Nice 'n" Eason does it

　

Feisty Cantopop actor Eason Chan has been told to tone down his combative stance with the gossipmongers. He'll stay in line, he tells Norman Yam- at least until he's paid off his mortgage.

Eason Chan puffs on a Marlboro, seemingly oblivious to the whirl of activity around him in the studio. Eyes closed, he savours the silent moments, exhaling more smoke into the air as the stylist works on this tousled hair for the fashion shoot.

Observing the Cantopop singer-actor's quiet self-absorption, it is difficult to imagine his as the madcap entertainer who pulls off headstands and other offbeat antics regularly onstage and off. During the interview, Chan says: "Just the other day at a music awards ceremony, my butt got sore from sitting all night. I needed some loosening up. When it was my turn to sing, I did an aerobics dance to go with the rock'n'roll song I was performing. The audience liked it. Basically, I am a spontaneous person. When I hear music, I get up and dance."

A best-selling artist with EEG, the audio-visual division of Emperor Group, Chan is no stranger to music awards. Two days after the interview, he won the much-coveted Grand Media Award of a local radio station in a tie with Andy Lau. Earlier, the 28-years-old star swept the major awards at the music events hosted by TVB and various radio stations.

Since breaking into the pop scene in 1995, Chan's increasing repertoire of hit songs- including Shall We Talk, King of K Songs and Today Next Year- has won him legions of fans, despite his lack of height and tendency to put on weight, which is made up for by his teen-idol good looks. But he takes the criticisms lightly, especially those that label him "fat".

"Of course, I would like to have a body like Andy's Lau's," he says. "He is still so fit even though he is in his early 40s. But if I looked like him, there would no diversity and it would be boring. In a way, I would also like to tell people that you don't need a great body to sing well.

In contrast to many pretty teen idols who can't carry a tune, Chan sings superbly with his richly textured voice. And his vocal prowess comes across remarkably in his live performances. "I make albums for me to do live shows. We promote the songs so that the audiences know them by heart when they come to watch me," says the star. He has scheduled a series of six concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum from mid-February the year.

But a danger with Chan's live gigs is that he gets carried away, sometimes with painful consequences. While performing in Taipei last year, he fell off the stage and injured his testicles. Recalling the mishap, he laughs almost uncontrollably, as though it is a joke on someone else: "It's a man's weakest point. For sure, it was very painful. Nobody wants accidents, but they happen from time to time. But still, I have my two testicles.

Despite such occupational hazards, his love for music remains passionate. "To me, if there was no music, the world would surely perish," he says. He claims to be enjoying what he currently does, cutting two albums a year, apart from making movies. But one suspects that he is a little disheartened about how things have turned out.

"I am more like a receiver-transmitter," he says. "The lyrics are not by me and I use my voice to express the emotions of others. I've been a singer-composer before, but my compositions never been plugged." He names Lenny Kravitz as his idol. Musically, he is influenced by the Beatles and Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung and Alan Tam. Chan's induction to Cantopop began when he started listening to the music of retired composer Joseph Koo, performed by household names such as Adam Cheng, Roman Tam and Michael Kwan.

Chan's other laments are that local album sales are declining due to the poor economy, that Hong Kong people are not doing enough to support local music productions- and their narrow preference for ballads: "I don't hate singing ballads, but there are other varieties too. It's good that the indie group LMF and Anthony Wong Chau-sang have appeared. But the press only focuses on the vulgar language in their music and overlooks the message the convey."

As a musician, he fears that he may be losing touch with his roots due to his celebrity. "I haven not taken the MTR or been on a bus for a long time," he admits. "Sometimes, I talk a walk in the streets, but only at night." Fortunately, his involvement in the cinema world makes up for this isolation. "Actually, making movies brings me back to the real world because that is where I can see a lot of people working behind the cameras and putting so much effort into the production." Chan made six movies last year, including If You Care and Demi-haunted, but this year he plans to reduce his filming commitments to concentrate on his music.

On the Hong Kong entertainment circuit, where gossip often gets magnified out of proportion, Chan's lack of media savvy has landed him in hot water. Some time back, he made an open remark that he only purchased the music albums of his idol Jacky Cheung, but not those of the other three "Heavenly Kings"- Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok. This immediately triggered an outburst of protest from fans of the trio.

The matter came to a head at a press conference, where Chan suddenly knelt down before the journalists and begged them to let him off the hook. He denied having made the remark, but when a journalist suggested playing back the tape-recording of his original comment, Chan lost his cool and threatened loudly: "Do you believe that I will beat you up?" The room was shocked into silence.

This and a slew of other incidents have given him a somewhat negative reputation, so much so that his recording company has told him to cool it. Having mellowed out, he now says: "I guess it's a kind of compromise I must make. To be honest, I have to finance an apartment mortgage. After paying it off, I can then by myself more."

For now, he has to put up with what he perceives to be other people's lack of understanding. "I have my own sense of humour and if others don't get it, that's fine. Often in quick interviews with the press, people don't fully grasp what I have to say and think I am weird. There are certain things that I feel are funny, but others don't seem to think so. They think I am crazy and should be in a mental asylum. And when I did those handstands on stage, they thought I'd gone totally insane. But I don't care- on stage, it's my space and my time and sometimes even I don't know what I am doing. I was just following the music.

When he is away from the madding crowd. Chan is apparently not much different from the average guy next door- gregarious, civilized and level-headed. The way he speaks and carries himself, good manners and all, reveals a respectable upbringing. Born in Hong Kong in 1974, he was sent to Dauntsey's School, a boarding school near Salisbury in England, when he failed to secure a place in a local secondary school after primary six.

At the boarding school, he learned to play the violin and joined the First Form choir. During those formative years, Chan took up formal voice training and learned to sing in Italian, Spanish, Latin and German. "There, for nine years, I was influenced by the place and the people around me." he recalls.

Subsequently, he began a degree in architecture, with his father's encouragement, at Kingston University near London. "I ended up very confused in my architecture studies." He confesses. "I didn't have a clue what the subject was about." Just when he was considering making a switch to psychology, Chan returned to Hong Kong for a summer vacation in 1995, where he was persuaded to take part in TVB's New Talent Singing Contests, emerging first out of 2,000 entrants. Capital Artists, an influential music company at that time, signed him as one of its contract artists.

"Dad told me that not a lot of people could make it like Jacky Cheung or Faye Wong," he remembers. "He also told me that music could never be a lifelong career. But I asked him to give me three years. If I couldn't make it within this period, I would return to my studies. Now, I've proven to him that music can indeed be my full-time career.

It was a Capital Artists that Chan met his current girlfriend Hilary Tsui, an actress turned fashion-magazine publisher, through his colleague Josie Ho when they were both contracted to the company. Unlike many Cantopop heartthrobs who keep their love relationship under wraps, Chan frankly admits that he and Tsui are living together.

Dismissing all grapevine buzz about their "secret marriage", he says: "You don't really believe all that stuff, do you? I'm always bullshitting those people who don't really care about my music, So when they asked if I was hitched, I said, "Yeah, sure, I even have 3 kids'.

"But the truth is that we are not married yet. I don't know when the time will come, but right now, I am not ready. We don't have enough time to be with each other. I am busy and so is she. I don't want my kids to grow up in such an environment. I have three dogs and I don't even have time for them. So how could I have time for my kids if I was married?"

It comes as no surprise that at this juncture in it, his career is the foremost priority on Chan's agenda; it provides him with the opportunity to do what he likes and does best. But most of all, it is his safest bet to ensure the attainment of his grand resolution for 2003: " I just hope to finish paying off my apartment's mortgage as quickly as possible."