Zhang Zetong, 31, Wants To Travel To The Future To See How His Life & The World End

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Fresh from his turn as the nefarious Richard Mo in All That Glitters, Mediacorp actor Zhang Zetong shows his range in Chinese New Year drama Once Upon A New Year’s Eve in which he plays an ingenuous time traveller .

Zetong’s character, Liu Lang Han, which basically means ‘wanderer’ in English, doesn’t actually have a real name. He is an inventor from 2060 and is able to travel through time thanks to a chip in his body.

He hurtles to 2024 and meets Cai Yiren (played by Qi Yuwu), a man who longs to fix his fractured relationship with his family.

Earlier this month, 8days.sg spoke to Zetong over coffee at a press event for the show.

The Star Search 2019 champ, who turned 31 on Jan 22, says playing Liu Lang Han gave him the opportunity to “unleash [his] inner child”.

“He’s such a simple and naive person. In his world, everyone is honest and tells the truth ‘cos they can see into each others’ past and there’s no point in lying. It was fun for me, especially acting opposite Qi Yuwu. He’s super serious while I’m like ‘la la la’, always running around,” says Zetong with a smile.

If you’ve been keeping up with the first few episodes of Once Upon A New Year’s Eve, you would’ve noticed that Zetong’s styling in the show does not scream cool and futuristic.

Instead, his bright-coloured outfits and bowl cut hairdo reminds us of a genie.

“That was not my choice,” he chuckles. “I would have loved to have a cooler [look]. In my mind, when they talked about the future, I was thinking about The Matrix, with full black blazer suits and all that. But our producer wanted nothing of that. She wanted something fun [‘cos] I’m like the comic relief in the show,” he continues.

8DAYS.SG: If you really had the ability to time travel, is there a specific moment from the past you want to relive?

ZHANG ZETONG: I think I will relive my university life again (laughs). Maybe it’s because I’m gonna hit 31 so it’s dawned on me that youth is something you can only look back on and never get back. I think my uni days [in NUS] were the prime time of my youth. I really enjoyed being carefree. You don’t have much money but you do a lot of dumb things with your friends. It’s literally being young, dumb, and broke, so I feel that those three to four years were the best.

Were there any specific incidents that happened during university that makes you feel this way?

There were a lot leh. So many stupid things (Chuckles). We used to do a lot of pranking. In uni, I stayed in Sheares Hall where they had individual small rooms of student dormitories, and everyone stayed in close quarters. We had a lot of events, [one of which] was ‘Angel or Mortal’ where you can prank the person you were assigned to. For the entire week, you’re licensed to do anything you want so long as you don’t cross their boundaries.

We did a lot of stupid, random things. There was a time a prankster put baking flour on top of the ceiling fan, so when the person turned on the fan, the entire room would be covered in powder. Baking flour is hard to remove so the person had to move out of the room to wait for the powder to get cleaned up. That was a disastrous prank, but one of the things that I remember from my uni days.

Do you have any regrets from the past?

I think… I’ve come to terms with everything I’ve done in the past. It  has shaped me into who I am today. This might sound cliché but I do sincerely believe that.

You’ve been in showbiz for five years now, have you done or said anything you regret during this period of time?

No leh. Fortunately now that I think back… (pauses to think). I don’t think there’s anything I’ve said that I feel like is too disastrous and I would take back. I think I’m a person who is always somewhat careful with my words.

So there’s no moment you would return to change?

Yah I wouldn’t change any of that. But I would love to go to the future. I’m a very forward thinking man and I like to tell people that if I can witness the end of humanity in my lifetime, that would be quite cool.

It’s a little morbid. The thing is, if you know you are the last lap of humanity and you can witness everything that humans before you couldn’t see, personally, I think it’s cool.

It's definitely something that is not happening in our lifetime, so maybe it's the year 3000 and we’re destroying ourselves and the planet. I’ll love to witness that and see how far humanity can drive itself into the grave. For me, it’s just a curiosity to see where this all ends. Humans have been the dominant species. So far no aliens have been discovered and we’re the top-tier species…

You believe in aliens?

