The future of live music shows in the Covid-19 era? It’s here, with Mandopop star Eric Chou’s sold-out arena concerts
- At Eric Chou’s arena concerts last weekend in Taipei, fans had to pass a temperature check, wear face masks and use hand sanitiser
- They also had to register to receive a QR code in case contact tracing was needed later. Inside it was like normal, with Chou high-fiving fans and taking wefies
Taiwanese singer Eric Chou is fresh off two back-to-back, sold out arena concerts that have shown the world what live shows look like in the coronavirus era.
He spent last weekend belting out his biggest hits to huge crowds of concertgoers at the indoor Taipei Arena, where he led legions of diehard fans in singing – and screaming – their hearts out, face masks be damned.
Between songs, Chou got up close with his adoring fans, borrowing phones for wefies and high-fiving as many eagerly outstretched palms as possible. In short, it went a lot like a regular concert for Chou: “To be honest, to me, the only difference is wearing a mask,” he says.
But the pre-concert precautions tell a different story. Restrictions on large gatherings were lifted in Taiwan after the city logged zero new locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus for eight weeks, but the list of guidelines handed down to Chou’s management team by the local Department of Health was still long.
And as one of the first regions to lift restrictions on audience numbers for gatherings, the world is now looking to Taiwan and Chou’s sold-out concerts to show what life for music lovers will be like in the future.