The Touching Story of How Jay Chou Struggled Before He Became Today's Pop Icon

Jay , a pop icon whom millions of young people adore , has absolute respect and love for his mother Ye Hui Mei, because in his most lonely most helpless, the mother with warm arms supported him .

 So Jay has been saying, "As long as my mother happy, I am willing to give up everything for her! "

 Jay was born in January 1979, his mother Ye Hui Mei Taipei's Tamkang elementary school art teacher, and his father is a high school physics teacher Tamkang.

 Jay was 4 -year-old kindergarten boy back then, the Ye Hui Mei took him to early childhood music classes Tamkang Yamaha piano . 

 Usually Jay is a lively kid but when he was put in front of the piano, he was mesmerised to the piano, and was actually surprisingly quiet. 

 He could listen to the teacher once and then play the music piece out on his own. 

 The teacher told Ye Hui Mei , the child is very talented !

 In order to develop Jay’s talent for music, Ye Hui Mei advocates spending the family’s entire savings to buy him a good piano.

 However, Jay’s father believes that the mum was being overly serious and there was no need to spend their entire savings for that.

 Finally, Ye Hui Mei still went ahead to buy the piano for Jay against his father’s wishes. This made Jay’s dad very upset.

 During his third grade, Jay overheard the world famous "Swan Lake”, played beautifully on a cello and was again mesmerised by the instrument.

 Once again, Ye Hui Mei bought Jay a cello behind her husband’s back.

 Her husband was furious that Jay’s wife has no regards for his thoughts. As time goes by, there was lesser and lesser love in the family, only more and more bickering.

 Jay did not understand why the father always has to quarrel with his mum. Eventually, he wrote a poem that read that “In my childhood, Mum gives so much love and Dad only gives so much scolding. If I have a pair of wings, I will fly away with my mum.”

 When Jay was in secondary level two, his parents divorced. 14 -year-old Jay wrote: “Mom and Dad do not love each other, is this true meaning of life?” Silence, stubbornness and rebellious were already shaping up in Jay.

 Jay has musical talent, but homework was bad. He did badly for his college entrance exam and did not even make it into college. His future was bleak and both the son and mother were wondering if that was the end of Jay.

 Fortunately, Tamkang Secondary School music programs were enrolling around that time. Jay’s mum tried to enrol him for that, and he made in for the admission.

 Because playing a good hand of piano and cello and also often active in the basketball court, Jay attracted the attention of many female students and was often the subject of discussions among the students. 

 However, Jay is often dead serious, rarely showing a smile.

 Despite having outstanding musical achievements, his academic results were all in the red.

 His teachers all felt that Jay was retarded. His English teacher was even as outspoken to tell Ye Hui Mei that Jay is mentally retarded. 

 Ye Hui Mei fell into deep thought and she decided to help Jay cultivate his talent in music because she hoped that at least, he can become a piano teacher in the future and earn a modest living.

 Ye Hui Mei did not blame Jay. She felt that it was the family background that caused him to become such a quiet and rebellious child.

 She did not believe that he is mentally handicapped either.

 Sure enough, as the teacher's prediction, Jay did not make it to university. Ye Hui Mei, after making inquiries, encourage Jay to try for Taipei University Department of Music, and he was not admitted. Jay teeth exam a second time, still failed.

 Mother and grandmother grandfather are worried about the future of Jay, what this child can do it in the future? 

 Jay had no choice but to wait to be enlisted for military service. During this period, he suffered an illness that caused his spine to be infected and harden.

 Worst of all, this illness has no cure except to use medication to relieve the pain. In his elderly days, his spine could even become so stiffened that he might become paralysed.

 After his spine illness improved slightly, Jay went to a restaurant to work as a dish washer. Because he always breaks plates, his monthly salary was often deducted in half to pay for the damages.

 The restaurant has a piano and one day, Jay happened to just play on it for fun.

 While he was playing the “Chopin Dance", his boss heard and was stunned.

 An idea came to his boss’s mind. He asked Jay not to work as a waiter anymore, instead play piano in the restaurant.

 In order to create some publicity, his boss invited some television reporters to make news on Jay playing piano in the restaurant. 

 This helped improve the restaurant’s business significantly and Jay was also fairly well paid working as a pianist in the restaurant.

 One of Jay’s school mates help him to register to take part in Taipei Star TV entertainment show “Super Rookie". 

 For this competition, Jay created an elaborate song “Dreams have wings," but he really did not have the confidence to sing it himself. Instead he invited a singer to sing on his behalf. 

