自从我来中国之后，我一直尽力去熟悉华语音乐，为此来提高我普通话的水平。因此，我的朋友门邀请我陪他们去看女子乐队音乐会的时候我毫不犹豫地接受他们的邀请。他们所说的乐队叫做‘BEJ48’。 之前我没听说过这支乐队，所以我问他们给我解释以下。结果把来自英国的我弄糊涂了。这支乐队不是普通的乐队，而是一支由三个队组成的乐队，每个队有二十多个歌手。我们决定最好了解这个概念的方法就是去看表演。然而，我们去看表演之后，表演给我留下的印象是我对中国文化的了解没我之前以为的那么好！首先，我去看音乐会前，我以为大部分的粉丝都是小姑娘，可是原来他们都是很宅的男人。他们的行为好像球迷一样，都在欢呼，不在跳舞。可是，最奇怪的事情就是歌手的装束。虽然她们都是大人，可是他们的样子和八岁的女孩子差不多，都戴着蝴蝶结什么的。对粉丝来说这些女生是偶像，代表他们理想的女朋友，可是对我来说这就是我不能了解的一个现象。
My view of the concert (cameras weren’t actually allowed)
ENGLISH:
Since coming to China I have tried my best to familiarise myself with Chinese music in order to improve my Mandarin. With this in mind, when my friends invited me to go to a girl band’s concert I didn’t hesitate in accepting their invitation. The band in question was called ‘BEJ48’. I hadn’t heard of this band before so I asked them to tell me a bit more about it. What they said to me (their clueless foreigner friend) left me quite confused. Apparently, the bad wasn’t a normal band but was instead made up of three teams, each team having more than twenty members. We decided the best way for me to understand this concept was to go and see the performance. However, after seeing the performance, my lasting impression was that my understanding of Chinese culture was not as good as I had initially thought! Firstly, before seeing the performance I had expected the majority of fans to be young girls, but in actual fact they were mostly nerdy men. What’s more, their behaviour was much like that of football fans – aggressively chanting rather than dancing. However, the strangest thing was the clothes the performers were wearing. Although they were all adults, their appearance was more akin to that of eight year-old girls, with bows in their hair etc. From the fans’ point of view these girls were idols representing their ideal girlfriend. However, from my point of view this was simply a phenomenon I could not understand.