02/12/2025
Would you still give your best if fourteen thousand seats were empty?
Japanese pop star Ayumi Hamasaki was set to perform at the Shanghai Oriental Sports Centre on Nov 29 2025 Her team had already spent five days building the stage, setting up the lights, coordinating dancers, and preparing the full concert.
Then, the day before the show, Chinese authorities cancelled the event under force majuere.
Most artists would have packed up and gone home. Instead, Ayumi made decision and she showed up on the scheduled night and performed the entire concert to a fourteen thousand seat arena with nobody in the audience except her crew.
She still went through the entire production exactly as planned. The full choreography, the live band, the dancers, the costume changes, the confetti, and even the encore all went ahead just as if the arena had been packed with the audiences.
She later posted photos from the empty arena and wrote that even with no audience, she felt so much love of supporters from all over the world, it was one of the most unforgettable show ever to her and appreciating 200 of Chinese and Japanese crew and band members, dancers who made the stage happen from bottom of her heart.
Her crew reportedly filmed the performance so the fans who bought tickets may still get to see it.
