BASICS

BIRTHNAME 莊佳慧, zhuang jiahui
NICKNAMES

BIRTHDATE february 9th, 2001
BIRTHPLACE taoyuan, taiwan
HOMETOWN taoyuan, taiwan
ETHNICITY han taiwanese
LANGUAGES FACE CLAIM yeh shuhua, (g)i-dle
BACKUP FACE CLAIM wang yiren, everglow / yang chaoyue, rocket girls
HEIGHT 168cm
WEIGHT 53kg
APPEARANCE

 

PERSONALITY

TRAITS stubborn, curious, original, independent, relaxed, aloof, proud, authentic, frustrated, can have somewhat of a victim mentality, will choose unique over better  

ELABORATION pls don't judge me i haven't written in a while i'm sorry for word vomiting

CHAPTER ONE: AUTHENTICITY, UNIQUENESS, 
NON-COMFORMATIVITY AND THE ESSENCE OF ZHUANG JIAHUI

jiahui would be that black haired girl working her way through basic chord progressions in the studio. rubbing her eyes, she munches on an apple as she resumes yesterday's work. the other trainees are probably done with breakfast by now, but jiahui doesn't mind: as different as it might be, she follows her own schedule and would honestly much rather be here.

the distance she keeps from them has nothing to do with the girls, though. if she ignores the weird looks some of them gave her, "the new chinese girl", when she joined and the initial whispering that followed, the truth is they've done nothing wrong to her. jiahui simply prefers her own company, considering how, more often than not, large groups of people don't get her and tend to reject what makes her different and unique. they're confused when she expresses her thoughts, they're too concerned about what others think of them, they're frustrated when she tries to find a deeper meaning to things and they're startled by her mannerisms and jokes that korea so adeptly calls "4D".

she's getting a bit stuck on this song, which is hard to admit. she takes a deep breath. she could ask for help, she knows, but she's not desperate enough for that. starting a new song is tempting too, but not tempting enough: she wants to finish this one. how jiahui-y is that, huh? she's always been this headstrong. she likes to rely on herself and herself only and even when things get hard, she perseveres, but that doesn't mean stubborn is always the best thing to be, it's just good to be as stubborn as she is sometimes. it's what encouraged her to begin composing.

that, and her curiosity: jiahui takes great pride in knowing that she doesn't just take things as they come and actually thinks for herself. the world is her oyster, really, and she'll never be one to pass up an opportunity to learn. that's why she took up composing: to grow as an artist in this company. the korean pop music industry is robotic and repetitive, yes, but it's more than that, so she feels almost responsible to take any chance she gets to slip into those tiny creative cracks and really come into her own as a different kind of idol trainee.

suddenly, she gets an idea. this won't work within conventional song structure patterns and it might be a bit complicated to fit into what she already has, but jiahui is drawn to the ingenuity of it. it will enrich the song and she particularly wants to go with it because of how weird it is, it's exactly the kind of idea that makes her, her. if she performs it next evaluation, reviews will be mixed and she'll have to do it solo because not enough girls will want to do it. well, that is unless she switches to the more basic lane for a bit and panders to their taste in some trap breakdown or... uh... whatever it is they like. well, it is what it is. 

CHAPTER TWO: PARADOX, THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN ZHUANG JIAHUI AND THE REST OF THE WORLD

"it's cool, why did you think we wouldn't like it?" is what they say once she finishes it. she got so attached to the song she didn't want to share it, but someone walked into the studio and heard her playing the track over, so it's whatever at this point. jiahui is a bit surprised by their response, she doesn't know how to react. she's used to being misunderstood, the underdog, so jiahui tends to think the worst of other people's opinions of her and her work. so much so that, when something or someone is special to her, she treasure it to the fullest. she doesn't care what other people think, she's proud of being a weirdo and she's nothing but her authentic self at all times, but she has no idea how much of that pride comes from a place of hurt and rejection. shouting how different and misunderstood she is from the rooftops has become her way of protecting herself. instead of being vulnerable and actually putting herself out there for people to judge, she assumes they won't from the get-go and hides behind lonesome habits and her "different" shield. all because she cares. 

