Pop idol wins new fans in China
Sultry voice gives star a distinctive sound and hordes of appreciative audience, Xing Wen reports.
Hashizume launched the Pretty Lies Tour 2025 earlier in the year, which took him to various cities including Haikou in Hainan province, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, Xi'an in Shaanxi province and Weifang in Shandong province this spring.
During each stop, he sampled local delicacies and explored the culture.
In Weifang — where the local kite-making skills were included in the first batch of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage representative projects list in 2006 — he experienced the kite-making process. He joined thousands of people flying kites of various shapes and sizes at the 42nd Weifang International Kite Festival.
"That's really new to me. Not many cities I've visited have such a unique festival and culture. So being able to learn how to make a kite and also to see that many kites in one area was really cool," he says.
In Xi'an, Hashizume brought his American father for his first China visit. They explored the Terracotta Warriors and savored authentic local delicacies such as biangbiang noodles and roujiamo (Chinese meat sandwich).
"Being able to travel to different cities and learn about their unique cultures brings me closer to China. That's definitely the highlight of every tour for me," says Hashizume.
Now, across the vast expanse of this country far from his home island, he consistently finds ways to maintain his once-outdoorsy lifestyle: jogging through the parks in Beijing where he's resided for four years, playing mahjong in Chengdu, Sichuan province, pedaling a tricycle along Hong Kong's seaside trails, trekking across the grasslands in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and scaling snow-capped mountains in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
He has visited nearly 30 Chinese cities so far, and at each stop he immerses himself in local culture and cuisine while documenting his experiences through vlogs.
"Through his vlogs, you can see how he embraces local cultures as a foreigner — with such open-mindedness and sincerity that we naturally want to embrace him back," says Zhang Meilin, a devoted fan from Urumqi, Xinjiang's regional capital.
