Dai Yangtian: The Dark Knight

Dai Yangtian habitually wears such a brooding demeanour that you expect him to growl on approach. He also habitually wears a baseball cap that obscures half his face, and from beneath it a thick sheaf of hair, a force of nature hell-bent on springing free, hides in its shadow, his large eyes are wary, mocking and coldly observant.
“I realise Singaporeans greet almost everyone they meet with a ‘how do you do’ or ‘have you eaten’ and I don’t understand this, says Dai. “I’m not used to it and it just feels artificial to me. It’s strange to ask someone ‘how are you?’ and not even be prepared to wait for the answer and just walk away. I know that is just the manners around here but I don’t agree with it; I won’t adopt it.”
So when exactly is a good time to ask ‘How are you’?
“When I know you well enough, I’ll sit down with you and have a conversation and really get to know you. Until that time, I’ll just give a nod and go my way,” Dai confesses, unapologetic about seeming aloof or proud, and not making polite conversation.
Because he’s made such a splash, one quickly forgets that he’s only been working in Singapore for less than two years. Following his debut in Taste of Love, he shot to household fame and sealed his hearthrob status in The Little Nyonya.
It’s no surprise that he wouldn’t be mistaken for a Singaporean. Like the obscuring cap, he wears a pall of otherness. For one, although he is learning Singlish quickly (one suspects that Dai has the mainlander’s mercurial adaptability), he speaks in booming, crisp, perfect Mandarin. This is charming, but also intimidating, and speaking to him is not unlike being browbeaten by the president of a debating team making an eloquent, winning argument.
“I’m not romantic. I’m not the knight in shining armour on a white horse. I’m more the dark knight, really.”
Unlike Elvin Ng, there’s something menacing and predatory about Dai and therein lies his appeal – he’s a Heathcliff type. And he’s like Zoe Tay: There’s something of the forest and the barn about Dai — a whiff of nature. Beneath the glittering trappings, the cap, the trendy pink plaid shirt, the hip hop jeans and sneakers, his legs are heavy and hirsute, his feet large. His big hands, often abusing the console of computer games, can just as easily knock you out senseless and drag you into his cave. And which girl can resist that? Combine this atavistic charm with Dai’s bursts of eloquence in that low growl, and he’s a spellbinding package.
Dai has something else in common with Zoe: In his answers during interviews, the wheat and the chaff are indistinguishable, and what is offered as revelations is often transcribed as an opaque mass. With the more transparent Ng, the wheat and chaff, though profuse and mixed in equal parts, are easily separated. (Fann, of course, offers unadulterated chaff.) As if to preserve his mystique, Dai may wax eloquent when he gets into the mood, but he’s never revealing or personal, and ultimately inscrutable. He firmly declines to discuss his estranged parents. (But he’’ll say: His mother runs a food business in Shanghai and Tokyo.) And although he professes to like Singapore enough to want to make it his second home, one senses unspoken motivations.

He wants to settle down here, the food, the cleanliness the organised, nice people. Ah... but there's something else, something unsaid.

(The Men's Uno cover is for May 2010. The complete interview and a version of this appeared in 8 Days)