("because she always does," someone scoffs on their way out, "jiahui thinks she's some visionary that is so different and oh-so above us mere mortals. by the way, the song could be better". her response is indifferent, she's never been one to get fired up easily, but the comment leaves her thinking. people think she's pretentious, they think she's too closed off and stay away from her. she has built an identity based on being different, but it seems like even then she can't protect herself from being outcasted. it seems she hasn't quite shaken off the idea that her uniqueness is weird and wrong and she's still looking for acceptance, for approval. it seems she's still afraid of the judgement she pretends to ignore).

 

BAckground

jiahui is born an only child to two loving parents in taoyuan, taiwan. she's a curious kid, they realize. little jiahui is eager to get to know the world around her more so than she is to get to know the other kids at kindergarten or to chat up her aunts and uncles at family dinners.

the one thing that seems to make her eyes distinctively light up and get her to talk (to anyone) is music. from playing instruments to singing and dancing around the house, jiahui's grandma is truly astounded by how much the young girl opens up through art. it seems easier, in a way, for her to express herself in school plays or piano recitals, than it is by using mere words. soon enough, literature becomes another one of her pleasant discoveries. it opens up a whole new world for jiahui, one in which she is free to explore different realities and perspectives, one that helps her take control of the words she says and get her message across when she speaks.

her family is as proud as ever, but the kids at school don't seem to get jiahui's breakthroughs. honestly, she comes off rather weird to them: she's always by herself, she never talks and she's always busy with extracurriculars so she can't hang out after school (she does so many types of dance, is it even necessary? and if she's not busy with dance, then she brings up random instruments, like come on!). what's worse, when she does socialize she uses words none of them understand. also, she likes books. who likes books? yeah, kids can be pretty mean, and the kids at elementary school sure aren't nice to jiahui. she doesn't have any true friends and some people even for being "fat" (chubbier than some other girls). 

it hurts at first, it really does. she feels alone and misunderstood, but by the time she enters junior high school she's formed her own little misfit squad and wears her outcast past like a badge of pride. jiahui finds comfort in the idea of being different from everyone else and rejects everything popular and mainstream, she protects herself from being judged by other people's standards by outright rejecting them and mentally separating herself from them. 

it's around that time when she discovers kpop, right before everyone else in her grade does. by chance, she happens to click on a music video by big bang. in no time, 2ne1, miss a and shinee are to follow, and jiahui is completely immersed in a k-music bubble that none of her classmates are even aware of. she wonders what it must be like, life as a kpop singer. she's really drawn to it, but in a fantasy-like sort of way –her taiwanese self would never get into an entertainment company. unfortunately, that same year is the year kpop blows up in taiwan and all the popular girls in her grade sing along to the newest tracks. of course they do, of course they take her thing and make it into a whole new beast (some of them don't know a single girl group other than girl's generation, like, come on! and they call themselves fans...).

she goes to a performing arts senior high school where she can't seem to fit into any friend groups. she tells herself she doesn't care, tells herself she's used to it and that they don't understnad, and slowly returns to kpop music videos and dance practices. suddenly, taiwanese members begin to pop up. they're multiplying! there's one in got7, f(x) and even a rookie girl group called twice. for some reason, the more time passes, the more she sees herself training to become a kpop star, singing and dancing on stage with a team. jiahui wants other things in life too: she wants to go to college, finish high school, maybe publish a book, but she knows deep inside her that she can't miss the opportunity to try. jiahui goes on google to find every agency who debuted taiwanese or chinese trainees, she then records an audition tape and emails it to every single one of them.

she only hears back from pledis entertainment. they hear back from her too.

