Back In The Spotlight.(Taiwanese singer A-mei banned in China)

When the doors open at 6 p.m., a mass of students rushes into the arena. As the small hall on the outskirts of Taipei fills up, shouts rise up from the crowd: "A-mei! A-mei! A-mei!" It will be an hour before the slinky Taiwanese pop star (whose real name is Chang Hui-mei) walks out to greet the crowd and to pose for pictures. When she does, the audience of 2,000 young people--mostly of high-school age--cheers hysterically. A-mei turns her head, whips her coffee-colored bangs out of her face, and smiles radiantly. The lithe 28-year-old singer has been absent from the stage for six months, and her loyal fans--not just in Taiwan, but all over Asia--are pining to see her again. During a preconcert satellite hookup with admirers in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, she is peppered with questions. Someone raises the question on everyone's mind: will she ever go to China again? Normally exuberant, A-mei responds quietly: "I don't have any performances planned there."

It is the only response she can make. The superstar was banned from China last year after she sang at the inauguration of Taiwan's newly elected president, Chen Shui-bian. At that time, A-mei was the most adored singer in Asia--with CD sales totaling more than 8 million over the last four years--and the sole Taiwanese pop star to earn a near- cult following on the mainland. But after her inaugural performance on May 20, 2000, she fell victim to the political enmity that has roiled China-Taiwan relations for half a century. Beijing abruptly banned her concerts, CDs and promotions. A-mei's career went into a tailspin. Coca-Cola, which had employed her as a poster girl for its Sprite advertising campaign in China, dropped her under pressure from the government. Hurt and emotionally drained, A-mei dropped out of sight for months, living in New York and Los Angeles. Now, however, she has emerged from her self-imposed exile and is eager to regain her pre- eminent pop-diva status in Asia--despite Beijing's chilling interdiction. She released a new CD in December--her seventh--and embarked on a rigorous month of promotional activities and concerts in Taiwan. Her record company is mulling an Asian tour later this year. Is the magic still there? Both A-mei and her Taiwan-based record company, Forward Music, will soon know the answer. "She has been in hibernation for so long," says an MTV executive in Taiwan. "Everything hinges on this comeback."

A-mei has little interest in politics, but Beijing's leaders took a political interest in her. Two years ago, China offered the Taiwanese singer what anybody with a product to sell craves--access to the world's largest market. But the communist government wanted something in return: to co-opt A-mei's popularity as a way to legitimize its claim over Taiwan. Chinese fans see the singer--who is an aborigine--as a symbol of the free-spirited island they long to possess. At her only concert appearance in China, A-mei was billed by the government as an "ethnic minority," one of a number of nonethnic-Chinese groups the communists claim to have brought into their fold. "It is really hard to get a booking there," says one of A-mei's producers. "They gave it to her because they wanted to show that Taiwanese aborigines were under their rule."

A-mei says that her Beijing concert, in August 1998, was a political eye-opener. Cordoned off from the stage by more than 2,000 riot police, the crowd used the occasion to vent their fury at the government. "Everyone was really getting excited," A-mei told NEWSWEEK. After an official announced that the concert was sponsored by the Beijing city government, says A-mei, "the people in the front row started to yell at the bureaucrat, shouting, 'Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!' Soon, there were tens of thousands of people yelling, 'Kill him, kill him, kill him.' It was very scary."

Not as scary, from Beijing's perspective, as what happened next. Six months later, for the first time ever in Chinese history, voters on Taiwan elected an opposition president, Chen Shui-bian. He's widely known as a lifelong supporter of Taiwanese independence, and had always tried to project a youthful image. For his inauguration, he asked A-mei to sing Taiwan's national anthem. It was a great honor for a young woman who grew up in an aboriginal village in Taiwan's poorest region. A-mei got up early every day for a month to practice. "The president felt I could represent so many people, and I would never have another chance," she says. Neither she nor her record company considered the political consequences. "I had sung the national anthem since I was a girl," says A-mei. "I never expected anything to come of it."

Beijing felt betrayed. China's aging leaders, steeped in the shadow play of cultural-revolution politics, always decipher political allegiances through gestures and appearances. To them, A-mei's performance at Chen's inauguration was tantamount to supporting Taiwanese independence. "This is a political issue," says a Chinese official. "She went too far on such a big occasion. If a singer behaves like this, how can we allow her to still appear on the mainland?" Taiwan's leaders reacted to China's sales ban with indignation of their own. Vice President Annette Lu chastised Beijing for "bullying weak, little girls." Added Chen: "It's like treating your own flesh and blood, sisters and brothers, as enemies."

Suddenly a pawn in cross-strait politics, A-mei seemed to fall apart. China, a fast-growing and symbolically important market, was closed to her. Rumors broke out that she had overtaxed her voice. A Hong Kong magazine alleged that she had fostered an illegitimate child--an article that outraged the singer, who denied the claims. A-mei's boyfriend, who has his own entertainment company in Hong Kong, added a new complication. He began vying with her record company to represent her. Overwhelmed by it all, the perky singer fled to the United States, where she is a virtual unknown. Free of handlers and hangers-on, she says that she was revitalized by the anonymity she found on the streets of Los Angeles and New York. She ate the same meal three times a day for one month straight--oyster noodles. A-mei won't talk explicitly about her troubles with China. Even after her run-in with Beijing, she shows ...