Tzuyu Biography [1/2]

[Baozi 1,658]

 

 

(What is kpop?)

 

 

The Early Days...

 

Tzuyu was born in Tainan, Taiwan. She grew up in a family of business owners. Her father and mother were restaurant business owners that operated several businesses in the city. From a small age, she had taken a fascination to dance and singing and as such her family was able to send her to various activities and competitions. She was enrolled in performing arts school Yong Kang Elementary School and later the Yong Kang Junior High School Joint Concern program. Situated near the Guiren Cultural Center-Performance Hall, this performing arts school is where Tzuyu would be studying in as a kid and into her teens all the time till her discovery by TWICE. It was in 2012 that during a performance at the MUSE Performing Arts Workshop that JYP Entertainment took notice of her. In November of that same year, several months after, she signed a contract with JYP Entertainment to appear on the South Korean show Sixteen.

 

Sixteen…

 

A South Korean produced show created by JYP Entertainment. The show’s purpose was an audition for their new girl group. The show pitted 16 trainees against each other in various trial and tests in an attempt to select 9 girls to join the establishment of JYP’s new flagship team. Although not scoring as high as the other girls, Tzuyu made the final cut in the series and was added to the creation of the group as the 8th member of “TWICE”. While not the strongest in any particular area, she was noted to be strong in dance and visuals and the JYP director had commented that she had the most potential of all the candidates including Jihyo and Sana whom comprised the best vocalists of the group.

 

TWICE…

 

With a debut in October of 2015, the group performed its first showing to the song “Like OOH-AHH”.

 

 

Tzuyu and TWICE debuted to huge success thanks to their upbeat songs and a group comprised of members with so much personality that they were able to relate to major segments of fans in Korea. In her group she is given the moniker of Makane (aka young child) as she is the youngest in the group and others often see her as the little sister of the group. Despite an incident with the Chinese government and media in 2015 where fans were outraged that Tzuyu was forced into a public apology by Chinese international pressure as she had been seen supporting the Taiwanese government. Despite the Chinese media’s best efforts, her popularity only continued to rise and before the end of 2016, she was already ranked as one of the top three idols in the country. Taiwan’s top politicians including the president candidate Tsai Ing-Wen publicly supported her stating that “a citizen of the Republic of China should not be punished for waving her flag and expressing support for her country.” Even rival political parties supported her through the ordeal.

 

The Beginning of Hockey…

 

While not a big presence in Taiwan, Korean Ice Hockey has a fair sized following in the current day. It was in Korea that Tzuyu began to pick up the sport. At first it began as a hobby, but her natural talent and interest in it sooned picked up to a point where she enrolled in the Asia School of Hockey. There under the Fong administration, she continued both her studies and began to play seriously in the hockey program. At first it seemed like it wouldn’t be possible given both her training in Kpop and her needing to continue regular studies and of course now adding the rigorous schedule of hockey. She definitely struggled to adapt in the first half season but at the encouragement of her trainers and JYP entertainment, she persisted in pursuing both of her activities. The fruits of her hard labours appeared in the second year of high school when she not only was able to balance out her life as a top idol star in Korea, but she won the inter-high MVP and most improved award that season. The Asia Hockey Academy collects all the brightest young hockey talents in Asia and train and have them compete both against their own clubs and in intrasquad leagues. Tzuyu lead her team that season in both goals and points as well as causing several scouts from overseas to remark on her skating ability which despite only started skating in the last few years, was better than most major junior players already that were older than her. Later in the tournament where the Asia Hockey Academy school faced off against the top professional teams of the J-League Hockey teams, she turned heads again when she lead the charge to help the Academy team go a perfect 10-0 in the league tournament. During this span she managed some of the best numbers in Academy history, matching prior prospect Ginzou Fujiwara with 23 points in those 10 games including 10 goals. Despite this, in her post tournament interview she was fairly conservative about her own play.

 

“It was definitely a team effort for all of us out there. I don’t think it was anything more than that. We felt good and we never stopped moving out feet so we collected the wins. I’m proud of my team and it was great to win the tournament.” - Tzuyu

 

With the tournament MVP in hand, she is now only one of a handful of players from the Asia Hockey Academy to venture overseas to the VHLM with hardware in hand. Among the last few players, the most notable being Xin Xie Xiao whom set a tournament record with 20 goals. Among the others, Ying Qin and Fook Yu were able to make impacts at the VHL but unfortunately never really reached stardom. Despite this, Tzuyu isn’t too worried about needing to reach stardom, she just wants to play and win.

 

With the entry draft for the VHL shortly coming, it seems that Tzuyu is fully committed to hockey now and will prepare for the next step in her journey both as a star in the entertainment and sporting sector.

 

 

 

[JG10 28]

1028 words. Good job I really like the format you did.