 

trivia

▪ jiahui likes her food hot. not if it's not supposed to be hot, but if it's meant to be hot then anything that's not recently cooked is going in the microwave.
▪ on the topic of food, the only snack she outright dislikes is string cheese. she doesn't love cheese in general (fun fact: she can not for the life of her eat cheese tteokbokki).
▪ jiahui was one of the first members of her middle school hip hop dance club. she was the leader for a year.
▪ aside from hip-hop, she took dai dance and contemporary dance classes. she also learnt a bit of ballet in senior high school, but then she moved to korea to train.
▪ she can play the guzheng and the piano. she used to know how to play the pipa.
▪ she used to love creative writing. well, she still does, but the only writing she can sneak into the trainee lifestyle is songwriting. not that she minds, but she misses her short stories.
▪ wouldn't say she favors any groups, just particular songs.
▪ she respects seventeen a lot. she has some... strong unpopular opinions on their discography, but jiahui likes their choreographies and, above all, admires how they single-handedly re-built pledis' rep from the ground up with their self-made songs and choreo.
▪ here's the thing: jiahui joined pledis because they accepted her and it wasn't a scam, not because she had any idea whether or not it was a good agency. it hasn't been too long since she found out how terrible they are (and god are they terrible). after school was apparently legendary, but they made a mess out of it. pristin had everything to be a mid to high tier group (even a rookie award) and they disbanded three years later, like what? seventeen seemingly avoids all the nonsense because they do pretty much everything themselves, but what the hell is she supposed to do? 
▪ pledis being a mess is actually kind of motivating, though. unless she can compose and choreograph to seventeen herself out of this hellhole, there's not much hope for her in the industry, so jiahui makes sure to repeat that to herself when she's tempted to take the easy way out like some of her fellow trainees.
▪ if jiahui had to pick a self-producing group, it'd be stray kids. she has only actually heard hellevator and miroh, but the song structure in miroh speaks for itself.
▪ jiahui has slimmed down considerably after going through puberty, majoring in dance during high school and dieting like an idol trainee, but compared to some of the other trainees, she doesn't have a lot of muscle in her thin figure.
▪ rarely does jiahui feel scared of getting cut from pledis. it would definitely be sad, but she makes it a point to remind herself that it's not the end of the world if the idol thing doesn't work out: she got this far, which her junior high self would have deemed impossible, and there are so many other things she wants to do in life. if it comes down to it, she could even take all of her experience in korea to taiwan and pursue music there either as a performer or a producer.
▪ she remembers a lot of second gen kpop choreo from her first encounter with kpop

relationships

LEE CHOYEON / NINETEEN / TRAINEE / FRIEND

jiahui takes her cue and enters pledis after pristin's debut, right after choyeon's best friend is snatched away from her. she has no idea, but she doesn't reject choyeon's welcoming demeanor and, before she knows it, she doesn't mind her presence. before she knows it, she minds choyeon the least out of the pledis girl trainees, which is weird. choyeon is this rehearsed, perfectly practiced character, she embodies everything jiahui hates about idol life, but choyeon is also stuck between a rock and hard place. she was the least popular out of the trainee roster from the get-go and she was left alone a trainee to watch her friends leave and succeed without her. in other words, she's alone. who, other than choyeon, is rooting for choyeon? jiahui, who knows what it's like to be alone. she tells herself this is why they stick together, as if jiahui would have rejected someone willing to accept her and let her in.

YOON SAEYOOL/ NINETEEN / FORMER IDOL / ANTITHESIS

simply put, jiahui isn't saeyool's biggest fan. in her eyes, saeyool is every mean girl she encountered at school, using her experience as an idol as a symbol of status or a reason to justify her "top of the food chain" outlook on things. as long as she's the best, others be damned, right? except for those who fall for her propaganda, of course. jiahui doesn't love that. saeyool represents so many things she doesn't like in people and so many things she doesn't want for herself, being her friend is out of the question. do you think jiahui hasn't seen how the girl looks at her? she seems to have such a problem with her not wanting to be a cookie-cutter idol, which is just so pointless, they don't even know each other!

so why does jiahui find herself trying to earn saeyool's respect? she doesn't want to be like her and, on principle, she doesn't want to be her friend, doesn't care about what she thinks of her, but in the back of her mind she wants to be someone who people like saeyool would be friends with. she always has. 

