LeeHom [aka Wang Lihong], a Taiwan-born pop star, should remember May 28th, 2005 [or try his best to forget this day] forever. It might be one of the most embarrassing situations in his singer career. It's never easy to be a public figure--you may have a bad memory but people just remember your gaffes all along.

At the 16th Taiwan Golden Melody Awards ceremony, Karen Mok and Jay Chou were guests for presenting the Best Male Singer award. LeeHom Wang and Stanley Huang [Huang Lixing] were both nominees for the award. When Mok read "Wang--Li--", the audiences cheered up and people around LeeHom started to hug him. The congratulations were somewhat misleading that LeeHom ignored the last character "Xing". He turned to hug Stanley, a sign seen as greetings from winner, and then went onstage. Interestingly, Stanley Huang heard "Xing", stood up and were surrounded by his friends. It seems that he was not so sure whether the hug from LeeHom was comfort or congratulation. When ready for going onstage to claim his prize, he was surprised to find LeeHom was already there. When LeeHom found out it was a mistake, he felt so awkward and escaped from the stage. After the event he told the media that "I just sneaked away, feeling so embarrassed".

The picture is taken from Zaobao.com.

Karen Mok was later bombarded for her Cantonese accent. Actually in Cantonese, the pronunciations of "Wang" and "Huang" were the same. She apologized to LeeHom after the ceremony. Anyway, bad things might turn out to be good results. At least we are sure none of the nominees knew who would win, quite the opposite of many music awards in mainland China. And Karen Mok will work a lot on her Mandarin pronunciation.