Busking Chase

T Junction - Dhoby Ghaut MRT station - 20 Apr 2025

Whom will I encounter, and what kind of conversations will we have?

WJ Teng

26 Nov 2025 — 3 min read

T Junction busking at Dhoby Ghaut MRT station on 20 April 2025.

It's the last few weeks before Dhoby Ghaut is set to become a balloted location from mid-May - not really a surprise though, as the location is relatively popular and I have been going there quite frequently to catch busking performances.

The National Arts Council (NAC) has updated its list of balloted locations, with 17 locations on the list (which includes all four MRT stations and four popular locations along the Orchard Road belt). The purpose of this balloting system is to provide buskers with equal chance of securing popular busking locations. This way it refines the "fastest fingers first" booking method, and audiences may get to see a good mix of buskers at these locations, from well-known groups like T Junction to lesser-known buskers and newcomers.

Speaking of which, I came across this cat mural behind the lifts linking the concourse and transfer hallway to the North East Line platforms that appeared quite recently, which I believe is illustrated by local visual artist Yip Yew Chong. This features a cat doing laundry along the Stamford Canal, a nod to the history as a place where washermen do their laundry (Dhoby Ghaut gets its name as Dhobi Ghat, which means washerman's place in Hindi - dhobi means washerman, ghat is a series of steps leading down to a body of water.

A Yip Yew Chong cat mural can be found behind the lift linking the concourse and transfer hallway to the NEL platforms.

The three songs picked from this busking session are:

他不懂 [originally performed by Jason Zhang (张杰)]
- The inspiration of the song came from a real emotional experience of one of the lyricists Ivan Dai (代岳东), where Dai fell in love with a girl while studying abroad, but broke up with her after returning to China due to geographical distance and various pressures of reality. Dai, young and impetuous back them, did not realize how much he had hurt the girl in the relationship, and could only express his guilt through lyrics, regretting his ignorance at the time and lamenting his helplessness now.
遇见 [originally performed by Stefanie Sun (孙燕姿)]
- Probably Sun's most signature song, it is the theme song for the 2003 film Turn Left, Turn Right (向左走·向右走), starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Gigi Leung. This is the first Stefanie Sun song to be covered in Season 2 of the Busking Chase.
体面 [originally performed by Kelly Yu (于文文)]
- This is also the first Kelly Yu song to be covered in Season 2 of the Busking Chase. Probably the signature song by Kelly Yu, this is the sub-theme song of the 2017 film The Ex-File 3: The Return of the Exes (前任3：再见前任), of which Yu also stars in. (Fun fact: this film was publicized as the final instalment of the Ex-File series, but a sequel was announced, and released in 2023.)