Don't Listen Too Closely

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ested by Taiwanese coastal police last month while trying to sneak across from the Chinese mainland, Lu Jing had only one question: "Is Zai Zai in Kaohsiung?" And with that one simple query, the 22-year-old from Fujian province became the unofficial No. 1 F4 fan.

Zai's real name is Vic Zhou, and he is one of the four members of the Taiwanese acting-singing sensation F4 that is rapidly building an Asia-wide following. O.K., so the guys can't really act. Or sing. And they can barely dance. But they're a boy group, for chrisakes: Zhou, Vanness Wu, Jerry Yen and Ken Zhu are only required to have nice smiles, hot bodies and fantastic hair. These things they have in spades—and not a tattoo or pierced body part among them. In Taiwan, these squeaky clean little love boys are being held up as model spouses. If that sounds absurd, remember that this is a place where 93% of couples say they are unhappy in matrimony and 34% of marriages end in divorce. "F4 are so popular because women cannot find romance in real life," says Angie Chai, general manager of Comic Productions and creator of F4.

The boys leapt into the limelight last April with the launch of the show Meteor Garden on Taiwan's Chinese Television System. Women of all ages gushed over the romantic tale of a poor girl hooking up with a member of a rich brat-bully pack at an élite Taipei high school. (Mainland Chinese authorities were less enamored, saying it misled young viewers; Beijing recently banned the show after a few episodes aired on some local television stations.) The TV plot was adapted from a Japanese manga comic called Hana Yori Dango (Men Are Better Than Flowers). Chai, a variety-show producer, handpicked the boys from an audition of 200 (minimum qualifications: good looks and a height of 1.8 m) and dubbed them F4, short for the "Flower Four."

The show attracted the attention of Sony Music, which gave the band a three-album deal; the first, Meteor Rain, was released late last year. It was pop-fluff stuff, a sonic fusion of Japanese groups SMAP and Tokio. But Taiwan's teens had not had a local boy band to worship since Little Tigers disbanded a decade ago, and 400,000 copies of Meteor Rain flew off the shelves; it sold more than 1 million Asia-wide. That success was quickly replicated on the mainland, where bootleg copies of the show, album and merchandise hit the streets.

F4 is now on the fast track for boy bands everywhere: each member will have solo albums out, and movie contracts are ready to go. Collectively, they host a TV show, ABCDEF4, and are planning an Asian tour this fall. You have been warned.