 However, the singer did not really understand the genre of his song and so, his piano accompaniment turned out very weird. The audience booed and it was a total screw up for Jay.

 Ye Hui Mei was very anxious for Jay. She found the courage to look for popular host Jacky Wu, and showed him Jay’s “Dreams have wings” score.

 Wu was Taiwan Alpha music company owner, he did not have a good first impression of Jay but after taking a look at the score, he found the music score very eye-catching.

 The score was written in a very neat and orderly manner despite the spectrum of the music being very complicated in nature.

 Because of that, Wu immediately changed his mind and told Jay’s mum, "This child still has some potential, ask him to come to work tomorrow."

 Jay joined the music company as a production assistant. Under his mother’s encouragement, Jay often took the initiative to help colleagues to buy lunch and help them in any ways possible.

 Gradually, everyone in the company started to have some good impression of this quiet but diligent young man.

 Ye Hui Mei was always worried about Jay’s indifference and stubbornness.

 She was afraid that Jay would offend bosses and employees because of his character and temperament.

 And so very often during off hours, Ye Hui Mei will always appear at the recording company to offer some delicious pizza, fried chicken to give employees and ask them to bear with Jay. 

 Very soon, Ye Hui Mei was also familiar with colleagues than Jay himself. And everyone knows that Jay has a good mother.

 Jay quickly created a large number of songs, but let Wu was unmoved. He felt that the lyrics and music Jay wrote were always strange and almost nobody within the music circle has any appreciation for that sort of music.

 Once, Jay took what he thought was his finest creation to Wu to have a look. Wu did not even look, crumpled the score and readily throw it into the trash bin.

 Jay was so upset that he could only keep crying.

 Should he abandon his dream or continue? His mother turning up at his company to offer things to his colleagues has become a common scene. 

 Jay felt very sorry if he were to give up after what his mum has done for him all these while.

 Jay decided to bite the bullet and as hard as he tried, he wrote songs at the speed of a song every day.

 Ye Hui Mei goes to the company every night to see Jay and seeing her son suffering, she choked and tried her best to hold back the tears.

 She tried to say a few words of encouragement to Jay and some happy words, and then replaced Jay’s clothes to bring back home to wash.

 For more than a month, Wu would turn up in the office consecutively every day at eight o'clock. And when he reaches office every day, he would always see a new piece of song by Jay.

 Finally, he was very moved by this young man’s hard work and talent. He started to see some signs of hope in Jay’s songs and decided to help Jay find some established singers to sing his songs.

 Wu took Jay’s "Tears knows" to Andy Lau but was refused in the end.

 Shortly after, Wu took Jay’s “Nunchaku" to A-Mei and she did not hesitate in rejecting Jay’s song.

 Wu decided to give Jay one last chance and let him sing his own songs, and if this still does not work, Jay will have to leave the company.

 Jay was called into the office and Wu solemnly told him: “Jay, I’ll give you 10 days, if you can write 50 songs, and I can pick 10 from those, then I’ll help you launch an album." 

 This made Jay very excited and motivated. He called to tell his mother and then ran down the street after work to buy a large box of instant noodles. 

 He thought that this was his last chance, even if he were to die of exhaustion; he will still have to give it his best!

 The bloodshot eyes Jay wrote about 50 songs and each of the songs were written in a very proper structure. Finally, Wu let out a fade smile of happiness. 

 He picked out the 10 songs and in early 2001, Jay’s first album “Jay " was debuted.

 The recording company did not have much hope for Jay’s album and was simply hoping to earn enough to just recover the cost of production.

 However, that album became like a fierce typhoon that swept through Taiwan, quickly snapped up by fans. “Jay" won in Best Pop concerts in Taiwan that year for best album, best producer and best composer three awards.

 Jay’s success was totally not within the expectation of the company and the music industry was totally shaken as well by Jay’s sudden rise.

 If the first album was a sign of success, then Jay’s second album "Fantasy" was even a bigger one.

 “Fantasy” became a storm that swept through the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the entire Chinese music industry, sweeping numerous awards, one after another.

 Jay finally succeeded after the earlier years of his unhappy family, sad childhood and painful teenage period.

 He is fully aware that if not for his mother, he would not have been able to make it.

 Because of Jay, his mother did not remarry as he was the world to her.

 Now that Jay has become so rich, he gives all his income to his mother to be in charge.

 Even though he now has his own house, he still goes home every weekend to spend time with his mother and grandmother.

 And as time goes by, the memories of her husband’s sarcasms, his teachers’ opinion of him and the hardships that they went through together has slowly vanish in Ye Hui Mei’s mind.