Despite facing continuous accusation of producing fake rock music, the pop rock band Mayday still played their largest concert to date in front of a capacity 80,000 crowd at Shanghai Stadium on Saturday.

Fake rock or not, the five-piece band from Taiwan certainly has a lot of fans in Shanghai, mostly teenage girls and university students. Fans started lining up hours before the concert.

They occupied all the restaurants, shops and markets around the stadium.

As with all Mayday concerts, fans stood for the entire three-hour duration. Those in the VIP area were standing on the arms of their chairs in order to get a view of the performance.

Luckily, nobody fell or was injured.

"I'm just so happy to be here, although I don't know where to go and what to do after the concert," noted Linda Zhou, a university student who had traveled all the way from Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Like many others who flew to Shanghai just for the concert, Zhou planned to spend the night on the street and take a train home the next day. Zhou was one of the luckier ones, many who couldn't get tickets had to make do with listening to the show from outside the stadium.

The band performed all of their popular songs, covering topics from Chinese legends like the Monkey King to the girl next door.

While their early songs have a more vibrant edge with a greater variety of subjects, the more recent ones are increasingly emotional and love centric.

These were apparently the more popular judging by the audience accompaniment levels.

Saturday's Mayday concert attracted the biggest audience of any musical concert so far this year in Shanghai.

(上海日報 2007-10-25)