What Real Singing, What Lip-Syncing — This Is the Original Singer: A Gala Becomes China's Authenticity Test
At the Greater Bay Area film concert in Macao, one line — 'what real singing, what lip-syncing, this is the original singer' — became the night's verdict, and the latest round of China's long argument about who actually sings live.
The year's most-watched gala broadcast came with an unusually pointed flashpoint: whether the stars on stage were actually singing.
The "Rising Moon Over the Bay Area" film concert — the Greater Bay Area gala staged in Macao on Saturday night, gathering over a hundred film and music figures — trended under a phrase that doubles as a verdict: "Zeng Peici: what real singing, what lip-syncing — this is the original singer." The line comes from a comment on the Taiwan singer's rendition of a song from the 2000s drama series "KO One" (《终极一班》), praised in posts as the moment "her voice ended the argument for everyone." CCTV's entertainment channel ran its own clip under a headline about youth remembered, with the hotword attached.
The lip-sync question is not gala filler; it is one of China's longest-running performance debates. Big-budget galas routinely pre-record vocals and have stars mouth the words — audiences spot it fast, and the fallout lands hardest on the singers who did sing live. When a singer's live take sounds better than the studio track, viewers say "this is the original singer (这是原唱)" — meaning she out-sang her own recording. It is high praise, and it has become the standard the internet applies to every big-stage performance within hours.
Saturday's show gave the debate plenty to work with. Leo Ku, Alec Su and Ruby Lin reunited on stage to sing "Rain and Tears of a Deep Affair" (《情深深雨濛濛》), the theme from the 2001 drama that made all three famous — and, per posts, restored their 2001 costumes and hairstyles as well. The Paper covered the reunion as pure nostalgia economics: the show's "youth-recall" factor (回忆杀) is the gala's core product, alongside acts like Jackson Wang taking on Jacky Cheung's slow-burner "Man Man."
The gala itself is worth explaining to an outsider: launched in 2022 to mark the building of the Greater Bay Area plan that binds Hong Kong, Macao and nine mainland cities into a single economic region, it is equal parts concert and policy showcase, and this year drew a Zhihu thread asking users to pick their most memorable act. The Paper's editorial page went further, arguing the gala "connects this bay and that bay" — cultural work in a region whose two shores once pointed different ways.
The nostalgia programming is deliberate. The Paper's coverage noted Qi Qin singing "The World Outside" — an anthem for those who left home — and pointed to a generational relay at the gala's heart: Faye Wong opened the very first edition in 2022 with "Bay," and this year her daughter Dou Jingtong "took over" the song in an ethereal register of her own. In the editorial's reading, that handover is the event's real subject — the Greater Bay Area story told by the people who left it and the ones who grew up inside it.