DONG BONGCHA/ NINETEEN / TRAINEE / NEWFOUND FRIEND

jiahui just can't make sense of why someone as awesome and special as bongcha would be (well, have been) best friends with saeyool. that aside, jiahui wouldn't hesitate to say bongcha is one of the starship girls she likes the most. first of all, her name is bongcha (she hasn't met a single bongcha in south korea), second of all, she pretty much lives in her own world and is fully unapologetic about it. have you seen bongcha's outfits? heard her fangirl? but there's this innocence to bonghca that jiahui loves the most. she wears her heart on her sleeve and does things with honesty, which is something jiahui can even feel protective about ("don't tell bongcha about it like that! i think you should bring it up like this [...]").

unlike some other people, she does see potential in bongcha, huge potential. with some help, she could be a star. if she doesn't debut after planet idol, jiahui will produce her a song herself.

KIM YOUJU / NINETEEN / FORMER IDOL / FRIEND AND EYE-OPENER

they only got to know each other within the context of the show, where jiahui realized youju was cooler than she expected (and not saeyool:reloaded). at first, she mainly hung out with her for the ego boost, as she definitely noticed youju had a distinct type of respect for her. she thought she was opening the doors to a whole new world for youju, who was a more artificial, choyeon-esque type of idol/trainee.

as they got closer, jiahui got to know youju's side of the story regarding pristin's disbandment and her path towards idol life. it kicked in that pristin weren't just a bunch of superficial girls chanting meaningless lyrics: she thought she was so wise and so different from them because she assumed such a thing, but youju literally gave up her education and left her best friend behind to be one of those girls. why didn't she think harder about how difficult that must have been, how gut-wretching? now choyeon has built up all this meaningless resentment and jiahui has to watch youju hesitate to approach her when she's around the purple-haired girl for absolutely no reason.

she's realized some of the girls carelessly speak over youju, seemingly sure they know her and know what she wants. screw that, jiahui thinks. she begins to ask what youju thinks about certain things, what she really thinks, and she's absolutely convinced she deserves better. they deserve so much better, all of them. and maybe jiahui would be proud of performing meaningless trendy songs on stage with them (as a last resort, of course. imagine how much better it'd be to perform one of her tracks).

▪ NAME / AGE / OCCUPATION / RELATION
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trainee info

COMPANY pledis
TRAINING PERIOD 2017– present
TRAINEE LIFE
jiahui remembers things were looking up when she arrived at pledis. seventeen was coming back as strong as ever and a new girl group had just debuted, which admittedly wasn't the best case scenario, but it gave jiahui enough time to become fluent in korean and hone her skills before a new lineup was picked and she had the chance to debut as an idol in korea. it still sounded crazy, she had a legitimate chance to become a kpop idol.

socially, the new trainees and especially the girls who hadn't made it into pristin didn't click with jiahui. there was choyeon though, and that she is thankful for. still, jiahui's outlook on many aspects of trainee life was... a bit disruptive to the status quo and it didn't help her reputation. for example, she was never too phased by scoldings and would break the gloomy silence to ask her stern instructors how to improve. the other girls would react to such things with raised eyebrows or by looking at each other. she even heard someone whisper "is she crazy?" under her breath. she told herself she didn't care.

the truth is jiahui had a lot on her plate as a trainee: she was learning korean, adjusting to the culture and trying to get the most out of her lessons yet she refused to interrupt her schooling and wanted to learn how to produce. at first she didn't understand a word of what her teachers at her new korean performing arts school were saying and she was too tired to keep up, but this is what she wanted. never one to just give up on the face of adversity, jiahui began to get the hang of things and became much more comfortable. 

that's when things stopped looking up. pristin suddenly disappeared, rookie awards and nation-wide popular members long forgotten. then, jiahui came across after school's similar (though longer) journey and realized that she was incredibly likely to meet that same fate. she began to spend longer hours at the studio, korean grammar books spread over the mixing console and eyes bloodshot from looking at computer screens for so long in an attempt to become proficient at composing and songwriting. she shifted her focus from strengthening her dance skills and telling a story to choreographing for large groups, now aware that this was the only way she could become the kind of kpop idol she wanted to.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
▪ jiahui attended a performing arts high school in taiwan where she majored in dance. 
TALENT TWIN yuqi from (g)i-dle
BACKUP TALENT TWIN heejin from loona (but woogi !! blease)

