Chinese-Canadian singer/songwriter Wanting Qu a star in China, rising in Canada

TORONTO – When she was last in China, Wanting Qu remembers standing outside her apartment, chatting idly with her makeup artist. The singer didn’t notice the paparazzo surreptitiously snapping photos of the exchange, but she sure noticed the next day when the pictures were published alongside a fabricated story about the innocuous conversation.

Contrast that incident with the scene in Toronto on Friday, when Wanting was led through a short photoshoot in a small downtown park. As she comfortably cycled through a series of well-practised poses, locals ate lunch less than a metre away, cheerfully oblivious.

Such is life for the 28-year-old, who first moved to Canada at age 16. She came here to earn a business degree, but wound up discovering her passion for music. Now a star in Asia, she’s able to remain relatively anonymous in her adopted home, and that’s fine by her.

“I think when I want to write, and be focused, and just live life and feel emotion and normal things, (Canada) does that for me,” said Wanting, clad in a leather jacket and snug trousers, her wavy black hair wrapped over one shoulder.

“Although not at my shows. My shows are still crazy.”

Freshest in her mind is a gig Thursday at Toronto’s Mod Club, which sold out a month prior. She raves about the enthusiastic crowd but notes that she’s still feeling the effects, yawning and lamenting all the four- or five-hour sleeps she’s endured lately.

To put it lightly, it’s been a busy few months for Wanting (whose English handle is a phonetic amalgam of her Chinese names). She released her debut full-length “Everything in the World” back in April. It’s now approaching triple platinum status in China, while racking up similarly ample sales in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

While she’s still developing her audience in North America, this is where she found her sound. When she moved to Canada (first to the Toronto area before settling in Vancouver, in part due to the relatively harsher Ontario winters), she was fairly well-versed in pop but knew nothing of other genres — blues, jazz, alternative rock.

Here, she fronted a rock band for a while and fell in love with the work of several Canadian artists — most notably, fellow Vancouver resident Sarah McLachlan. In 2005, still a student, Wanting scraped together enough money to buy a keyboard. She’d always been blessed with a full and precise voice, but she had never tried to write a song before. Her first was about an ex-boyfriend, and still many of her lovelorn tunes centre on relationships.

“That was the starting point of me trying to express myself through music,” she said.

She had left China in part to escape the watchful gaze of her strict mother, but pursued the pragmatic business degree to appease her all the same.

That economic acumen actually came in handy once Wanting decided she wanted a career in music. She began aggressively networking in Vancouver, trying to amass as many contacts as possible. She paid extra attention to Nettwerk Records founder Terry McBride, who once steered the careers of McLachlan, Avril Lavigne and the Barenaked Ladies. Wanting eventually persuaded McBride to sign her and spend years collaborating on what would become her debut album.

Still, Wanting herself wasn’t sure how much of an audience awaited her. She notes that she’s something of an anomaly in China, where it’s somewhat unusual for an artist to play instruments and write her own songs.

So when she posted a hastily recorded video of her performing her lovesick piano ballad “Drenched” in her Vancouver apartment to YouTube in 2010, she had low expectations.

“I was thinking, ‘OK, maybe when I come back to this video in a long time, I’ll probably get a thousand hits?'”

She’s now just shy of the million-hit mark, while more polished clips for that tune and her “You Exist In My Song” have soared well past three million clicks.

“It got viral in China — people just started sharing and sharing.”

But straddling two markets at once occasionally requires some nimble gymnastics.

And that’s beyond the linguistic differences. Wanting, who could read and write English before she moved to Canada but hadn’t developed her oral skills, sings in English and Mandarin, languages that require two quite dissimilar vocal approaches — each requires a “different part of your throat and palette,” she explains.

Perhaps more difficult was getting her head around the cultural differences.

“Here (in Canada), if I’d been very modest, people would take that as a lack of confidence,” she explained. “Over there in China, if you’re very confident, that’s like being not modest or you’re just being cocky. People don’t like you over there if you’re too cocky.

“So it’s a lot like that that I have to be aware of and conscious about. Sometimes it’s very stressful.”

Based on her burgeoning popularity in Asia, she’s handled the distinction well. She says she’s commonly swarmed by fans hungry for autographs and photos in China, and she mostly doesn’t mind the new obligations.

“There are (times) where I wish that no one would stop me when I’m trying to get my contact solution, because my eyes hurt, I want to get solution, go home and take them off,” she said.

But mainly?

“If I have the time and If I’m in the mood, I don’t mind at all.”

And with that success, Wanting’s mother — once disapproving — has come around.

“For the past two-to-three years, she’s very proud of me. She’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m Wanting’s mom!’ Before, it was just like: ‘This is my kid.’ … It’s just roles changing now. She’s very proud of me right now.”

Still, not all the feedback is positive.

Wanting recently came under fire in China after speaking out against the country’s rampant piracy. While she understands the backlash to a certain extent — “people in China don’t have the time or energy to pay attention to your intellectual property,” she says — she doesn’t plan to back down.

“I’m not going to be the only person who fought for copyrights and got bashed,” she said. “I think there are more people (who will) do that.

“It’s like a revolution,” she added. “So I’ll be the pioneer.”

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