For those who didn’t grow up with them: F4 was formed in 2001 after Jerry Yan, Vanness Wu, Vic Chou, and Ken Chu starred together in the Taiwanese drama Meteor Garden. The show became a phenomenon across Asia, and the four of them went on to become one of Mandopop’s biggest acts, with albums like Meteor Rain (2001) and Waiting for You (2007). This year, three of them reunited for the FโฆFOREVER 1st World Tour โ Jerry, Vanness, and Vic, joined by Mayday’s Ashin, with Ken Chu sitting this one out.
I was twelve or thirteen when Meteor Garden first aired โ and somehow, twenty-three years later, it found its way back to me in a stadium full of strangers who felt, for one night, like old friends.
I remember running home from school just to catch the afternoon episode, praying I hadn’t missed the opening. There was no YouTube yet, so if you wanted to hear the songs, you waited for them to play on TV, over and over, until the lyrics settled into memory whether or not you understood the words. I sang them anyway, phonetically, with the kind of full-hearted confidence only a twelve-year-old can manage. I bought posters of them at school, traded photo cards like currency, and pinned Vanness’ face somewhere I could see it every day. To this day, I still have those photo cards and posters tucked away somewhere, a little worn at the edges. It’s strange, and a little tender, to realize how long ago that really was โ and how much of that girl is still in me.
So when I heard they were coming to the Philippines, I felt that old excitement rush back all at once like some younger part of me had been waiting patiently, all these years, for exactly this.
A friend asked if I wanted to go. I didn’t need convincing. It felt less like a decision and more like something I had already said yes to, years ago, without knowing it โ a promise made by a version of myself who couldn’t have imagined it would ever actually come true.
Ticket day came with its own quiet anxiety the waiting, the worry that the line online might stretch too long, that the seat I wanted might slip away before I could even get to it. But it worked out. I got a good spot. Close enough to feel, later, like the universe had been in on it all along, like it had all been meant to happen exactly this way.
Then came the night itself. And then the moment they walked on stage, I screamed. No other word for it. A full-body, unguarded scream, the kind you don’t plan and can’t hold back. Jerry Yan, still impossibly handsome, still exactly as I remembered and somehow more. And Vanness, my long-time bias, real and present in a way I hadn’t let myself imagine after all these years of only ever seeing him on a screen.
Every note of Meteor Rain pulled up a version of myself I hadn’t visited in years โ a whole era, folded quietly inside a song.
And then came the tribute to Shan Cai: angel wings catching the light, a solo number from Jerry Yan sung with so much tenderness it felt like a private moment shared with thousands of us at once, and at the end, a small, aching recreation of a scene from the drama โ the telescope, the necklace. Such simple props, and yet they carried the weight of everything the story ever meant to us. My heart was so full it almost hurt, that particular kind of ache that only comes from being truly, fully happy.
Somewhere in that moment, I realized the night was ending soon โ and something in me didn’t want it to, didn’t want to let go of the feeling of being back there, twelve years old and wide-eyed, but held safely in my grown-up body. I was close to tears, not because it was sad, but because it mattered that much, because some part of me had waited twenty-three years without even fully realizing it, and here it finally was.
In the days after, I fell into something like post-concert depression replaying the same videos over and over on my phone, watching Meteor Garden clips at 2am, unwilling to let the feeling go even a little. I still haven’t quite moved on, if I’m honest, and I’m not sure I want to just yet.
Maybe that’s why, when my friend suggested catching them again in Bangkok this August 2nd, I said yes without hesitation, without even checking my calendar first. Some stories, apparently, aren’t ready to end just yet and I think I’m okay with that. Some things deserve to be held onto a little longer.
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