Promise

There was a 7 hour long charity show today organized by the Hong Kong Performing Artistes Guild (amongst others) for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. About 500 artistes from Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong participated in the event and I think they managed to raise quite a sum. The song the artistes are singing above is "Promise", a song written by Andy Lau. If I'm not wrong it's an old song of Beyond's.

Even though parts of the show were rather disorganized (understandable for such a long show involving so many people) and some singers really cannot sing, I thought it was truly touching that so many artistes flew in specially to contribute in some way or another. I bet it was hot, sweaty and disgusting and they are not paid at all but 500 actually turned up. Five hundred!!!!!! And people like ASOS flew all the way in just to say a few words of encouragement and Zhang Xiaoyan who hasn't appeared in ages also flew in to host parts of the show, amongst many many other Taiwanese and Chinese artistes.

Of course the artistes in Hong Kong have also been extremely involved in charity work. Andy Lau is especially respectable, he really has been leading all the charity work done for Sichuan since the very beginning. Andy Lau, Sammi and Joey Yung also visited Sichuan over the past couple of days to motivate the rescue workers and to see for themselves the magnitude of what has happened. I think they've just arrived back in Hong Kong today and instead of taking a break they've embarked on this 7-hour marathon of a concert again. I'm not sure if I can do so myself honestly.

The Hong Kong showbiz has always been associated with vanity, bad press and scandal but really this event has really shown everyone how much they are able to help people if they work together and direct their power to the correct purposes.

I think that's what's precious about human nature. Despite all that is negative, despite what happens, we always find strength to pick ourselves up. Even when we are discouraged by how nature rampages parts of this world mercilessly again and again, or when we forget momentarily to care about other people in the midst of our so-called suffering, there will be people who are compassionate enough to spend some time to remind us to help, or at least remember, those who are really much less fortunate than we can even imagine.

It doesn't really matter how much you contribute, but do try to help the people of Sichuan rebuild their lives.

You can do so at the following websites:
www.worldvision.org
http://www.artistes512.com (This is the official website for the aforementioned event, click on "pay online".)