SKILLS

vocal  6/10, her tone takes people by surprise and she loves it. some people take things too far and say her voice is one of a kind or that she's an alto, but the truth is jiahui just has a deeper voice than most kpop vocalists. she's not the type of vocalist that hits the high notes in a song's , mostly because she can't reach them comfortably, but jiahui thinks her ability to stand out nonetheless is her greatest strength. she might be a six out of ten on paper, but it can translate as a nine to an audience.
rap  1/10, despite her korean being a bit... uh... wobbly, jiahui supposes she could rap in korean if she set her mind to it, but there are so many other things she wants to expand her knowledge in. rapping can wait.
dance  7/10, jiahui danced as a hobby on and off for years. shouldn't she be at a kpop main dancer level, then? not necessarily, especially if you consider she didn't only take hip-hop classes (some examples are dai dance and jazz) and that she danced as a hobby. however, she has a very strong foundation in dance and she does have some experience in hip hop, so she's gotten pretty good with training.
performance 6/10, how much and how well jiahui delivers on stage can vary depending on many things, but she can always do the bare minimum and a bit more. although she might not be the most magnetic performer on stage, she's charming in her own right.
variety  5/10, she can be very interesting and engaged when it comes to recording footage with the other girls, resulting in funny and random moments. when it comes to interacting with hosts, though, jiahui shuts down. in case you couldn't tell, she doesn't enjoy being ordered around and showcased like a circus animal (now do aegyo! sing for us! show us this kind of pose! random play dance!). this might change if the moderators are people she's familiar with.

OTHER TALENTS dai dance, playing the guzheng and the piano, second gen kpop dance covers

CONCEPTS jiahui doesn't love this part of the industry. first of all, "concepts" in kpop aren't even real concepts. looking past the lyrics, most songs don't work with their themes in all aspects of a performance: choreography, music, outfits, scenography, expressions, etc. groups will slap on a costume and call that a concept most of the time, which honestly makes her want to pull her hair out. even if "cute" or "girl crush" were actual concepts and not a specific image that benefits marketing strategies for a group, jiahui doesn't like how restrictive they are: they totally skip over someone's ability as an artist by reducing them to a single word.

cute let's see... well, jiahui could pull off a cute concept if she liked the song and especially if it had some whimsy or even a sad element to it (like gfriend's rough), but she won't stand out too much. every time she faces a cuter track, jiahui focuses on getting the song and the choreo down. when it comes to performing, her strategy is smiling and hoping for the best. she might not look cute, but she does definitely look happy to be there, which is why, surprisingly, she does better at cute concepts than she thinks, they're just not her strong suit.
y truth be told, jiahui feels a bit uncomfortable doing y concepts. she might not look like it, but she pictures her grandma's reaction to her being y on stage and any desire to cover "y" sunbaenims she could possibly have disappears in seconds. she gets a lot of help from her deeper tone and elegant features doing y concepts though and if she (for some reason) managed to get rid of the embarrassment, she'd do well enough. 
girl crush the pledis trainees are told to pair up for next evaluation. jiahui meets choyeon's eyes and, no surprise, they do something girl crush. out of the preexisting concepts, this is jiahui's forte. this is mostly due to the fact that it's not as restrictive as y or cute and all it requires is confidence, but jiahui is willing to admit that it's also due to practice. she owes choyeon one for that.
other this is where jiahui feels the most free, when she's no longer defined by an adjective and allowed to make a personal connection to a song. the opportunity not to be restricted by "cute" "y" and "girl crush" doesn't come very often (and when it does, it's in the form of ballad tracks that she usually doesn't care for). she thinks she shines the most when she gets to truly express herself and the message of a song, so expect jiahui to do very well in concepts that push the envelope.