DESPITE a tight promotional schedule lined up in conjunction with her new album to be released on 26 Jun, Taiwanese powerhouse singer A-Mei strives to make time for charitable causes.

 
She was in town recently as the ambassador for relief and advocacy organisation World Vision, sharing her experiences in India, where she visited slums and interacted with villagers.

'Before departing for India, the H1N1 virus was spreading fast in the Asian region,' said A-mei, who is of Taiwanese aborigine ancestry.

'I felt additional pressure to stay healthy and repeatedly told myself that I must visit India and return to Taiwan in one piece.'

And the confident chanteuse certainly did.

But India threw her a few surprises.

'My initial impression of India was that it is one humid country, but the place I visited (in North India) turned out to be dry and scorchingly hot,' she said.

 
But bad weather conditions failed to daunt the spirits of the gutsy lass.

'India has always been a dream destination of mine,' she said.

'To me, it's a country full of mystique. I'm glad I've fulfilled this wish of mine. And what can be better than being there for a good cause?'

She added that though the trip was tough, it was still better than her previous experience in Sudan, where she slept in tents and suffered gastric pains.

'This time in India, it was great that we stayed in a hotel.'

After returning from India, A-mei has focused all her energies on the promotional work for her upcoming album, Amit.

The oddly-named title is actually A-mei's aboriginal name.

This album, which she put her heart and soul in, will mark her 12th year in the music business.

'It's going to be a totally different A-mei you'll hear on Amit,' she explained.

'The music's going to be a lot more experimental than what I've sung before. I've done 12 years of mainstream Mandopop. This time round, I wanted something out of the box.

'I've had many new ideas and I participated personally in the selection of tunes, as well as the writing of lyrics and melodies.'

A-mei added that while she is known to fans for her love ballads, on Amit, she avoided melancholic tunes of forlorn yearning and sad relationships.

'Instead, I wanted to do songs about society, to talk about people's lives and take a step closer to the thoughts and emotions of youths.'

While she had no qualms waxing lyrical about her album and upcoming projects, A-mei was coy about her rumoured relationship with Taiwanese basketballer He Shou-Cheng.

The minute reporters quizzed her on her love life, she laughed and shrugged the questions off.

When a journalist mentioned that the plot of popular Taiwanese idol drama Defeated Queen seemingly reflected the current trend of older woman-younger man pairings (she and Shou-Cheng make precisely such a pair), A-mei cleverly deflected further discussion by saying she has 'never given thought about this issue'.

Perhaps her reticence was because of a previous high-profile relationship - with a Singaporean businessman named Mr Chou - that ended badly.

Before Shou-Cheng, she also made headlines with rumours that she was dating fellow Taiwanese singer Lee-Hom.

This article was first published in The New Paper