Around 10pm last Saturday night, residents of an urban village in Shenzhen gathered just outside exit A of Shangsha subway station to watch a very special piece of street theater.
If the sparkling white glove and crotch-grabbing weren't enough to tip you off, the performer was imitating no other than the King of Pop himself: Michael Jackson.
He did a pretty good job too. To the tune of "Smooth Criminal," the busker moonwalked across the dirty pavement of the public space.
As he shimmied and gyrated in front of stalls that held construction materials, passersby stopped to stare. Many of them pulled out their phones to record the unusual sight.
People on Mobikes or scooters also passed by occasionally, doing double takes as they went. At one point a small white dog decided to see what all the commotion was about and almost interrupted the show.
Some watchers dropped spare change into a nearby pink cardboard box labeled with the (Chinese) words: "keep living for your dreams."
The man behind the sunglasses is 24-year-old Yan Junhai. He's a native of Chaoshan, Guangdong province, and currently lives in Shenzhen. Despite the box of tips, he says that dancing is mainly a hobby as well as a way to “spread Michael's cultural spirit."
He's admired MJ since childhood, and says he learned to dance on his own.
This isn't Yan's first performance in Shenzhen: "As long as I'm not driven away by chengguan, I'll go to every place where there's lots of people."
See a short clip from one of his routines below (VPN off):
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