Jerry Yan stood on a stage in Bulacan last night, and an arena full of Filipino fans lost their minds. Some of them were 12 the last time they saw him live. Some weren’t born yet.
That’s the strange thing about Meteor Garden in the Philippines. It never really left.
What happened in Bulacan
On June 27, 2026, Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, and Vanness Wu played the Philippine Arena as part of the “F✦FOREVER” world tour, the one most headlines call F4EVER. Mayday’s lead singer, Ashin, joined them on stage.
Tickets ranged from ₱1,500 for restricted-view seats to ₱21,500 for the floor. They moved fast.
One name was missing: Ken Chu. He skipped the reunion over a disagreement related to the project, though he’s said he wishes the others well. So this wasn’t the full F4. 3 of the original 4 showed up, and for most fans, that was already more than they expected to get.
Manila was the first stop. The tour also hits Chongqing, Jakarta, Bangkok, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur.
Who Jerry Yan actually is
Strip away the Dao Ming Si haircut and the rich-boy character, and his real story looks nothing like Meteor Garden.
He was born Liao Yang-Zhen on January 1, 1977, in Taoyuan, Taiwan. He’s of Hakka and Atayal descent. His father died when Jerry was 12, and he took odd jobs to help his mother and sister get by.
He didn’t plan on acting. He won a modeling competition in 1998, picked up ad and music video work, and landed a small TV role in 2000. A year later, Meteor Garden made him famous across half of Asia almost overnight.
He’s 49 now. Still working. Still, somehow, the heartthrob.
Why Meteor Garden still owns Filipino nostalgia
Meteor Garden hit ABS-CBN in May 2003, dubbed in Filipino. Within weeks, it was one of the most-watched shows in the country and basically started the local “Chinovela” craze.
Jerry, playing Dao Ming Si, became the template for a specific kind of Filipino teenage crush: rich, moody, secretly soft. Viewers paired him with Barbie Hsu’s Shan Cai and never quite let go of either character.
When Jerry visited Manila that November, NAIA went on high alert. He paid a courtesy call to then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Malacañang, and fans got so worked up during the photo session that both of them briefly had to be moved out of the room.
That’s Meteor Garden fever. The Philippines never fully recovered from it.
He didn’t disappear after F4
F4 went on hiatus in 2004 so the members could chase solo careers, then officially split in 2009. Jerry kept working the whole time.
He starred in The Hospital (2006), a medical drama good enough to get picked up by Japan’s NHK. He played opposite Ella Chen in Down with Love (2010). In Loving, Never Forgetting (2014), he played a single father, and that performance won him Best Actor at the 2015 Philippines Asian Drama Awards.
More recently: Count Your Lucky Stars (2020), a stint on the variety show Call Me By Fire (2021), and the drama The Forbidden Flower (2023).
He never really escaped Dao Ming Si. He didn’t seem to want to. He just kept working past the role anyway.
Jerry Yan instgram : Jerry Yan
Quick answers
How old is Jerry Yan in 2026? He’s 49, born January 1, 1977.
Did the full F4 perform in Manila? No. Jerry Yan, Vic Chou, and Vanness Wu performed. Ken Chu didn’t join this tour.
Where did the Manila concert happen? Philippine Arena in Bulacan, on June 27, 2026, as the opening stop of the F4EVER (F✦FOREVER) world tour.
What’s next
No second Manila date has been announced. No word yet on a full F4 reunion with Ken Chu back in the lineup, and given the reasons behind his absence, that might not come soon.
For now, Filipino fans got one night at Philippine Arena, more than two decades after Meteor Garden first aired. For a lot of them, that was the whole point.