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Talent shows have been the rage in China since the success of the "Super Girl" national singing competition organized by Hunan satellite television from 2004.

This year, Shanghai`s Dragon TV pushed its own "China`s Got Talent" show, the local version of the UK series "Britain`s Got Talent", to the top of its audience ratings chart.

The lure of stardom

With the lure of stardom, many Chinese young people are starting to look at singing as a career option.

One is 21-year-old Ren He. Despite opposition from his parents, he closed the small restaurant he owned in his hometown of Tongliao, a ffxiv gil city in northern Inner Mongolia, and took a big part of his savings to pay for his course at the Lee Wei-song School of Music in Shanghai.

The music talent school offers a full time course for its "Asian Music Artist" class, with students taking in about four hours of different classes every day including ff14 gil voice training, studio recording, keyboard skills and dancing.

The full time course costs 24,000 yuan ($3,600) for half a year and is divided into junior and FF14 Power leveling senior levels for a full two-year course.

The school was founded first in Singapore by local musician Lee Wei-song in 1995, and FFXIV Power leveling the Shanghai branch was opened in 2007. Lee and his twin brother Lee Shih-shiong are credited with being pioneers of the Singapore xinyao music movement, a local music movement with a focus on songs about life in Singapore.

Lee Wei-song`s school later became famous for grooming one of Singapore`s most famous singers, Stefanie Sun.

His school now hopes to buy runescape gold unearth mainland China`s next singing superstar and expand its presence in other Chinese cities.

There are now more than a cheap ffxiv gil dozen similar professional singing schools in Shanghai alone, offering music courses to wannabe singers looking for a shot at fame.

Though TV talent shows have fuelled the boom in these schools, they are actually a double-edged sword, said Ethan Han, manager for the Lee Wei-song School of Music.

"It`s a dilemma because talent shows give a quick shortcut out from our school. Some talent shows judge you on your image and general package, and rs gold you do not have to sing very well. So they are not choosing the best singer," he said.

"We had a training class for contestants in a talent show in the past. It was for a month, they learn some things, they go compete and runescape money they stop studying here."