Laurence Larson speaks and sings in Mandarin, and has millions of fans in China. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Laurence Larson speaks and sings in Mandarin, and has millions of fans in China. Photo / Brett Phibbs
With blue eyes and sandy hair, Laurence Larson looks like your typical Kiwi lad - but he speaks and sings in fluent Mandarin, has a Chinese name and professes to be more at home in Asia than New Zealand.
To his fans he is known as Luo Yiheng, and the Auckland-born musician is back in New Zealand for a short break after carving out a name for himself in China and Taiwan with his C-pop ballads that have garnered millions of views on social media.
The 28-year-old, who grew up in Howick, writes his music in a mix of Mandarin and English and, after cracking the music scene in China and Taiwan, is now eyeing other Asian markets including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
After Auckland University, Larson left for China with dreams of becoming a singing sensation there. Seven years later and after several knocks and setbacks, Larson is happy with how things have turned out.
Lawrence Larson is currently blocked from returning to China due to Covid-19 border restrictions there, but will return to Taiwan in mid-April. Photo / Brett Phibbs
While most musicians dream of making it big in America, the former Macleans College student said it has always been his dream to break into the Chinese market.
Larson said he saw an opportunity after taking part in a Chinese singing competition here where he was the only European singing in Mandarin, a skill he developed while studying for a popular music and Chinese language degree in university.
He said at the time, he couldn't believe that he received more than three million views from seven videos he uploaded on Chinese video-sharing website Youku, the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.
Larson's vocal and guitar cover of Chinese song My Singing had more than 500,000 views, and his English version of Long Time No See got half a million views when they were released at the time.
Mandarin speaking singer-songwriter Laurence Larson is exploring opportunities in other Asian countries after cracking China and Taiwan. Photo / Brett Phibbs
His music videos sung in the unusual blend of Mandarin and English have been viewed millions of times on China's biggest social media platforms.
"Chinese music is melodic-based as opposed to Western, which is more rhythmic-based and it just really resonated with me," Larson said.
"I just had to take the plunge, so I left for China, not really knowing what I was in for.
"When I moved to Beijing that year I had a fallout with my team here in Auckland, and I was mostly on my own for the first couple of years."
He then started more songwriting and production, and focused on connecting with other C-pop artists there. The fact that he was a European who spoke fluent Mandarin put him in high demand with TV and radio talk shows and singing programmes.
"They did give me a buzz in my popularity ... besides being a Kiwi white boy who speaks Mandarin, my real point of difference to other foreigners is my understanding of Chinese music, how lyrics work, how pronunciation works. I positioned myself as someone who really knew the industry, and that worked for me," Larson said.
Kiwi singer-songwriter Laurence Larson is known as Luo Yiheng to his Chinese fans. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"It's weird now coming back to New Zealand because I feel more at home in Asia than I do here, and I think part of it is because of my personality as well. I don't feel like a Kiwi blokey kind of guy, so I don't really fit into that sort of crowd here."
The first two years in China, he struggled with adjusting to the cultural differences with the people he worked with.
"Being a white foreigner in Beijing, you stand out, but you also get all the bad things that come with it," Larson said.
"There's a lot of cultural misunderstanding to start with. I was working with this other Chinese artiste, and both of us put in a lot of resources and creative energy to build a studio up.
"But when the money started coming in, then suddenly all the energy that I put in amounted to nothing because there was no contract. I was naive, and I just got cast aside from that whole project.
"There's just a lot of preying on talent."
Larson said he also wasn't used to the Chinese way of viewing people who are older as being superior just because of their age.
However, Larson said he has learned to flex his own cultural muscle to now say "that's not how we do things", and things have gotten better since.
"When a foreigner goes to China to be an actual legitimate artiste - not a foreign performing monkey as we call them - there is no framework for how to do that," he said.
"So for me it's been setting that out and trying to approach that, and map my way. Running into a few 'not right people' has taught me a lot about myself, and you learn about how people of a different culture work and for me that's the most valuable thing."
"While almost all of our famous music artist exports - Lorde, Benee, Teeks, Kimbra, Katchafire, Flight of the Conchords, L.A.B or Six60 - are about bringing a slice of NZ music to the world, musicians like Kiwi-Pākehā singer-songwriter Laurence Larson are rare, perhaps even one-of-a-kind," Lee said.
Lee said he was first introduced to Larson in 2015 and contacted him while taking his artists, the Modern Māori Quartet, on tour in China in 2019.
"He's endured a string of bad experiences while finding his way into the Chinese entertainment industry, none of which have put him off his dream of being a bilingual Kiwi-European superstar in China," Lee said.
Larson was currently blocked from returning to China due to Covid-19 border restrictions there, but will return to Taiwan in mid-April.
