SINGAPORE — For someone with more than 2.5 million followers on Chinese microblogging site Weibo — and 1.2 million more on Instagram — Malaysian Mandopop star Shila Amzah doesn’t exactly behave like your regular superstar.

For instance, when we met backstage at the Global Chinese Music Awards last Friday she immediately exclaimed, “You’re so cute! I think you must be younger than me”, and wrapped her arm affectionately around me.

When we established that I was actually older than she was — despite my short stature — she grinned cheekily and said: “We’ll just pretend we are both 18.” She then proceeded to happily tell me about all the ayam penyet and hor fun she had eaten in Singapore.

Her affability is perhaps one reason she has found friends and fans in every city she has gone to. Shila, who was born in Kuala Lumpur, moved to Shanghai and Beijing to expand her singing career. In 2014, Shila saw an explosion in her popularity after she was awarded third place on reality singing competition I Am A Singer (she sang covers of Mandopop favourites such as The Night I Spent Thinking Of You by Guan Zhe, The Longest Film by Jay Chou and Forever Love by Wang Leehom.)

It is an incredible feat, considering how she didn’t speak Mandarin until very recently, and had to memorise every word using hanyu pinyin.

In fact, the vocal powerhouse was getting recognised so frequently in China that she is enjoying her relative privacy in Hong Kong, where she is now based.

“I don’t get recognised when I am not wearing make-up, or the proper ‘Shila Amzah’ clothes, because there are a lot of people wearing scarves in Hong Kong. It’s like in Singapore. But in China, it’s different, so (when they see someone wearing a headscarf), people go, surely that’s Shila! They are so enthusiastic, I love the fans there so much. But Hong Kong gives me the best of both worlds, because I get to work, and I get to enjoy my privacy,” Shila said, adding that she loves her apartment in the New Territories, far away from the noise and crowds.

So far, Shila seems to be settling in well in Hong Kong — even though she said she still cannot do without her belachan,which she uses in the sambal she makes for her friends around the world. The 25-year-old recently held her first concert in the city, where she sang three Cantonese songs.

She has also finished recording her new album, which will contain eight Mandarin songs, two English songs and one Malay song. Shila wrote most of the songs herself although she had to get help with some of the Mandarin lyrics. “It’s going to be very exciting,” Shila gushed. “I composed the melodies, and some of the lyrics I wrote in English. I got a lyricist to translate them to Mandarin. It’s very difficult because I am not so poetic in Mandarin. My vocabulary is very limited, and my songs would just be a repetition of ‘I love you’, ‘you love me’, ‘how are you’.”

Shila said she was hoping to release her album around Valentine’s Day, but has decided to wait until after March, because “everyone will be going home (for Chinese New Year)” in February.

She also said she wants to go on a world tour to promote the album, and hopes Singapore — which she loves — will be one of the stops. And when she does come, she hopes to be able to explore the city like any other traveller. “I promise that if I get a chance to do a concert in Singapore, I will go on the MRT for a ride,” Shila said. “I am just going to experiment!”