra mileage with fans, appearing with them on the red carpet at the MTV Asia Awards held in Singapore earlier this year as well.
The five-member of Machi (Taiwanese slang for "friends") are cousins. But the most popular member is Andrew Chou, better known as Machi Didi and just 13.
Quite a feat for someone who's barely hit puberty.
It's all in the hip-hop moves. And maybe the fact that one of the Machis - Nickyy - is Korean American. And perhaps also because Vanness shared big-screen time in the movie Star Runner with Korean sweetheart Kim Hyun-Joo.
- Abstracted Vanness Wu and Machi part The New Paper 28/07/04