Okay, I’m not a big study of aliens and extraterrestrial stuff but how I see it is that I do believe there’s some other species out there. I don’t delve into how they look or what they would do to us, but it’s cool. The universe is just too big, I do buy the theory that yes, there are other species out there, but our timelines just don’t overlap, or we haven’t discovered them yet.

So instead of moving into the future to see your family, you want to see the end of humanity?

Yeah, I mean… my future family wouldn’t know who I am, and I wouldn’t care to know who they are. Would my great great grandfather care to know what I look like? I don’t know… I think he doesn’t care ‘cos he’s too far away. So for me, I also wouldn’t care. Maybe I would like to see, uh, how I die. [It would be] interesting to see how my life ends. Like what terrible things I’ve done from there to the end, and maybe I should avoid that.

You’ve recently been posting more online content, like food vlogs and gadget reviews. It looks like you’ve been making an effort to connect with your followers online. Do you think it’s important for an actor to create content to be popular these days — is acting not enough anymore?

To answer that straight out, I say yes. I’d say that it’s very important and right now, the good thing about social media is that we are able to take the initiative to do what we want. It’s really like a blank piece of paper where you can do whatever you want to do, create photos, avant garde fashion, or short content. I feel like with the advancement of social media, everyone can really rise up and engage as long as they have great content.

So with regards to acting in Singapore, yes [content creation is important]. I feel that it depends on what you want at the end of the day. For me, what I’m pursuing is that I want to expand on the facades that I have besides acting. I hope that with my free time, while not disturbing my craft of acting (glances at manager with a smile), I will be able to craft more entertaining content for whoever is out there.

You spoke about venturing into social media during our last interview and it’s great to see you being more active online these days. Have you found your niche?

I think that’s the million dollar question everyone asks. Right now, definitely not. The only niche I have is ‘Zhang Zetong’. Besides that, I think I’m still all over the place, but I feel that I’m cherishing this time where I put up whatever interests me without marrying myself to a niche yet.

The gurus online say you have to have a niche, but for me, it’s like I don’t want to box myself up with a singular niche first. Food is something I’m interested in — I just ask myself what kinda content I want to do while still enjoying myself. I genuinely want to find nice food or different places, or new gadgets that I would buy and try out myself. These are just extensions of what I like as Zhang Zetong and I feel like I’ll do that first and see what sticks.

There was a period of time that I thought I could be a finance bro, like a ‘finfluencer’, that’s the word. But I don’t think… it’s a very small and niche community. A lot of people who follow me might not necessarily like finance content lah. It’s [too] niche, like credit cards, miles, and investments. I was chatting with this guy who makes a living out of writing about finance investments and thesis and methodologies, and he [told me] one wrong move could cost your entire career. I think that’s quite risky in the finance world, and I'm not ready to jump into all that lah.

So finance is something you’re big into?

Yes. Wah, I feel like financial literacy is a compulsory subject for all working adults. The good thing is that a lot of working adults in Singapore are talking about it. 

I joined a few thriving online communities where they discuss a lot about things like cards, how you spend your money, how to save, and how to invest stuff like that. I feel like if you want to be responsible for your wealth, financial literacy is as good as learning English.

Do you manage your own finances?

Yes, not very [well], but I am doing that now (chuckles). I don’t need an accountant yet, I hope I will get there one day (laughs).

These days it’s easy to go live and chat with your fans. Are you ever afraid that you’ll say something wrongly?

On live? Yes a hundred percent, ‘cos I feel that when it comes to live you weigh between being entertaining and wanting to engage the fans every minute. As much as I watch my words, when it comes to trying to be entertaining on live it’s so easy to make a mistake and just shoot your mouth. Whatever you say will be frozen in time, and it’ll all be on you. So yeah, it’s a concern. I don’t have that many opportunities to go on live anyway, but I’m a cautious person for sure.

We recently saw an IG video where you picked the choice of having 10 supporting roles over one lead role. Why that choice?

Photos: Mediacorp, Ainslyn Lim, Zhang Zetong/ Instagram

Catch Zetong in Once Upon A New Year's Eve on mewatch or view the first episode below. Once Upon A New Year's Eve also airs on Channel 8, weekdays, 9pm.