Are you stunned like vegetable, too?

UPDATE (April 17):

As a song, The Other Music Video, Sandcastle In My Heart, has nothing on Unbelievable.

Unfortunately, it has nothing on How I Met Your Mother’s Sandcastles In The Sand, either. But its star, Chen Tianwen, remains just as epic. Because basically, right now, Chen Tianwen can do no wrong in our books.

How is he riding on his sudden surge of popularity? Why, by posting a photo of his bare torso to Instagram, of course.

@chantianwen’s open-shirted picture, posted yesterday with the caption “the new me”, has earned comments including – very predictably – “Unbelievable”, “I so stunned like vegetable” and “U blossomed like a flower”.

In fact, he looks almost as unbelievable as he did back in those aforementioned army/air force/navy shows – check out this epic picture we found of him in his heyday. 

(Click to enlarge) Old-school Chen Tianwen with pals in the 1988 Channel 8 series Air Force. L-R: Wang Yuqing, Li Nanxing, Chen Tianwen, Li Wenhai, Edmund Chen, Zheng Geping and Lin Ming Zhe. 

The music video has even been talked about by The Huffington Post. Thanks, Tianwen (I think) for putting us on the map. 

SINGAPORE – Greetings and salutations, fellow stargazers! This is your Showbiz Sista discovering that Chen Tian Wen is Singapore’s answer to Robin Scherbatsky. Because his latest music video, Unbelievable, will have you cringing and singing along.

Technically, it’s a teaser clip from the latest season of MediaCorp TV Channel 5 sitcom Spouse For House that has gone viral because, well, it’s so darn brilliant. It features Chen Tian Wen in a wig the cat dragged in, cavorting on the beach in a classic 80’s-style music video to the song “Unbelievable”, which truly has to be heard to be believed, and features suitably 80’s references to coffee tables and cable cars.

The clip, uploaded to MediaCorp Channel 5’s Facebook page yesterday evening, has been viewed more than 400,000 times and shared 16,000 times.

It has earned likes and shares even from my friends who don’t usually tune in to Channel 5, accompanied by comments like, “Faith in humanity restored”, “I just watched it again and it was funnier the second time”, and “God bless Chen Tianwen. Who would have known he had this in him after all those navy/air force/army shows?”

The answer is nobody – not even Chen Tianwen himself, it seems. “Yesterday, when I saw that the video had received so many likes on Facebook, it gave me a shock,” said the actor, who guest stars in the upcoming Spouse For House episode.

His epic dance moves, you’ll be impressed to hear, are improvised. “I probably did recycle some of my moves from my younger days at the disco,” he chuckled. And the wig could almost have been recycled from his old period dramas: “I used to wear wigs like that in guzhuang shows!”

But of course he couldn’t have done it if Unbelievable hadn’t been so inspiring to begin with. “I thought it was a very unique song – a very Chinese tempo with English lyrics. And the lyrics, I think, are very well written: ‘Come be my coffee table and I’ll be your sofa’. I think it’s a very simple but very meaningful song that will bring up people’s memories of going on cable car dates. Unfortunately, I didn’t personally go on any dates in cable cars! But young people can also use this song to declare their love to their girlfriends.” He laughed. “Modern love songs are too in-your-face.”

Showbiz Sista couldn’t agree more, because what the world needs these days is more music videos involving large heads of broccoli.

If you want to watch the music video in context, tune in to April 15’s episode of Spouse For House at 10pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5 – and you’ll also get to see another of Chen Tianwen’s music videos, this one entitled Sandcastle In My Heart. Showbiz Sista, signing out. Live long and pop corn!