She's sitting in the middle of the room, surrounded by activity. Backstage at the Beijing Workers'Stadium, one of Asia's biggest music stars looks a bit like a red-velvet clad Dorothy, caught up in a tornado of yodelling back-up singers, dancers practising their routines, and some guy in the corner slurping instant noodles.

This is the first sign that Chang Hui-mei is no ordinary pop star or prima donna. Performing at Warner Music’s tenth anniversary showcase in Beijing on October 24, Chang is the only artist in the green room. Her Hong Kong counterparts such as Sammi Cheng Siu-man and Aaron Kwok Fuk-cheng are nowhere in sight.

Face to face, Chang is as real as they come. Commonly known by her public nickname A-Mei (a name she never uses herself), she first danced across our television screens in the mid-nineties with the spunky shag haircut that made her instantly recognisable. She may now favour multi-coloured dreadlocks, but her energy remains.

For a bit of privacy we step out of the green room into… the locker room. Chang, who had just finished her three-song opening set sat down like an athlete after a game.

Chang recalled the first time she realised she was more than just a girl who loved to sing and dance. “When the first record [1996's Sisters] came out, I was doing a video and a crowd of reporters gathered. When we were done filming, they were all over me. I didn’t know what to do. The record company [then Taiwan’s Forward Music] told me to just go out and relax. I went out there, and they asked me to introduce myself. I just burst into tears. I didn’t know what do.”

Seven years later, she has obviously grown accustomed to being in the spotlight. “I haven’t really changed, not as a person. But of course I’m not the same Chang Hui-mei as in 1997. My attitude now is open to more and more new things.”

Despite having attained regional superstardom, Chang doesn’t like comparisons to singers that have preceded her, such as Taiwan’s Deng Lijun. “That’s a media tool. I would certainly never say that. No singer would ever say, ‘I’m the new this-or-that-person of this generation.’ There’s only one Deng Lijun, we loved her so much – I love her music so much even now. After me, there will be somebody else.”

At the same time, Chang isn’t afraid to venture off the beaten pop music path through covers of various Chinese and foreign musicians – including Chinese rocker Cui Jian. During a string of post-Christmas 2002 concerts in Hong Kong, Chang unexpectedly performed Cui’s counterculture hit, ‘Nothing to My Name.’ She explains, “I knew the song well. I had seen Cui Jian perform it in a video a number of years ago, although I didn’t know who he was then. I really liked it, but more importantly, I was really moved by it.”

Other covers like her rendition of the folk song ‘I Stand on the Mountain’ are standard A-Mei live fare, heard during her recent Beijing appearance.

That said, Chang won’t be abandoning her native tongue in favour of English or Japanese. “I haven’t seriously considered singing in English just to go further, nor Japanese. The most important thing [about a song] is if I like it, can I do it, how does it make me feel?”

Although she rocketed to fame in the late 1990s, Chang’s progress in China hit a wall in May 2000. Chang performed at the inauguration ceremony of Chen Shui-bian in Taiwan and found herself on the wrong end of a political controversy. Does she regret it? “No, I don’t regret it,” she said. “It was purely a musical decision. They asked me to sing and I sang. Did I expect or could I control the reaction that followed? No, absolutely no.” The move cost Chang her sponsorship deal with Sprite, and slapped her with a performance ban on the Chinese mainland for two years. Would she do it again? “Maybe it’s better to let someone else sing next time,” she said coyly.

More on her mind is original material for her next album, slated for a Chinese New Year release in early 2004. What can we expect from the new record? “Really rock!” Emphasising the latter word, she hurls herself forward and thrusts her hands into the air with the pinky and pointer up, thumb-in sign most familiar to heavy metal fans and Beavis and Butthead. Alert the media: A-Mei’s a headbanger.

“All my early songs were rock, Tina Turner, stuff like that,” she says, indicating a return to her roots. “I’ve been listening to some Malaysian rock lately. I know some of my fans are going to think I’ve lost my head when they hear it, they’re going to think, ‘A-Mei’s gone crazy,’ but I just want it to have a real rock vibe to it.” She flips the sign again.

Chang hopes to stray further from the confines of pop music in future recordings. Born to a Taiwan aboriginal family, she hopes to produce an album that will focus entirely on minority music. To illustrate her point, she bursts into song, a slow, haunting melody in a little-spoken dialect. A back-up singer spontaneously joins in harmony. One can imagine A-Mei does this a lot: she sings not because it’s another day at the office, but because she would do it even if she were standing around washing dishes.

That album is “for my mom. She has really let me be and express myself. Everything in her heart comes out in song. I want to help those feelings to come out, to share them with many others.”

The spectre of piracy hangs over the Chinese music industry, and one wonders how many more millions of albums Chang has actually sold. She speaks passionately about the issue. “The first thing is, we as musicians have to work hard. We can’t back off. [The music] has to be good every time.”

Her advice to music fans regarding piracy is: “If you can’t buy it, then borrow it, but don’t buy pirated material. Or find another outlet, like the radio, to listen to it. Just don’t buy the pirated stuff,” Chang emphasised.

Towards the end of the conversation, Singaporean starlet Stephanie Sun Yanzi bursts in, having just finished her set. Based on audience reaction and merchandise sales outside the concert, Sun may be the heir to Chang’s pop crown. What if that day comes? What if the great Chang Hui-mei was one day silenced, one way or another?

“I don’t think I could ever get to that point. If I couldn’t sing, I’d produce. Somehow, I’d use my experience,” Chang said.

As the interview ends, she is gracious to the last, apologising for not speaking English well, and then managing a clear “thanks” as I head out.

Later, accusations emerge that Shenyang-born songstress Na Ying admitted to Chang and others after the show that the Warner showcase was her first true performance in over a year, having lip-synched earlier live shows due to a vocal injury.

But Chang again proves that she’s the real deal. Hours after the show ends, the other artists have disappeared, but everybody’s big sister is still there. She is not in a private suite but sitting at another table, again in the middle of the room. And it is she who is making the rounds, glass in hand, congratulating the Warner executives present on their anniversary and wishing them continued future success.

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